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He Sang I Love You
• INDEPENDENCE DAY AND AN OREO
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• “So what you’re going to name him, Ivy ?”, Ian asked his sister as we headed back across the street towards the house. Ivy barely heard him she was so excited. I knew she could hardly wait to get through the gate and up to the front door and inside to tell her dad and I had allowed her to get a puppy.
• “I don’t think she heard you Ian.” I told him as we look both ways before we crossed our street. There was no traffic as usual on our street so we crossed to the gate where Hooligan was waiting for us, wagging his tail and smiling his big goofy smile. Ivy had already made it into the house.
• “I’m really surprised mom. I thought she’d picked the other one.”, Ian told me.
• “Hell, you got me! I figured she’d pick the big yellow one too. I wonder why she picked the runt?”, I asked mostly to myself but out loud.
• “You can never tell with her mom.”, Ian said kind of chuckling. We pet Hooligan for a few minutes, letting him smell all the little puppy smells on us. He sniffed and licked our hands as if to say, “Big deal, another dog.”
• We walked up the driveway and in the front door where Ivy was excitedly and hurriedly telling her father all that had gone on. The look on Ron’s face was pretty clear he wasn’t happy.
• “So, Ivy,” Ian began asking his little sister again. Lue-lu immediately hopped back into his the moment he sat back down on the couch where he’d left his video game paused. He absently scratched behind her ears while she sniffed at the different and strange scents left behind from Mama Dog and her puppies.
• “What are you gonna call him?” he finished his question finally. Ivy's brow scrunched in concentration as she thought. A few moments later she said to her brother, “I have no idea, but I’m sure I’ll think of something!” she said matter of factly, smiling at us. “I’m gonna go to my room right now and message Anna! Maybe she can help me think of a good name!” she stood up, and ran through the kitchen and out the back door, her words following and fading after her. She’d be on Facebook messenger, I was pretty sure, for at least an hour, talking with one or more of her friends about the new addition to our house.
• I sat down at the table and just waited. I knew what was coming. I didn’t have to wait long.
• “You know we can’t afford another dog, Mary.” Ron said quietly. He looked at me with a flat expression, scolding me without words.
• “Yeah, I know! We can’t afford anything, but we still seem to manage. I’m working now and we’ll take care of it! The dogs have never gone without food and they won’t now.” I was getting irritated.
• “ If you’d help out by at least looking for another job and maybe finding some work, we wouldn’t have to have these discussions, would we!?”, I said trying not to sound like a complete bitch. It was a conversation that has in the past month or so, became an argument. After eight years at his old job, Ron felt like a bit of a break wasn’t too much to ask for. At first I agreed, but when we’d had to start visiting the local food bank, and threatening letters from utility companies started becoming the norm, I’d figured break time was over. Ron hadn’t .
• “So she picked the runt huh?”, he asked changing the subject. Both Ron and I were of the opinion that runts made damn good dogs. Mostly because being so small and usually sickly, they had to fight their bigger siblings to stay alive. Runts made good dogs in our book.
• As far back as I could remember I never had any problems with runt dogs as long as they were of a bigger breed. As I said before I never had liked small dogs. This was based on one miniature teacup poodle my mother had owned when I was a teenager. That one little dog made me hate 99.9% of all dogs that were small breeds.
• “Pip”.
• That had been the name of my mother’s beloved and cherished teacup poodle. I had actually helped her find the dog through a friend of mine’s father. She’d always wanted a miniature teacup poodle, and when she finally got one? Oh good lord! If I’d ever thought she done a bad job raising me and my other siblings, this dog was certainly proof!
• The first night she had him, she had put him in her big garden tub in their bathroom, to sleep. He cried and whined so much though, that she ended up putting him on the floor and slept with him there for the entire night!
• Neither her nor my stepfather even bothered to try to potty train the dog either. They just hooked a long lead my mother had braided to Pips collar, that was tied to the front steps, and put him outside for a few minutes throughout the day. The problem with this was, Pip would have already made a mess somewhere in the house. I guess somewhere in there, they thought I was going to be responsible for catching him before he peed or pooped.
• Nope! I had my own dog at that time. A Siberian Husky pit-bull mix, named “Damon”, who was strictly an outside dog. I had enough trouble keeping up with cleaning up after him and going to school. I also took care of the house cleaning as well.
