SANDY | LOVE OF MY LIFE | FUR & FEATHERS WRITING COMPETITION MAY 2023
The Answer to Trauma Is Love
I adopted my first pet after my childhood polio isolation
Back in 1954, when I was four years old, I came home from a year in isolation from my polio rehab therapy. This was the protocol when you were one of “Salk’s Kids” polio victims.
I previously wrote about that experience here.
When I came back home from rehab, I was aloof and unsure of my family. I frankly didn’t remember them from before when I was taken away by ambulance. They had taken me away just before my third birthday. I was returned to my home after almost a full year. When I got back home, I was afraid of my strange new surroundings, including my family. I didn’t remember much.
To make me feel better, and get me more used to “normal,” my parents brought home a puppy. A small terrier, white and brown, and probably quite nice, small enough for normal children.
But when they brought him into the kitchen where I was, he excitedly jumped on me, coming up to my mid-thigh. I backed against the stove, screaming in abject terror as he jumped up on my legs, barking incessantly.
That was an experience I’d never had before with an animal I’d never known before. I didn’t feel fright so much as I felt “violated.” I cried for an hour after they took him off me.
I think they called that dog “Frisky,” but he was gone the next day after I recoiled from him. I was an emotional mess for a couple of years back then, it’s fair to say.
Back then, our whole family fought our way back through the hard times of my “recovery,” I’d guess you’d call it. Every three months as I grew, I was getting new half-body braces fitted on me for my deformed skeletal development with my upper body being paralyzed and I was expected to proceed through life like nothing was different for me, going to school and pretending I wasn’t looking different from everybody else.
My parents were expected to make me feel normal and “accepted” in the world I was going to enter when I started elementary school.
For a few years, things were progressing as well as could be expected. And then, Ralph Howard-a friend of my older brother, Mike-came into our lives when he got his dog, “Sandy.”
I would go to elementary school by passing through Ralph’s yard and Sandy would be in his doghouse out back. Deliberately, I would trespass through that yard so Sandy could come up and greet me with a love I'd never known before. Of course, I had to stop and say “Hi!”
I was late for school more than once.
Don’t misunderstand, I had all the love I could ever have from the family and people I knew, but not the kind that comes from a dog. You know, the “melts you down and makes you cry for joy” love that dogs give you when they bond with you.
I knew Sandy wasn’t my dog, but after two months of passing through his yard on the way to and from school, and back and forth again for lunch breaks, he became “My Dog.”
Osmosis, I guess.
Then one day, as I was playing with Sandy, Ralph told me that he and his divorced mother were moving away and taking Sandy with them.
I immediately ran home and burst into our house, screaming in tears to my mother, “They can’t do that!”
“Who can’t do what, dear?” my mother calmly asked.
“They’re taking Sandy away from me!!”
My mother got on the phone, and I have no idea what she said, she may have even played the “polio” card for all I know, but by the end of the day, I had Sandy, his wooden doghouse, and his food bowls all over at our house, and his love had arrived all for me!
I will be forever grateful to my mother for her negotiating skills that fateful day.
Sandy and I became inseparable. “Best friends” doesn’t even begin to describe us.
He listened to me like I was giving him air to breathe. Staring right at me with his beautiful panting grin.
It isn’t too much to say he was my salvation, bringing me back into this “world of the living” from the isolation of polio rehab a few years before. I’d never felt the joy of that unconditional love before from anyone or anything, separated from my family as I’d been.
Back then, in my early youth, everything about me was eggshell fragile. My health, my psyche, my well-being, what with my half-body cast and the still unknown pitfalls of polio at the time.
It wasn’t until Sandy came into my life that I blossomed.
He knew everything I ever thought, ever felt, ever loved. Word by word I told him. And he listened to me, so he knew. Panting at me with his gorgeous Golden Retriever smile as I told him my life, day after day, we would sit, and I would talk.
We’d run and I’d laugh. I would tell him how special he was. And he would listen. He would understand my pain, my hopes, and my love for him.
