Dandy, or the Price of Love

THE PRICE OF LOVE

Dandy came into our house at my insistence. I threw tantrums: locked myself into the bathroom, denied myself food and water, and threw crying fits. What could my parents do?

So one day, in order to put an end to all the unpleasant screaming and crying, my father took us all out and we came home with Dandy. There was nothing much he could have done anyway… He was getting sick of me stealing his newspaper early in the morning and taking his favorite pages out before innocently putting it back where I found it. Little did he know that Dandy would do the same thing for 6 months, albeit less innocently.

Dandy was a tiny black and white ball of fur, with the chocolatey brown eyes that make you feel like everything’s right in the world when you look into them. He had long ears that flopped around, and a wet, friendly pink tongue. When he bent his head into his bowl of milk, his ears found their way into it before his mouth did, a fact that puzzled him greatly.

Dandy won my father’s heart quickly. He would wait by the door when it was time for papa to come home, and in the mornings he’d beg to be allowed to accompany him on his daily morning jog. Dandy’s dogged doggy-devotion was soon reciprocated by papa, who began bringing home biscuits in his pockets for Dandy to find.

He was a smart dog, he knew exactly how to get what he wanted out of anyone in the family. He’d perfected the art of begging, he’d watch you with rapt attention if you were eating something, and whine pitifully until you felt sorry for him and dropped your sandwich on the floor for him.

Dandy was a traveling dog. A tourist in his own right. Wherever we went, he had to smell everything, examine every hole in the ground, and look out of every window in the building before he gave us his approval of the place. We went everywhere together, and if we ever got lost while walking in an unfamiliar city, Dandy would always be able to lead us back to the car, if not back to the hotel room.

Dandy made himself comfortable within our family. My mom spoiled him more than she ever spoiled me. When I left for college, she showered even more attention on him. She was the only one who was allowed to lift him up. If anyone else tried, he’d get agitated and jump off, but when my mom did it, he turned into this docile little angelic puppy.

The death of a pet is tough to deal with. When Dandy died, I couldn’t believe that he was gone. After a few days of disbelief, sadness overcame me. When I look at his photographs, I can still imagine him alive, breathing. Dandy gave us the sort of pure unconditional love that only animals are capable of. His absence left our family incomplete, empty.

Now, there’s no friendly tail wagging bundle of energy waiting for us when we get home. No whining under the table during dinner. There’s no fluffy warm thing to cuddle in bed when its cold. No disconcerting mornings in which a wet tongue on your face serves as an alarm function. No one to talk to in the dark about my secret fears and fantasies. No one staying up with me till the wee hours while I watch mindless TV or study for an upcoming test.

It’s a strange sort of emptiness, this sudden lack of affection. But the sadness of losing a loved pet is nothing compared to the sheer bulk of affection they shower on you while they’re alive.
I have heard people say that losing a pet is a painful experience, and that there’s no point even keeping one because you know from the moment you get one that its life span is finite. You know that sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with death.

But that is the price of love.