• My older half brother and older half sister had moved out leaving just me with my mother and stepfather. Neither one of them worked. My mother, I believe refused to work just due to laziness. My step father was disabled and epileptic. My mother was more content to borrow thousands and thousands of dollars from her mother in Kansas when the bills came do every month.
• Every single day they would go for coffee at the local restaurant for two to three hours, which meant two to three times a week I cleaned the house spotless. Sweeping, and mopping floors, doing laundry, vacuuming the living room and huge dining room, and of course, cleaning up the multiple piles of shit that neither of my parents seemed to ever notice.
• All of this, I felt they should have been a little more responsible for. But it kept me from having to hang out with them, or talk to them.
• It seemed like her damn dog loved to leave these logs of shit throughout the whole house on purpose, knowing I was the one who would have to clean it up. Be it in the living room, the dining room, or her office, all which we’re carpeted. The kitchen and the little nook area that was all linoleum, was for urine. He managed to urinate along every bottom space of every cabinet that he could reach! What disgusted me and angered me the most about this dog though, was he ruined everything with this habit. A year prior to my mother getting him, my grandmother had come down for a visit from Kansas. My half brother had moved out so my sister and I no longer had to share a room. She wanted to redecorate for us girls, and put a rough cap of five thousand dollars as the limit, each!
• We didn’t have to do much to my sisters room as her choice for colors were going to be pink, white, and burgundy. The carpet was already pink and the wallpaper had pink flowers and was a kind of a creamy color. My sister chose white and gold furniture to go into her room. My mother had crocheted her a bed spread in her colors. It looked like somebody had thrown up Pepto-Bismol in her room!
• My room on the other hand, got a complete overhaul. The pink and white wallpaper that had been in that room was completely replaced with white wallpaper and embellished silver flowers. The bedding was dark blue and the curtains were a light blue. The furniture was white and black. My carpet was something I thought she’d spent too much money on. $3,000! It was thick soft shag and the color was called thunderstorm. It was stunning, and it felt so good under my feet. It was a deep bluish and black silver color that changed when vacuumed. Once a week I carefully cleaned the carpet with a light spray of 98% water and a drop of bleach. I was a smoker and didn’t want the carpet to smell. I kept my room and that carpet immaculate.
• There were more serious issues between myself and my mother mostly. Deeper ones causing me to become a repeat runaway. I’d gone to juvenile hall a few times, my mother putting me there for running away. During one of those incarcerations, they had let Pip into my room where he managed to urinate so much on the carpet, that he turned sections of it green!
• After I was able to go home, further damage was assisted by my stepfather who would wake me every morning for school, by knocking and letting the dog into my room. I told him numerous times not to let that damn dog in my room! They never listened. I felt that was $3,000 my grandmother had spent that they were taking for granted.
• I didn’t like that little dog and he knew it. I think the feeling was mutual.
• About two months before I moved out was my last straw with him. I’d caught him once again, lifting his leg to pee in the kitchen. When I went to grab him to put him outside, he tried to viciously bite my hand! I pulled it back surprised, but he was still coming at me!
• That’s the only time in my life I purposely kicked any animal, as he again came at me. I was done with him and from that point on, I hadn’t liked little dogs.
• “What does he look like?”, Ron asked, the disappointment seemingly to clear from his face. As I’ve mentioned, Ron could be pretty unempathetic at times.
• But for the most part, he could be a softy. Especially when it came to puppies or baby animals of any kind. He just didn’t openly show it.
• “Here, check it out. I've got a few pictures.”, I told him, going through my cell phone quickly hitting the files and pulling up the few pictures I’d snapped of the puppy. In one Ian was holding the little runt for the camera. In his hand it showed just how small he was, laying flat in my son’s hand. He still had room to move in Ian’s palm he was that small!
• “He is kind of cute.”, Ron said.
• “Does he make a lot of noise when you hold him?”, he asked no one in particular.
• I kind of laughed.
• “Well Gary said that he made so much damn noise during the nights that it wakes him up. He says he’s a talker so we’ll just have to see if maybe he’s gonna grow out of it.”, I said absently while we continued looking at the photos we’ve taken of Ivy’s new puppy.
