When I was five years old, my father and mother decided our family dog, "Duke," was not behaving, and they did not want the dog. So my father drove the dog 20 miles away and just let the dog loose to run in the farm land and drove away again. That was the end of our family dog. Sometimes, my father was a jerk.
This dog, "Duke," was the second family dog we had. We got him as an adult, from people who could no longer keep him. The first dog, was named "Rusty." We trained him to bite a knotted rag for fun, but he got too aggressive, so my parents sold him in a want ad. A couple weeks later the people called and complained that the dog was biting too much. We did not have another dog until my youngest brother Scott insisted on a dog more than five years later (when he was in sixth grade and got everything he asked for). This dog was a female named "Boots."
Somehow, I think my father thought that was the best solution for Duke. The dog used to run away and he convinced himself that the dog would survive in the country, I guess. We rarely spoke about Duke again. I still remember we were saying our night time prayers (before bed time) and my father came home and told us it was done. He sat down and looked relieved and troubled at the same time. He was only 29 years old. I was only five years old and had no idea what was right or appropriate in our complex American "society", but I felt strange about the dog being gone that way...
copyright (c) 2019
William Schaeffer
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