Our Dog Rusty

I started off by writing “my dog rusty” but that wasn’t true, he was our family dog, the only dog that my sister and I ever had while growing up.

We had wanted a dog for a long time but my father had come up with an ingenious plan to prevent that from happening.  From an early age, my sister and I were told that we could only have a dog if we kept our rooms clean for 30 straight days.  Clearly this was an impossible task for 8 year olds and so for many years we languished, dogless.

Until one day in middle school when my mother dropped me off at the library and went to the local grocery store in Los Alamos, Furrs, where the Española animal shelter had set up shop in the parking lot with a lot of what I’m told were very cute puppies.

Now to this day, no one’s quite sure why my mom these particular puppies got to my mom, she’d always been kind of agnostic on the issue of us getting a dog, but for reasons she still can’t fully explain, they were just too cute to not go home with one.

I of course had no idea what was going on, I just sat outside the library wondering why my mom was so late.  Until she pulled up in the green minivan and there, on the floor by the sliding door, was a small brown puppy.

rusty as a puppy

When we brought him home, that first day, I remember some of our friends came over to play with him, Eric and Sydney (I think).  Eric started his long tradition of chasing the dog around my living room (which continued until we graduated from high school) and that day the name Rusty was born (because of the color of his fur).

Rusty was not the smartest pet in the world.  He was the only dog I’ve ever met who did not understand the fundamentals of the game “fetch,” he’d chase the ball, stare at it, and then leave it where it fell, come back, and then give you a weird look.  In a world of brave dogs he refused to show any sort of courage, fearing everything from lightning to the weird mechanized singing reindeer my mom brings out every Christmas.  He once literally ate my 7th grade science textbook, allowing me to actually use the excuse “my dog ate it” at school.

Rusty's Head

But he was our dog, as only your first dog can be.  I used to bribe him with treats into coming to sleep down on my bed, walking him around the beautiful mountains and forests New Mexico every day brought a calm to my dad that I’m not sure he’d ever known.  My sister used to call him “Rooty” because somehow in her mind it rhymed with Rusty.  He was mostly my mom’s dog though, I guess he’d bonded with her from those first moments as a puppy.  When she’d go off on trips to see my grandmother, he would barely eat for days, just sit and stare out the front door waiting for her to come home.

After my parents moved to Dallas and I went away to college, he was the best part about coming back to their house.  I didn’t (and still don’t) have any friends in Dallas, so those summers, thanksgivings, and christmases meant a lot of quality time with the dog.

Rusty and Me

Two and half years ago, I got a call from my parents, saying that that Rusty, who had been sick, had passed in an accident.  It was just a few weeks after I had graduated from college and he died on the same day as my Aunt.  As awful as it sounds, while she had been sick for a long time and we had all prepared ourselves for the inevitable, I was completely unprepared to deal with his death.  Or how apparently I never told Eric, since he asked about Rusty the othe day, and now he’s going to find out about this from a facebook note (sorry dude, rusty loved you).

Shortly after he died, I picked up the book “Marley and Me” and read the whole thing on a trip.  I remember tearing up at the end, the emotion so raw, at some airport terminal, maybe Las Vegas or St. Louis, and the woman next to me leaning over and asking what my dog’s name had been.  I told her and she smiled and said told me her dogs name and said something to the effect that we carry them with us forever.

My first Thanksgiving and Christmas without Rusty was hard to bear, my parents house was remarkably less interesting without a dog present, there was no one to hang out with when my parents were at work or when they’d gone to bed.

So I decided, using all of my considerable skills as a political operative, to lobby them to get a new dog.  It was a delicate operation, emotions were still very raw after the loss of Rusty, and so it had to be handled with only the kind of sensitivity and finesse that I possessed.  Here’s some actual conversations I had with my parents to convince them to get a dog.

“Hey Dad can we get a dog?”
“No.”

“Hey Mom, can we get a dog?”
“No.”

“Hey Mom and Dad, can we get a dog?”
“You don’t even live here!”
“Fine.  Hey mom and dad, can YOU get a dog?”
“No.”

“Hey mom and dad, can we get a dog?”
“Why do you want a dog so badly?”
“So I have someone to hangout with when I’m home.”
“You want us to get a dog so you have someone to hang out with the ten days a year you’re home?”
“Yes.”
“No.”

“Hey mom, can we get a dog?”
“No.”
“But dad said it was ok.”
“Really?”
“Yes.  But uh…you don’t bother to call him to ask or anything.”
“No.”

“Hey Dad, mom wanted me to tell you that she’s fine with getting a dog, so you should just go to the pound and get a new dog now.  She said she…wanted you to surprise her with what kind you pick out.  Yeah that’s it.”
“No.”

“Hey Lianne, I’ll give you twenty bucks to go get mom and dad a dog.”
“No.”

Surprisingly, my parents did not succumb to this persistent and constant long-distance barrage for several years.

I had all but given up hope when I came home for Christmas this year and my dad said he’d been looking online at dogs and was planning on visiting some local animal shelters.  We made three visits to the Plano Animal Shelter before Christmas and found a few dogs that my parents liked, and one that really clicked with him, but my dad wanted to ponder it over Christmas.  I, of course, respected this decision and forced the entire family to see “Marley and Me” in theaters on Christmas Day.

So, tomorrow (or today since its 2am already) we’re going to the pound and it looks like my dad may bring home a dog that actually a bit like our old dog (I’d link to him on petfinder but I don’t want to jinx it).  The dog may have even already been adopted (sad for us, happy for him) but I know my parents are now in a place where they’re ready to have another dog in their life.  And so is our family, even if I have to love it from 2,000 miles away.

I never got to say goodbye to Rusty, I was far away and his death was so unexpected, so in a way, this is my goodbye to him.  It’s two and a half years later but somehow, he’s still as present in my heart as he was that first time I saw him on the floor of our minivan. And while my parents may be getting a new dog soon, there will never be another Rusty.

adam

Rusty and Lianne