• A few minutes later, Ivy became bounding back through the back door, slimming it as she ran through the kitchen. Excited, barely containing herself, she blurted, “Can Anna come over after school tomorrow and see my new puppy?” Inquiringly, she waited for an answer looking back and forth between her father and I.
“Well, I don’t mind, so you Ron?”, I told her looking at her father for confirmation.
“I guess”, he said, though he wasn’t finished.
“But you know, Gary and Bonnie might be the ones to ask if you come over with a friend.” He told her. I nodded my head in agreement.
“And you should try to go over every afternoon, so he can get used to your scent.”, I told her.
“Your puppy will get to know you quicker and he’ll be easier to train.”, I added.
“Should I go ask Santa now?”, she asked, starting to head for the front door.
“ No honey don’t worry about it now, it’s dinner time. You’re dad or I will talk to them tomorrow at some point, and we’ll let you know after you get home from school. I’m sure it’ll be fine if Anna comes over to tomorrow, but make sure you ask ahead of you want a friend to come along, okay?”, I told her. With that, I left the conversation to her father, her and Ian.
I got up and began to make dinner. I had to be at work at 10 o’clock that night, so it was time for me to start getting things ready for them and later for me. While making dinner, I began to think of all the extra expenses that would come with such a little dog.
Lulu barely cost us anything. She’d already had her shots and was fixed, and tagged. And she barely ate anything.
My thoughts drifted back to about two years before, remembering another puppy the kids and I had adopted. “Kitty”.
On a grocery shopping trip one rainy afternoon, the kids and I were leaving a local market where there was a man out front giving away little pit-bull puppies. I thought well okay I could never seem to say no to puppies, especially free puppies. I asked the man if they’d had their first shots yet, and he assured me, oh yes, yes, yes!, no problem.
Within a week and a half of having the puppy, she became very ill, very fast.
It was of course, parvovirus, and it was too late in it’s final stages to do anything.
We’d had to put her down. It tore all of us up and I was furious that the guy had told me that she had her shots. Obviously she hadn’t.
I knew this was going to have to be a cost as well for us with the new puppy, once he was ready to come home to us. I knew things would work themselves out, they always seemed to.
© M.E.Purdy
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• “So what you’re going to name him, Ivy ?”, Ian asked his sister as we headed back across the street towards the house. Ivy barely heard him she was so excited. I knew she could hardly wait to get through the gate and up to the front door and inside to tell her dad and I had allowed her to get a puppy.
• “I don’t think she heard you Ian.” I told him as we look both ways before we crossed our street. There was no traffic as usual on our street so we crossed to the gate where Hooligan was waiting for us, wagging his tail and smiling his big goofy smile. Ivy had already made it into the house.
• “I’m really surprised mom. I thought she’d picked the other one.”, Ian told me.
• “Hell, you got me! I figured she’d pick the big yellow one too. I wonder why she picked the runt?”, I asked mostly to myself but out loud.
• “You can never tell with her mom.”, Ian said kind of chuckling. We pet Hooligan for a few minutes, letting him smell all the little puppy smells on us. He sniffed and licked our hands as if to say, “Big deal, another dog.”
• We walked up the driveway and in the front door where Ivy was excitedly and hurriedly telling her father all that had gone on. The look on Ron’s face was pretty clear he wasn’t happy.
• “So, Ivy,” Ian began asking his little sister again. Lue-lu immediately hopped back into his the moment he sat back down on the couch where he’d left his video game paused. He absently scratched behind her ears while she sniffed at the different and strange scents left behind from Mama Dog and her puppies.
• “What are you gonna call him?” he finished his question finally. Ivy's brow scrunched in concentration as she thought. A few moments later she said to her brother, “I have no idea, but I’m sure I’ll think of something!” she said matter of factly, smiling at us. “I’m gonna go to my room right now and message Anna! Maybe she can help me think of a good name!” she stood up, and ran through the kitchen and out the back door, her words following and fading after her. She’d be on Facebook messenger, I was pretty sure, for at least an hour, talking with one or more of her friends about the new addition to our house.
• I sat down at the table and just waited. I knew what was coming. I didn’t have to wait long.
• “You know we can’t afford another dog, Mary.” Ron said quietly. He looked at me with a flat expression, scolding me without words.
