The Pain of Loving Old Dogs
By Margaret Renkl
New York Times
Feb. 25, 2018
NASHVILLE — It’s 2 in the morning, and it has just started to rain. It’s a gentle rain, with no threat of high winds or lightning. I know this without having to get up to peer into the dark night or put on my glasses to check the weather app on my phone. I know the facts of this meteorological reality without even opening my eyes because there is a large dog with halitosis now standing beside my bed, panting.
I’m grateful it’s only a rain shower. If this were a thunderstorm, Clark would be pacing the house, climbing into bathtubs and struggling to get out again, hunching under desks and overturning the chairs pushed up to them, knocking guitars from their stands — seeking shelter. He’s afraid of the rain, but he’s driven mad by thunderstorms.
On stormy nights, my husband gets up to force a tablet of dog-strength Xanax down Clark’s throat, and for an hour we will both lie in the dark, sleepless, while the dog staggers around the house in a state of now-drunken anxiety. Eventually the human tranquilizer will override the canine despair, and we’ll all go back to sleep.
Thirty years ago my husband wanted to establish a ceiling for any veterinary bills that might be incurred by the cat he had just acquired by marriage. He said, “If the cat needs something that costs more than a hundred dollars, I say we opt for the $40 shot and go get a new cat.”
It was my cat, so my vote counted more than his did, and the cat lived to a ripe old age. But in my husband’s defense I should mention that his formative years were spent in the small-town South, where humane people went out in the yard and shot an animal if it was suffering. I should also mention that, in 1988, we were paying student loans on the salaries of first-year schoolteachers, and $100 was more money than we spent on our own food or medicine.
My husband would have found it impossible to believe that 30 years later he would be running around the house in his boxers, trying to tackle an ancient 70-pound mutt in the dark and shove a pill down his throat.
Clark is also deaf, and he suffers from crippling arthritis. So far we have been able to manage his pain with medication, but at his checkup last year, when he turned 13, the vet had some sobering news. “With big dogs, there’s often a huge difference between 12 and 13,” he said. “One day Clark won’t be able to get up, and when that happens it’ll be time to let him go.”
The very idea is unthinkable. Clark has been our family protector, making political canvassers and religious zealots think twice about knocking on our door. He was the dog of our sons’ childhood, the pillow they sprawled on during Saturday-morning cartoons, the security blanket they returned to after an impossible test or a classroom bully or, later, a broken heart.
At 14, this big dog has now surpassed his life expectancy, but he is not the oldest dog in our house. We are also the custodians of my late mother’s ancient miniature dachshund, Emma, who is seven months older. She obliterated any thought of vet-bill caps in her first three months under our care. Emma has survived countless trips to the emergency clinic because she is the most accomplished food thief her canny breed has ever produced. She dragged an entire pound of dark chocolate bonbons under the guest bed and ate them before anyone noticed a lone fluted paper wrapper in the middle of the floor and wondered where it had come from. Rummaging through visitors’ purses, she has consumed whole packages of gum, pouches of dusty Tums and, once, a zip-lock bag full of prescription medicine.
There’s no room here to tell the whole story of the time Emma ate a tray of rat poison at a rented fishing cabin on Kentucky Lake, but it involves a manic drive down a twisting highway as the whole family peered through the trees for a sign of any kind of store that might sell hydrogen peroxide. You don’t know the real value of the human community if you’ve never poured hydrogen peroxide down an eight-pound dog’s throat in the parking lot of a Family Dollar store with half a dozen rural Kentuckians offering advice. Let me tell you, country people know what to do when a dog eats rat poison.
That bottle of hydrogen peroxide cost 78 cents, but the three months of professional treatment that followed made a trip to the emergency vet look like a trip to the dollar store.
Other people make health care choices for their pets that we could not afford for Clark and Emma, but we will always give them anything that’s within our power to give. Clark, our children’s canine sibling, and Emma, who gave my grieving mother a reason to get out of bed every morning after my father died — these dogs are our family.