He knew things as only Sandy could. My dog. God. He was my dog! I loved him so.
Shortly after Sandy came to us, one morning we let him outside before I went to school as we always did. Unleashed, it was the way of a small town and little traffic in front of our house.
He got hit by a car. The car didn’t stop, but I think my mother saw the accident. Sandy, hurt, but in pain, got up and ran away from the scene, in shock, as my mother described him.
When my mother told us what happened, of course, I screamed, “We have to find him!!”
And as we were leaving the house to search, Sandy was limping up the front porch stairs, his back hip obviously broken, and he was covered in grease or some kind of dirt. He came into the house and lay down on his side in obvious pain.
I had to go to school, 5th grade by now, and my dad said to me, “Go to school, Terry. I’ll take him to the vet, and he will do what he has to do for Sandy.”
I went to school and told my teacher, Mrs. Walthour, what had happened that morning. I am sure she handled me with kid gloves that morning, leaving me alone in my torment until there was a knock on the classroom door.
Mrs. Walthour answered, spoke to somebody for a few seconds, and then backed away to let my dad poke his head into the room. He found my face in the crowd of kids, and simply said, “He’s going to be all right.” Then he left.
I broke down.
It all came out of me for the next 10 minutes. My fright, my dread of almost losing my best friend. And everybody left me alone as Mrs. Walthour went on to teach her lessons. I was an object of curiosity to the rest of the children that day, I’m sure, but it didn’t matter.
Sandy was ALL RIGHT! Dad said so.
I ran home for lunch and when I got there, Sandy was in a cast and a cone collar, of course. He didn’t look the same as he did that morning before he went outside. But he needed me, almost as much as I needed him.
Please, I’d like a word with you about the magic between a young boy and his dog who have a bond, if I may.
I have read a lot of poetry and prose about the feelings of love, the meanings of love, and the sacrifices of love, and not one of those works comes close to the rapture this young boy felt with his best friend and confidante, my Sandy.
I’ve never had a love that was deeper or more life-changing in my development than Sandy.
For the next six weeks, as he recovered, he got more of me than he could have possibly wanted. I got to give back what he’d given to me those last few years. It was my turn to be his bud as much as he was mine when I needed him.
After he healed, he limped for the rest of his life, using his back two legs as one when he walked. I never noticed it after the first time I saw it.
I had a half-body brace with a sling on my paralyzed arm. I don’t think he ever noticed that either. We were good like that.
For the rest of my youth, he was my dog, even after I left for college.
But during my first year away, my mother called me to ask if she could take Sandy up to her family farm in Northern New York State to help her mother who lived alone, and I okayed it. My grandmother was a special person but developing dementia, and if any animal could help her, it would be Sandy.
He did so, keeping my dementia-ridden grandmother at home by making her feel responsible for his care, which was the idea. Otherwise, she’d take to walking the highway to places unknown and the Border Patrol would have to bring her home and call my mother, 600 miles away.
That worked until he got hit again by another car. A local farmer neighbor, Louis, took Sandy back to his farm and put my then 12-year-old Sandy out of his pain, mercifully, I am told.
And yet, still, after all these years, I can feel that “magic” that existed between us. Unrecoverable, now, yes, but unforgettable. And comforting still, at this stage of my life. How blessed am I?
That dog was always my Sandy. I will always miss him. And as the saying goes, we were “imperfectly perfect together.”
This story was written as part of the “Our Beloved Pets” writing competition at The Narrative Arc.
Other articles have been coming in so if you enjoyed this, I heartily recommend a couple more for you to read.
First is the compelling recounting of Chaotically Lottie’s difficult childhood with her streetwise adopted companion, Scout, and their relationship that led them both to happiness and redemption.
Also, Darren Weir submitted a story, even though he disqualified himself from any prizes since he’s an editor for the Narrative Arc. His story is about the endearing process of taking in a rescue pet only to find that the “rescue” has been turned around.
Please take the time to read the submissions that will be coming in for the rest of this month. We humans have so much to learn from our furry and feathered friends.