• “Yeah, I know! We can’t afford anything, but we still seem to manage. I’m working now and we’ll take care of it! The dogs have never gone without food and they won’t now.” I was getting irritated.
• “ If you’d help out by at least looking for another job and maybe finding some work, we wouldn’t have to have these discussions, would we!?”, I said trying not to sound like a complete bitch. It was a conversation that has in the past month or so, became an argument. After eight years at his old job, Ron felt like a bit of a break wasn’t too much to ask for. At first I agreed, but when we’d had to start visiting the local food bank, and threatening letters from utility companies started becoming the norm, I’d figured break time was over. Ron hadn’t .
• “So she picked the runt huh?”, he asked changing the subject. Both Ron and I were of the opinion that runts made damn good dogs. Mostly because being so small and usually sickly, they had to fight their bigger siblings to stay alive. Runts made good dogs in our book.
• As far back as I could remember I never had any problems with runt dogs as long as they were of a bigger breed. As I said before I never had liked small dogs. This was based on one miniature teacup poodle my mother had owned when I was a teenager. That one little dog made me hate 99.9% of all dogs that were small breeds.
• “Pip”.
• That had been the name of my mother’s beloved and cherished teacup poodle. I had actually helped her find the dog through a friend of mine’s father. She’d always wanted a miniature teacup poodle, and when she finally got one? Oh good lord! If I’d ever thought she done a bad job raising me and my other siblings, this dog was certainly proof!
• The first night she had him, she had put him in her big garden tub in their bathroom, to sleep. He cried and whined so much though, that she ended up putting him on the floor and slept with him there for the entire night!
• Neither her nor my stepfather even bothered to try to potty train the dog either. They just hooked a long lead my mother had braided to Pips collar, that was tied to the front steps, and put him outside for a few minutes throughout the day. The problem with this was, Pip would have already made a mess somewhere in the house. I guess somewhere in there, they thought I was going to be responsible for catching him before he peed or pooped.
• Nope! I had my own dog at that time. A Siberian Husky pit-bull mix, named “Damon”, who was strictly an outside dog. I had enough trouble keeping up with cleaning up after him and going to school. I also took care of the house cleaning as well.
• My older half brother and older half sister had moved out leaving just me with my mother and stepfather. Neither one of them worked. My mother, I believe refused to work just due to laziness. My step father was disabled and epileptic. My mother was more content to borrow thousands and thousands of dollars from her mother in Kansas when the bills came do every month.
• Every single day they would go for coffee at the local restaurant for two to three hours, which meant two to three times a week I cleaned the house spotless. Sweeping, and mopping floors, doing laundry, vacuuming the living room and huge dining room, and of course, cleaning up the multiple piles of shit that neither of my parents seemed to ever notice.
• All of this, I felt they should have been a little more responsible for. But it kept me from having to hang out with them, or talk to them.
• It seemed like her damn dog loved to leave these logs of shit throughout the whole house on purpose, knowing I was the one who would have to clean it up. Be it in the living room, the dining room, or her office, all which we’re carpeted. The kitchen and the little nook area that was all linoleum, was for urine. He managed to urinate along every bottom space of every cabinet that he could reach! What disgusted me and angered me the most about this dog though, was he ruined everything with this habit. A year prior to my mother getting him, my grandmother had come down for a visit from Kansas. My half brother had moved out so my sister and I no longer had to share a room. She wanted to redecorate for us girls, and put a rough cap of five thousand dollars as the limit, each!
• We didn’t have to do much to my sisters room as her choice for colors were going to be pink, white, and burgundy. The carpet was already pink and the wallpaper had pink flowers and was a kind of a creamy color. My sister chose white and gold furniture to go into her room. My mother had crocheted her a bed spread in her colors. It looked like somebody had thrown up Pepto-Bismol in her room!
• My room on the other hand, got a complete overhaul. The pink and white wallpaper that had been in that room was completely replaced with white wallpaper and embellished silver flowers. The bedding was dark blue and the curtains were a light blue. The furniture was white and black. My carpet was something I thought she’d spent too much money on. $3,000! It was thick soft shag and the color was called thunderstorm. It was stunning, and it felt so good under my feet. It was a deep bluish and black silver color that changed when vacuumed. Once a week I carefully cleaned the carpet with a light spray of 98% water and a drop of bleach. I was a smoker and didn’t want the carpet to smell. I kept my room and that carpet immaculate.