Clark is now under the care of a young hospice vet. On his first visit — a terrible day two weeks ago when suddenly Clark could no longer stand up — the vet worked a miracle. Now on a new combination of medications, Clark is wagging his tail again and begging to be taken on walks. But time is still time, and always unfolding. On the hospice vet’s next visit, he will most likely be coming to help us say goodbye.
Clark understands that he is old and weak and vulnerable, and it’s hard now to leave him alone with his fears. I watch sometimes from the next room when my husband leaves the house and Clark thinks he has been abandoned. Standing next to the door, he folds himself up, lowering his hind quarters gradually, bit by bit, until his aching haunches touch the floor. He slides his front feet forward, slowly, slowly, and he is down.
A moan begins in the back of his throat, lower pitched than a whine, higher than a groan, and grows. His head tips back. His eyes close. The moan escapes in a rush of vowels, louder and louder and louder, and now he is howling. It’s the sound he made in his youth whenever he heard a siren passing on the big road at the edge of the neighborhood, but he can’t hear that far any more.
QUESTIONS
Please write 300 words in response to this essay. Tell the reader what you think works about this piece and what, if anything, did not appeal to you. Which details were most effective? What is the challenge of writing about a personal relationship with a pet, and how does Margaret Renkl meet that challenge?
What works for me in this piece, is how the writer alludes to a story of her husband and her pet cat. She tells us that the cat was ill, and they had to spend a lot of money on him as a result of this. Her husband didn’t think a cat was worth spending that much money on and he suggested that the cat be put down if he is that sick instead of spending hundreds of dollars. Obviously, the husband didn’t have that special bond with the cat, hence, it was easy for him to suggest these things. Ironically, when the husband’s dog was ill, he would go out of his way and tackle him to give him his medication. I believe this is because he has formed a relationship with the dog and it goes to show that you may never know how a person feel unless you take a walk in their shoes. The use of the phrase “our children’s canine sibling”, was most effective to me, because if nothing else told us about their relationship with Clark, this surely did. I think so because if you consider something or someone as your children’s sibling, you must have a lot of love and affection for them. I think the most challenging part of writing about relationship with a pet is having to express the thought or idea of losing them. As a lover of animals and a pet owner myself, the thought of my pet being hurt or even dying causes me major stress and anxiety and makes me cry. I think Renkl met this challenge because of how she talks about her pets in a very hopeful tone. For example, she mentions that Clark has surpassed his life expectancy and she refers to another pet who is older than Clark, who have gone through so much and is still seemingly well and alive. This tell me that regardless of the circumstances, she doesn’t expect him to die very soon.
I’m with you about how emotional I could get about a pet injury!
It is easy to feel the special relationship you have with a pet, but it is difficult to put it into words. The relationship extends beyond an owner and pet relationship and I believe that Margaret Renkl was able to successfully convert her relationship with her dog in words. I think what really helped were the details of what extent Renkl was willing to go for her pets. For example, even when her and her husband weren’t financially fit for the expenses for her cat, they still covered her medical charges. Another instance was when their dog, Emma, ate rat poison. With her descriptive diction she was able to portray the panic of the situation. She used words like “manic drive,” “twisting highway,” and “peered through the trees.” Those words really helped emulate her feelings in words because they help the reader feel her fright and anxiety for the situation.
Another way Margaret Renkl met the challenge of portraying her relationship with her pets is by showing the way her pets connect to each member of her family. With Renkl’s husband, she shows us the contrast of how he connected with a cat that Renkl had before her marriage versus their dog Clark that they cared for together. With Renkl’s cat, her husband was more reluctant to spend large sums of money on its medical bills and was willing to just get a new cat all together instead of going through the hassle. However, he isn’t the same with Clark as Renkl states, “My husband would have found it impossible to believe that 30 years later he would be running around the house in his boxers, trying to tackle an ancient 70-pound mutt in the dark and shove a pill down his throat.” This shows how the husband formed a special irreplaceable bond with Clark, even though he grew up with different ideas. She further develops the relationship of her pets with her family members by writing that their dog Emma gave Renkl’s mother the will to get out of bed, and that Clark was like a sibling to her kids.
