all of the time, we're together, in dreams

i had a very upsetting dream the other night.

now, i know listening to a person describe a dream is kind of like hearing them describe the car accident they almost got into on their way to work. it's impossible to visualize the scene, and the crux of the event is always somehow described with not-so-salient details.

that said, here's the dream.

well, here's the back story for the dream.

when i was in 7th grade, there was nothing this boy wanted more than a puppy by his side. i went through the typical filibustering of parents. i spent hours researching different breeds, and this was years before google, let me tell you. after some concerns voiced by the speaker of the house, my puppy initiative barely passed by two ayes.

my parents buried a rider to initiative, which i must have missed as the last minute votes were earned and political favors granted. it turns out, i would have to clean out the side yard by the pool and renovate it into a puppy corral. i stacked bush, i trimmed hedges, i sunk posts and i wrangled fencing into place. there was sweat, dirtied brows, a garter snake or two, but in the end i had the satisfaction of a job well done.

my mom and i, well mostly my mom, decided an australian shepherd would be the right dog for us becauseof their medium build, mild temperment and intelligence. contrary to the name, australian shepherds are actually from california, by the way.

we found an ad in the paper for chocolate brown puppies in cotati. my mom and i drove down, discussing my new responsibilities. we bought our pup from a breeder for $50. (my dad would often joke "and to think we actually paid money for this dog.") i chose her because she was the most vocal of the bunch. the breeder told us that she would often take walks through her garden, and our puppy would follow her, making doggy noises almost conversationally. the poor thing got real car sick on the way back up to ukiah, and threw up repeatedly for the hour long drive.

i spent several days trying to come up with a name and settled on "Aussie." later, i would be ashamed of the name. i guess i felt such a sweet dog deserved a better name than some colloquial moniker for her breed.

aussie, despite being a total ding dong, or maybe because of that, truly became a member of our family. and quickly, too. like, so quickly, i am pretty sure i spent more time building the puppy corral than she actually spent in it.

aussie was very protective of our family and our home. she proved this often by leaping up to with window and furiously barking every time my dad walked by. she had a special regime against UPS trucks. my mom received frequent UPS shipments for a side business she ran, and sure enough aussie was in the driveway defending my mother every time a brown truck lumbered down the street.

one day, my mom profusely apologized to the UPS driver, explaining that our dog was real protective of our house. the driver kindly acknowledged my mom's explanation, and added that aussie must be real protective of the entire neighborhood, because she is always running his truck down whenever he's in the area.

although she loved and was loved, aussie had a hard life. prolly from some poor breeding, she had terrible skin allergies and was horribly allergic to fleas. so many evenings we would be in the family room, enjoying the blanketing warmth of the woodstove, watching a movie, and then aussie would start gnawing on an itch on her back. we'd yell at her to knock it off and she would resist until the itch became too much ignore. this repeated itself ad ifinitum for the rest of the days of her life. her ears were terribly prone to infection, and her violent surges to the window as the old man walked by led us to believe her vision wasn't so great either.

in so many ways, aussie was a sad case, but she was so sweet and loving, it was impossible to merely pity her. and she kept the fly population down. all the windows in our house had doggie nose smeared along the bottom, because aussie developed a connoisseur's palate for house flies.

after college, i lived with my folks for almost two years, living the ukiah dream; workin', drinkin', fightin'. etc. you can get a sense of that period of my life by reading the archives. to cop a phrase, when in rome...so i bought a ford f150. it was a big white beast, with an extended bed and mean 302 under the hood. i had it for a few months before the water pump gave way.

it took me a few days to to replace the water pump. i kept my work area clean, dutifully put my tools away as the sun sunk below the western ridge of the ukiah valley, and i would hose away any anti-freeze that may have puddled up on the driveway.

one day i was careless. this was to be a very bad day, so events are muddy in my mind.

maybe i went inside to get some lunch. maybe i saw the puddle of antifreeze under my pick up and didn't think much of it. maybe i took another break in the afternoon, and i noticed the aussie was walking sideways and crashing into things like she was drunk. maybe this was queer, but it was a little comical.

maybe we started to get concerned later in the night when aussie started vomiting, but on the other hand, she was always eating garbage and rolling in horse shit, so it wouldn't have been the first time the dog ate something her stomach didn't agree with.

the next morning, aussie seemed to be better.

when a doggie, or kitty, or deer, or bear, or your little brother, ingests antifreeze, their liver is ravaged by the ethylene glycol. the drunken staggering, depression, and frequent urination occur because the victim is literally drunk on ethylene glycol, which is an alcohol. the liver metabolizes the ethylene glycol, and makes compounds that are toxic to the kidneys.

the second stage of antifreeze poisoning is a rapid onset of kidney failure. when aussie retreated to a corner of the bathroom, and resumed the vomiting, saturday afternoon calls to the vet were made. dogs have 50-70% mortality rate after ingesting antifreeze, we were told, so maybe aussie would get past it. however, a teaspoon of antifreeze is enough to kill a typical dog. as the kidneys fail, they stop producing urine, and fatal levels of toxins build up, ultimately killing the victim.

aussie spent the last few hours of her life, convulsing with seizures on the bathroom floor. i cannot describe to you how painful it is to watch a loved one die, while their body is quaking uncontrollably, with a panicked look in their eyes. my eyes are actually watering as i type this. near the end, aussie was experiencing seizures about every 15 minutes.

the sun had set, figuratively and literally. fortunately for aussie, our friends, the merritts, had been her veterinarians for several years, and agreed to make a special trip into town and do what needed to be done late that evening. we loaded aussie in the back of my mom's blazer, but i couldn't go.

the next day, we buried aussie on the hillside overlooking the horse pasture where she used to run through the tall grass and roll in the horse shit.

so the other night i had a dream about aussie. this is one of those dreams that sets the mood for your waking life. in this case, i've been rattled for a few days now.

i feel like i was in some sort of factory farm, which not exactly a nice place for animals to be. i opened a door and aussie ran up, greeting me by wagging her tailless butt, and excitedly whinnying the way she did whenever i came home from college, or even a long day at work. she was so happy to see me, as if she was saying "there you are! i've been waiting for you for so long!"

i reached down, putting my arm around her neck and rubbed her chest.

she was so happy to see me.