• There were more serious issues between myself and my mother mostly. Deeper ones causing me to become a repeat runaway. I’d gone to juvenile hall a few times, my mother putting me there for running away. During one of those incarcerations, they had let Pip into my room where he managed to urinate so much on the carpet, that he turned sections of it green!
• After I was able to go home, further damage was assisted by my stepfather who would wake me every morning for school, by knocking and letting the dog into my room. I told him numerous times not to let that damn dog in my room! They never listened. I felt that was $3,000 my grandmother had spent that they were taking for granted.
• I didn’t like that little dog and he knew it. I think the feeling was mutual.
• About two months before I moved out was my last straw with him. I’d caught him once again, lifting his leg to pee in the kitchen. When I went to grab him to put him outside, he tried to viciously bite my hand! I pulled it back surprised, but he was still coming at me!
• That’s the only time in my life I purposely kicked any animal, as he again came at me. I was done with him and from that point on, I hadn’t liked little dogs.
• “What does he look like?”, Ron asked, the disappointment seemingly to clear from his face. As I’ve mentioned, Ron could be pretty unempathetic at times.
• But for the most part, he could be a softy. Especially when it came to puppies or baby animals of any kind. He just didn’t openly show it.
• “Here, check it out. I've got a few pictures.”, I told him, going through my cell phone quickly hitting the files and pulling up the few pictures I’d snapped of the puppy. In one Ian was holding the little runt for the camera. In his hand it showed just how small he was, laying flat in my son’s hand. He still had room to move in Ian’s palm he was that small!
• “He is kind of cute.”, Ron said.
• “Does he make a lot of noise when you hold him?”, he asked no one in particular.
• I kind of laughed.
• “Well Gary said that he made so much damn noise during the nights that it wakes him up. He says he’s a talker so we’ll just have to see if maybe he’s gonna grow out of it.”, I said absently while we continued looking at the photos we’ve taken of Ivy’s new puppy.
• A few minutes later, Ivy became bounding back through the back door, slimming it as she ran through the kitchen. Excited, barely containing herself, she blurted, “Can Anna come over after school tomorrow and see my new puppy?” Inquiringly, she waited for an answer looking back and forth between her father and I.
“Well, I don’t mind, so you Ron?”, I told her looking at her father for confirmation.
“I guess”, he said, though he wasn’t finished.
“But you know, Gary and Bonnie might be the ones to ask if you come over with a friend.” He told her. I nodded my head in agreement.
“And you should try to go over every afternoon, so he can get used to your scent.”, I told her.
“Your puppy will get to know you quicker and he’ll be easier to train.”, I added.
“Should I go ask Santa now?”, she asked, starting to head for the front door.
“ No honey don’t worry about it now, it’s dinner time. You’re dad or I will talk to them tomorrow at some point, and we’ll let you know after you get home from school. I’m sure it’ll be fine if Anna comes over to tomorrow, but make sure you ask ahead of you want a friend to come along, okay?”, I told her. With that, I left the conversation to her father, her and Ian.
I got up and began to make dinner. I had to be at work at 10 o’clock that night, so it was time for me to start getting things ready for them and later for me. While making dinner, I began to think of all the extra expenses that would come with such a little dog.
Lulu barely cost us anything. She’d already had her shots and was fixed, and tagged. And she barely ate anything.
My thoughts drifted back to about two years before, remembering another puppy the kids and I had adopted. “Kitty”.
On a grocery shopping trip one rainy afternoon, the kids and I were leaving a local market where there was a man out front giving away little pit-bull puppies. I thought well okay I could never seem to say no to puppies, especially free puppies. I asked the man if they’d had their first shots yet, and he assured me, oh yes, yes, yes!, no problem.
Within a week and a half of having the puppy, she became very ill, very fast.
It was of course, parvovirus, and it was too late in it’s final stages to do anything.
We’d had to put her down. It tore all of us up and I was furious that the guy had told me that she had her shots. Obviously she hadn’t.
I knew this was going to have to be a cost as well for us with the new puppy, once he was ready to come home to us. I knew things would work themselves out, they always seemed to.
© M.E.Purdy