By using descriptive diction and by describing the relationship of her pets to multiple members of her family, Margaret Renkl was able to successfully write about her personal relationship with her pets.
The author Margaret Renkl does an exceptional work while describing her relationship with the pets. The way she describes her relationship in a very comprehensive manner is what works for me in the piece. She starts her writing by introducing a scene and then gradually elaborating how the relationship is between her family and the dogs.
Renkl is successful enough to write about how much the pets, Clark and Emma mean to her. Clark is there for her children since childhood like their best friend and Emma was there for her late mother the whole time after Renkl’s father passed away. The emotional bonding the family shares with the pets are what mainly reflect in this piece. Details like the extent she and her husband went for the pets, trying their best to keep them healthy, how heated up the situation was in the neighborhood when Emma ate the rat poison and the amount of time they had to go to the vet afterwards add up to how much they cared about them.
Both the pets are eyeing the finishing line of the race called “life”. Renkl writes how the pets are old and lost the flare of their youth. “But time is still time, and always unfolding. On the hospice vet’s next visit, he will most likely be coming to help us say goodbye” is a very emotional line that the author writes while they await bidding farewell to their family member, Clark.
The essay is written in such a way that pet-owners can relate to at least one of the connections that the author sheds light on regarding the relationship between a pet-owner and pet. I am not a pet lover, but I was so indulged in the writing that I pictured myself in Renkl’s place.
This essay was captivating. I personally like the little details in this piece. The little things matter. For example, she mentions that “On stormy nights, my husband gets up to force a tablet of dog-strength Xanax down Clark’s throat, and for an hour we will both lie in the dark, sleepless, while the dog staggers around the house in a state of now-drunken anxiety”. She later mentions that now her husband can’t even entertain the thought of chasing a big dog in the middle of the night trying to put a pill down its throat. Additionally, I love the innocent comedy in the text. When she mentions the story of Emma eating a tray of rat poison at a rented fishing cabin on Kentucky Lake and the fact that southern people know what to do when dogs eat rat poison, makes me chuckle.
I personally believe it’s difficult to write about a personal relationship with a pet. Especially if the pet has passed away. I feel like it would bring a lot of feelings. You would feel the same way you felt during that time. However, Margaret Renkl approached it gracefully. She meets the challenge by introducing her “family”. Which includes her husband and her loving pets. For instance, Renkl’s cat and her husband didn’t start off on great terms. He was hesitant to spend loads of money on the proper care for her cat. He even said he’d rather pay 40 dollars to put down her cat rather than paying a very expensive bill. On the other hand, with Clarke (the dog they cared for together) he could no longer imagine himself trying to tackle a 70-pound dog to put a pill down the dog’s throat. However, in the end Renkl says goodbye to her beloved Clarke. She compares the significance of each pet to each family member.
I should have told you before now that I love the first sentence of this response, cause it draws me and makes me wonder what you found captivating.
I personally think that Margaret Renkl is really good in making the reader able to feel the same emotions that she is experiencing. Her relationship with pets is very well described and she uses many details. I really like the way she describes the actions that her dog does when it starts to rain. This piece reminds me of the relationship that I have with animals. Im not the kind of person that wants to touch a dog that is walking on the street and I do not feel any kind of emotions. In the past, I have been criticised by many friends of mine for the lack of emotions towards animals, especially dogs. This can not describe my personality but it seems that it does for many people. My mom used to have a dog, we bought it for a desire that my sister had but in the end Layla became my mother’s dog. In reading this piece, I found the same expressions that my mom used to tell us when we were younger. I never had a special relationship with Layla but despite this she grew up with me and my sister during our childhood. Even If my relationship with her was not good at all, I consider her as a part of the family because she experienced everything that we did and now it is sad to know that she will have to leave us in a short period of time. The challenge that the author had to go through in this piece was the possibility of getting to emotional and not being able of describing the situation at its best. Margaret is fantastic in not exceeding her emotions and she is capable of create a wonderful story. The story has a fundamental role in understanding why dogs are considered to be the most loyal animals.
