Well, the floor is mopped and the car aired out. Of course there is a lot more hair to pick up -- she shed like leaves -- and we have to throw away her dish and bowl and bone and somehow get rid of the chain run. What do I feel now that Callie has been given away to the SPCA? I feel some anger, of course. Not anger at Christine, though she thinks I do. Yes, it was her idea to get the dogs (to which I acquiesced willingly), and I cannot blame her for her growing alienation from Callie. And I find anger at myself because we couldn't provide the sort of home that would have been good for her, provided her with running space and much more love and affection than she got. I hope they find a home for her -- I almost have to believe they will. No, the anger is directed elsewhere.
Callie was never much fun. She was too hyper, demanded too much from our crowded schedules. She had energy to burn and it is a tribute to her animal patience that she did not do more destruction than she did, for she had to wait upon the whims of human beings who were capricious and unscheduled for her food and affection. In all of this she showed immense dignity and restraint, putting up with our indifference with good humor and constant attention.
I am angry at us, both Christine and myself as we are, and human beings in general. We act so cavalierly toward the animals we make our slaves, expect them to entertain us, then, when unneeded, to be gotten rid of in the least visible way. For almost a year we and that dog lived together and shared any number of experiences that created bonds of both love and hate, but in any case bonds that were strong and forged out of living flesh. Now, when it does not suit us to keep her, we don't, and off she goes, like the obedient animal she is.
I do not know right now if she has any inkling of what is happening to her. She sits in her cage at the SPCA waiting, seeing nothing but strangers. I wonder if she just thinks it's another one of our outings, and that we'll be back sometime, if not soon. We always come back. Like Lennie in Of Mice and Men, she trusts implicitly, with no logic to muddle things. She, in a sense, gave a year of her life to us, and now we just give it back to her with no interest earned, no regrets. She was a sprightly dog, full of energy and personality. We had no time for her good qualities, and so they never got a chance to shine. We wanted her as an adjunct to our lives, not as a focus of it, like an appendage that responds only when we want it to. I guess we didn't want her to have any sort of personality, just a compliant nature.
I suddenly do not like myself much today for having done this, though I can logicalize all I want. I think this hits deeper than I'm letting it. Certainly our lives are easier -- but is that a reasonable criterion? Is that the only measure of things, if it makes our lives easier? I would like to say no, but I would be wrong. We will not have children because they interfere with what we want. I can live with that, but how strong are those teachings that tell us to suffer and to strive and to have pain as the absolutes of knowing that we are alive at all! And we cave in to expediency. I hope Callie will be better off; I am not sure we will be.
There is death here, surely. I would like to think that life will run pretty much as before, that only now I won't have to run home to let her off her chain, that now I'll be able to take lunch in the dining hall and rub elbows with my colleagues. But it doesn't feel like that. In her there was an unreserved energy for us. Maybe love, I don't know, but when she saw me walk up the path, her whole body would display such recognition, and she would bounce into the house in a way, that I, in my more jaded or cynical moods, would not appreciate. I would yell for her to lay down, be quiet, and she would, but it wasn't what she wanted at all -- she wanted attention, a reward for having spent so much time alone and with such good behavior. My heart aches for her splendid ignorance. She wanted very little -- food, a place to stay, some petting -- and she had no real sense of the larger, more dangerous scheme that swirled around her. Why, as humans, are we balanced on this knife between the bliss of supposed ignorance and the desire for truth at any cost? Why is it our particular fate to be enmeshed in complexity so thick that to breathe is sometimes a victory and to simply get through a day with some sense of person intact is a banquet to our minds? I wish sometimes life would pan out, bottom out, that I would be fully happy with what I have and not desire anything more than what I already had. I wish to have no desires, and to have no desire for desire. Peace inside. But it won't come. If it cannot come for a simple dog, if it cannot come for an animal who desires nothing more than sustenance, then it will not come to me who has even a less clear notion of what to do and what to want. Surely there is death here, not only Callie's, but also of every possibility for peace and tranquility; I must face turgid waters and keep from letting the rocks have at me.
I don't like myself for having done what I did. I am afraid that such abandonment will come to me, too, that life will simply leave me with my illusions and no way to pierce them, that I will be as empty as I suspect myself of being. A truly human existence must be one in the constant face of pain and disillusion. Happiness can only come from defeat and renewal, not one or the other. Hard going. Meanwhile, Callie waits.