About a dog

This story starts way back in the mid 1970s, but my reason for writing is right here in 2021. 

A few nights ago, in the waning days of the year's first month, I watched on our office TV a film released in 2019, "A Dog's Way Home." Kind of a latter-day "The Incredible Journey," which I loved as a child. The stories are similar. Beloved but somehow lost domestic pets find their ways back to their people.

It's been many years since I've seen "Incredible Journey," so I don't recall many details. Just that the trio was comprised of a Siamese cat, a Staffordshire terrier and a Golden Retriever.

"A Dog's Way Home" follows a single dog, Bella, a pit bull mix, on her way home to her beloved Lucas, his girlfriend, Olivia and his mom. Her travels take her from New Mexico to Colorado over the course of two winters.

Bella makes friends with a pack, becomes a mother-dog to an orphaned cougar (Big Kitten) is hunted by wolves, adopted several times on her journey and finally, finally completes the game Lucas taught her: Go Home.

But not without a final road to cross. And it nearly proves fatal.

She is hit by a car.

Now this movie pushes all the right buttons for a tear-jerker, but it brought tears to my eyes because of where this story began in the '70s.

It was spring, I remember because I was wearing just a jean skirt and a light top.

I left my apartment by the Ohio State campus headed for a morning class (which one, I don't remember).

As I approached Lane Avenue, a dog on the opposite side started to cross, trotting right into traffic.

A car hit him, then ran over him.

Amazingly, the dog got up, trotted back to the side of the street it had started from and laid down under a young tree. It sat with its head up for a moment, then the head went down.

I was in a panic. I ran back to my apartment, a matter of moments, and phoned campus police.

I don't know what I thought they could do, and I can't recall what their response was, I think the dispatcher promised to send a car.

It didn't matter. The dog had died.

I wish, rather, that I had gone to the dog and comforted it. Stroked its head.

Where it came from or where it was going, I'll never know. But it was just a simple ordinary day for that dog that ended in what I can only imagine was great pain. And tears for me. Then and now.

It would be many years from then until I had dogs of my own and learned all they had to teach me.

I don't know if I can really think of that pup as my first dog. If it was, I failed it by not comforting it.

But if there is a rainbow bridge, little dog, I'm sure you made it to the other side.

Forgive me.

i remember 100 percent

memory. distinct. sexual harassment.

yes, i remember certain things distinctly.

and not just about being harrassed, which is just a condition of being female.

i remember my beloved dog coming out, finally after weeks of hesitation, from a tunnel during an obedience training class and looking up at me with trust.

Best dog ever. (Katy Buchanan)

i remember sharing a brief moment with a stranger asking for directions on penn avenue in pittsburgh and laughing when we both realized her destination was about 10 feet away and in plain sight.

i remember being angry during a winter drive in massachusetts with my sister suzanne and her two kids in a scary snowstorm.

i remember a man walking past me on a Cleveland street in the early 1980s and saying at me "nice bouncing boobs." i remember what I was wearing (knee length, pink knit dress, quarter length sleeves), but not what he looked like, just his words.

i remember a mainstream television network science reporter, also in the early 1980s, at a press conference at the University of Pittsburgh, telling me he would like to "take a nap" with me.

i remember a man named Peter who was in my Ohio State karate class helping me 'caress' his private parts in a corner of the natatorium. he told me he was teaching me certain blocks (me, very young, inexperienced and without knowledge to convey my ... discomfort?) .

i remember parts of lots of things. being in NYC as a young woman in the late 1970s with a college friend who wanted to sample a dish at a restaurant in Chinatown ... really rude, she just helped herself to my plate.

i remember being rude myself, when a roommate was smoking in our dorm and i told her to "put it out, it offends me." (this was also in the late 1970s when people still smoked everywhere, freely.)

i remember the taste of ripe tomatoes and crusty french bread at summer camp in the French Alps in the early 1960s.

i remember many years ago, also early 1960s, when our young family was traveling, sitting at a motel pool somewhere in North or South Carolina ... or maybe Virginia, and being hit in one eye with a hot pepper.  painful and blinding. someone did that to me. i remember that distinctly.


i don't remember all the specific details of any of these life events, i just remember those moments. and isn't it interesting that these memories were formed when i was very young.

  
my point is, that I think certain things sear themselves in our brains. maybe we don't capture everything about events, but the important, memory-making details, never go away.  maybe the brain just captures what's most important (how does brain know? i have no idea. brain has it's own secrets). i'd be willing to bet combat veterans have a lot to say on this subject.

so, yes. i believe dr. ford.