I think this reading was quite well written. The way she starts it off giving us as readers a scenario as to what is taking place at that very moment allows us to put our self there. It is funny to me when he mentions that that dog has halitosis because my girlfriend has a dog who I believe has the same thing. I am not really a cat lover so that part didn’t really appeal to me. On the other hand I can relate to how her and her husband when it comes to their pets because at one point I had two pet turtles who I adored very much. When she starts discussing the difference in her husband’s reaction to her cat as opposed to his dog. As you can see he doesn’t seem to care much for the cat and I believe the reason is that it was acquired through marriage. Maybe it could also be that the dog was seen as a family protector. She mentions to us how he was able to make people think before they knocked on the door. Their sons seems to have a special bond with the dogs as well. She says “He was the dog of our sons’ childhood, the pillow they sprawled on during Saturday-morning cartoons, the security blanket they returned to after an impossible test or a classroom bully, or later, a broken heart.” When it comes to writing about a personal relationship with a pet I believe the challenge may be the fact that they are an animal and not a human. It may come off to those who aren’t animal lovers to be weird that a person can show so much love and affection to animal. I can admit I sometimes tend to feel this way because humans can be very cruel to one another, but will treat an animal with the utmost respect. I don’t have anything against animals because as I mentioned I had two pet turtles. There were times where I felt like they were my little kids before I had my son. I named them Raphael and April, names of characters for the Ninja Turtles. I strongly feel that she met the challenge of writing about the personal relationship with the cat and dog. They are both well cared for and treated as part of the family. Losing either one would be detrimental to her family.
It’s hard to explain your attachment to your pets to somebody else, especially if they never had a pet before. I feel like in the Western culture animals, well in this case pets, are viewed and treated differently. People tend to have this deep connection with their pets. Whereas in other parts of the world, dogs, cats and others are seen as animals and nothing else. I don’t want to make any hasty generalizations and feed into stereotypes associated to different communities, but that’s the way people generally think. Most people didn’t grow up taking care of a pet so they don’t understand the bond between a pet and its owner. My words can sound crude, but if I call my grandma right now she would definitely tell you that animals are just food and nothing more. She might even suggest to lock Margaret in a psychiatric hospital for spending an hefty amount of money on medical care for her dogs. It’s the clash between those views that makes it difficult to express and share with others what you are dealing with your pets.
I’ve always been a dog person, a corgi person to be precise. So it didn’t take long for me to shed a couple tears upon hearing that Clark doesn’t have much time left. I’ve read it in five minutes but it feels like I’ve known him my entire life. This is due to the fact that the writer opted to share important memories they spent together from him destroying their stuff to them cuddling together. It gives a certain liveliness to the story. It warms my heart to see that they are his safe haven. Whenever he feels in danger, he runs towards them as if they could cease the storm. She also shared the constant anxiety Clark goes through. I can’t even imagine the pain of watching your pet in agony and feeling helpless.
I believe that talking about your personal relationship with your pet and being transparent about it can change others’ perspective. Margaret Renkl did an amazing job at being open about the hardships she faces. Taking care of a pet is not easy but it’s definitely worth it.
Margaret Renkl is able to effectively illustrate a picture in the readers’ mind with the words that she uses which is something that really works for her in her writing entitled “The Pain of Loving Old Dogs” published on February 28th in 2018. The description of her dog, Clark, staggering around the house painted a vivid picture in my head which in return made her piece easier to understand, connect to, and follow as a reader. Something that doesn’t really work for me in her writing is her multiple tangents as they often don’t add anything to her paper as a whole. One such incident of this was the anecdote in which she detailed the story of her late mother’s dog, Emma, who came into contact with some rat poison and as a result, they brought their dog to a Family Dollar to circumvent paying for the high prices of vetcare for treatment by purchasing a seventy-eight cent bottle of hydrogen peroxide. There are many challenges when discussing a personal relationship with a pet as each pet is unique in nature and those without experience with a domesticated animal may have trouble understanding such relationships. This is why it is vital when writing about such situations, to provide illustrious details like Renkl did at various points throughout her piece published in the New York Times.
the description of her dog’s irrational fear of thunderstorms and rain showers provide insight into Clark’s personality as he climbs into bathtubs only to get stuck and leave him struggling to get out. The term “driven mad by thunderstorms” fortifies this idea as usually you do not come into an instance in which someone would go berserk due to an uncontrollable meteorological event which poses no real threat in comparison to a hurricane or tornado.
The*
Loved this correction.
Margaret Renkl’s paints a picture. I feel like those are the best words I can use to describe her work. Her piece has its way of grasping your attention. Building off the weather and moving towards the emotional challenges her beloved pet faces, the author provides a remarkable description of the little things. A dot after dot she manages a flow that takes you into this moment where it feels as if you are there, in that room seeing that animal struggle. The fact that she is able to do that is something beautiful. It rose an emotion within me, I’ve grown up with a pet cat, and to me, it feels like describing the bond is close to impossible. It is unique, something far different from any other emotion one experiences. Margaret calls her pet the ” protector” of her family, I feel like those words explain so much about how she feels. A bond that makes her feel secure? That’s something to think about. To describe a relationship with an aged pet brings out a cluster of emotions. It’s overwhelming to reminisce about the wonderful times you have had and to know that the existence is soon to end. After carefully reading the piece you can see that Margaret attempts to approach this gracefully, however, there is an underlying sense of grief. After all having a pet that long makes it family, makes it a part of you.
Something that did not work for me in her writing was how it would divert off the main subject. She mentions an event related to her late mother’s dog, Emma. It felt irrelevant. It broke the flow of her writing. As a whole, I feel like she wrote an amazing piece and shows how valuable pets are to their owners. Per her description, they become family.
“The Pain of Loving Old Dogs” by Margaret Renkl has hooked me from the very beginning, kept me focused on the development of the dog’s fate and left me with powerful, mixed feelings by the time I finished reading it. This piece was particularly touching for me as an ex pet owner and I understand the feelings of other people when it’s a time to say a final goodbye to their beloved pets.
There are a lot of things the author is implementing to make this text work and invoke strong emotions in people who had never even had a pet.
The text opens with a night rain, dictating the sad atmosphere that will prevail throughout the piece. Then, a very detailed description of the old dog’s terrible struggles, which only a pill of hard tranquilizer forcibly pushed down the animal’s throat can stop, follows. “One day Clark won’t be able to get up, and when that happens it’ll be time to let him go.”, a dreadful statement made by the vet serves as an unbeatable apogee of dog’s miserable state and infinite suffering. Readers can feel the pain owners are experiencing when they hear such a terrifying verdict.
There’s another thing that works extremely well in this text. An extremely difficult choice that the author had to make over 30 years ago. The choice between life and death or, which is more accurate, whether you choose to pay vet bills or decide to let your pet die because you don’t have enough money. The idea of such a dire choice is absolutely horrifying and unthinkable. How is it even possible to put a price tag on one’s life? Luckily for us, the author makes the right choice of saving the pet’s life but still, this piece will leave most readers shocked and frustrated by the only idea that some people face such a grim choice
This is one of the best pieces I have read so far. The introduction puts the reader into the story without hesitating. Starting with the weather outside and mainly focusing on the narrator. The story takes an unexpected turn toward a dog. Dogs are great for creating sympathy. They are gentle creatures who are always friends to everyone. Not wishing harm on anyone and bringing join to everyone who sees them. The dog in this story is Clark. And like many others, he is reactive to extreme weather. The narrator describes his instinctive reactions to thunder by hiding under any objects, crawling into the bath, etc. Soon the story gets a little more morbid. Discussing the old tradition of how if an animal is in pain, its suffering should be ended rather than letting it live in its pain. This relates back to Clark because he is already of old age, and doctors soon predict that he will be unable to perform any regular functions and that his time is close.
I really like this because it is something that nearly everyone can relate too. Personally, when I was a child I was taught that if you see a bug suffering, you should kill it to put it out of its misery. But I never understood that and always felt bad. Nearly everyone had been through similar circumstances. And this story digs deep with it. Especially using a dog.
Clark means something special to her because he has made it his life to keep her and her family safe. Our pets become like family to us, and this piece shows us the lengths to which people would go to make sure their beloveds are in good condition as well as how people band together to help.
I was glad you liked this one.
Margaret Renkl with no hesitation takes us right into the scene. She sets the stage so perfectly making it feel as I were there myself. I never had a dog, yet with her elaborate writing I feel like I know exactly what it’s like to be a dog owner. I believe Renkl wanted to create a sense of connection between the reader and her dog early on in the piece to draw out more emotion from the reader. Therefore, when she decided to switch to heart felt content, the reader will have a greater sense of interrelatedness. Renkl’s decision to include the contrasting opinions she and her husband have also adds another layer of complexity to her piece. It shows the reality of having a dog, and how people have different opinions on pets. Although, her husband had certain feelings about their old pet cat, his feelings shifted greatly when Clark was introduced. While he used to not want to spend the extra money to keep their cat alive, now Renkls states that “30 years later he would be running around the house in his boxers, trying to tackle an ancient 70-pound mutt in the dark and shove a pill down his throat”
There is no doubt that writing a paper about a creature that cannot really speak to back to you is immensely difficult. Yet, Margaret Renkl does it with flying colors. She depicts Clark as a member of the family, rather than just a household pet. She speaks about how “Clark has been our family protector, making political canvassers and religious zealots think twice about knocking on our door. He was the dog of our sons’ childhood, the pillow they sprawled on during Saturday-morning cartoons.” By doing so, she allows Clark to be understood as a vital part of the family, making it easy to infer how tragic it would be to lose him.
Renkl’s “The Pain of Loving Old Dogs” is effective in that it made me feel very sad. As the text began, I enjoyed how the author first set the scene, I really liked how the first word was “Nashville” followed by a description of the scene. As the story went on, I became more and more sad. The author gives us descriptions and details of these dogs and her family’s relationship with them, which almost makes me know them.
The descriptive language used throughout the piece made me want to read on although one thing I HATE to think of is the mortality of dogs. Being a dog owner myself, I share the same closeness to my dog and the same fear of losing her. The details the author gave almost made this more sad of a piece because it makes you feel attached and it feels personal. I noticed that the Renkl tries to embellish her writing consistently throughout the piece with some comedic relief, jokes about the south and dogs swallowing rat poison but the ending and sad points throughout the text make it a somber read.
I enjoy dark writing but gloomy literature about the death of dogs, or any animal is not what I like to read about, why is it that it’s more upsetting than reading about some human deaths? Maybe because animals do so much good and no harm to their human companions, Renkl’s part about her dog being the pillow for her children for bullies and than later for heartbeat demonstrates the passing of time, how this dog is a member of the family and there through it all, even as things changed, Clark is their “family protector”.
The author does a good job taking us into her head, and takes us through her thought process. However, it is too distracting, bouncing from story time traveling back and forth without a connection to the idea that she is trying to discuss. I noticed the author attempting to be comedic at parts of the piece which is quite disturbing as the main point of discussion is the health of her dying pets which is already quite a morbid topic. Although she claims to do the best for her pets, the writing shows quite the opposite. If you’re not financially stable enough to cover your own expenses, it is not fair to adopt a pet and mistreat it, with the excuse of a bad economic status. Just don’t adopt in the first place. The same way survival becomes difficult for young new parents, as having a child is an expensive proposition.
The author gives us hope for her dog Clark and immediately takes it away, it is obvious that the dog is dying. She does a good job with imagery, even though the images are quite disturbing. If the goal of the author was to show her personal experience with her pet, she could have picked some of her fondest memories with her pets, instead of talking about their deaths. It is a challenging topic but I think she made it difficult for herself for no reason, as the piece lacks emotion and apathy.
Margaret Renkl does a great job of immersing the reader right into the world of being a dog owner, as she paints a vivid picture of the rain outside and the dog that is clearly afraid of it. Not as much as the dog is scared by the thunderstorm though! She does a great job at describing the feelings that dog owners go through when their favorite pet is in distress. The visual of her husband running around in his underwear to catch the dog in order to administer Xanax is actually hilarious. Margaret also vividly conveys the transformation that her husband underwent in regards to caring and loving their pets. As Margaret mentioned they both come from completely different backgrounds in how they see and ultimately treat their pets. But she describes how the couple eventually get on the same page on care of their pets, and not even the money is the issue anymore! Just like the saying goes “the purest love in the world is the one between dads and the pet they said they didn’t want”.
The most effective details in this piece are little anecdotal snips of a little dog stealing all kinds of food that ultimately led up to the dog accidentally ingesting the rat poison and the following rush to save the dog’s life. This works because it is very comparable to saving a loved one or even someone’s child. Margaret’s description of the old dog in the care of the hospice veterinarian also works really well since it draws an emotional parallel to caring for one’s older family member. That makes the reader emotionally connect better to the world of the pet owner, and it is especially effective since not everyone who would read the essay would be a dog or a cat owner. Margaret Renkl met that challenge beautifully by creating an emotional bridge between the human emotions of caring for someone dear in your life.
The use of the word “immersing” drew me into your response right away.
Margaret Renkl’s method of beginning the excerpt with a simple — but intriguing — story of her dog’s nightly routine engages the reader right away. The reader is already able to understand the relationship dynamics of her household — with her pet, husband, house. We are able to imagine her dog making a ruckus at the middle of the night, her husband chasing the dog, the dog calming down, the couple lying in their bed waiting for peace and silence.
The challenge with writing about relationships with pets is that no one can truly understand a person’s relationship with their pet. You know that saying “a dog is man’s best friend.” Through her anecdote of her marriage 30 years ago, we are able to understand the lengths they’ve gone for their dog and how much they value their pet. What Renkl does is not only show that her dog is their beloved pet, but also a “family protector, making political canvassers and religious zealots think twice about knocking on our door. He was the dog of our sons’ childhood, the pillow they sprawled on during Saturday-morning cartoons, the security blanket they returned to after an impossible test or a classroom bully or, later, a broken heart.” That line speaks a lot for how important the dog is to their family. She describes how the dog helps her children, interacts with her husband, roams the neighborhood. It’s these extremely specific details that truly serves justice to just how loved their dog is.
Although writing about your relationship with your pet is challenging, Renkl is trying to say her dog is more than just a “pet.” Because pet is generic, pet means something you can replace with another pet. But Renkl describes her dog as one-of-a-kind. She even explains the heavy medical bills the dog has cost, but they’ve still kept it.
Lastly, she purposely has a contrasting beginning and ending to her excerpt. In the beginning, her dog is active, loud, energetic, youthful. However by the ending, he is old, slow, and less active. This represents a sort of journey she’s had with her dog and how even though his incessant barking and jumping was irritating, she misses that side of her dog. But of course she’ll stay with him till the very end. Because he’s irreplaceable to her family.
The beginning of this excerpt attempts to demonstrate how similar taking care of an aging pet is to taking care of a newborn baby. Having to repeatedly get up in the middle of the night, force feeding medicines and food, having to deal with copious amounts of bodily discharge, and never growing tired of it all. Just as a raging thunderstorm would scare a baby, it frightens her aging dog, who comes up to her in much the same way a young child does after having a nightmare.
Through her descriptive and vivid language, the author beautifully illustrates the pain of seeing your beloved pets grow old, knowing that there might come a day when you have to bid farewell to what’s become an integral part of your family. The anecdote she relays in the beginning, about how her husband was hesitant about spending too much money on something as trivial as a pet. It is a universal experience, and one that I myself have witnessed in my own house. Just like most dads, my father was reluctant about getting a dog. He had countless (valid) arguments at his disposal, ranging from how expensive it’ll be to feed a German Shepherd, or take him to the vet, to who’s going to care for it religiously. Like most dads, my father eventually cracked under the pressure his puppy-eyed children applied, and there was a new addition to our family. Nobody cares for that dog more than my father now, however difficult it may be, the dog always comes first.
Her husband acts the same way. The way she jovially recounts her dogs’ shenanigans instantly makes the story relatable, and later when she describes just how valuable the dog has been to her family through out the years, solidifies the notion that her bond with the pet is inseparable.