One year ago I had the painful experience of bidding farewell to my first child, a purebred boxer named Tattnall. It was a sad occasion but I took solace in the fact that he may have been the oldest boxer to ever live. He made it 14 years. That’s like a human making it to 100. I just can’t get too beat up over that. We should all be so lucky.
Tatt was not a typical dog. We picked him up from a “breeder” out in the middle of nowhere rural Georgia. An old man and women led us into a barn and there in front of us was an entire litter of crazy dogs running and jumping about. My wife (we were far from married at the time) had the honor of picking out the dog. I thought she would go for one of the little fellas bouncing around but she immediately went towards a little pup brooding all alone in the corner. She took him outside and he had never touched grass until that time. They fell in love. I picked him up and he was indifferent towards me.
From the beginning, Tatt and I had a complicated relationship. He was very protective of his mother and sometimes would not let me even sit by her. He bit me a few times. He had a habit of finding hidden contraband I would bring into the house and carry it to his mother. He destroyed countless pairs of running shoes but would only destroy the left foot. I believe that was intentional.
One morning we woke up to find his face had swollen to the point where he could barely breathe. Apparently, he had been eating yellow jackets. Another time he managed to get our other dog’s tooth caught in his collar and swung him around in a way that pulled his collar and cut off his air. I had the pleasure of doing CPR on him.
One Thanksgiving we left him inside and he jumped on the counter, pulled down the turkey my dad had spent the entire day before smoking, and ate the entire thing. There was no turkey that year. He ran away countless times and had a habit of jumping into stranger’s pools. He killed a chicken or two. He even decided to fall off a cliff into a river when I proposed to my wife. I believe that was also intentional.
In true Tatt style, he decided that it was time to leave this world during a global pandemic and shutdown. When it’s time for your dog to go you know. It’s quite surreal. So when it was time to find a vet that was open, well, let’s just say it was quite a challenge.
We made the decision to bury Tatt in his favorite spot in the backyard. A small flat spot by a creek where he would often lie in the sun. I thought it would be an easy and somber task but it took me about 8 hours to dig the hole. Come to find out it was common practice to bury unused building materials and scraps in the back of a home under construction in the ’70s. After removing a metric ton of concrete, carpet, metal, siding, and an extraordinary collection of beer cans we were able to say our farewells. I have to think he knew all that garbage was back there and saved that as one final jab at me.
Despite all the mischief and chaos, the thousands of dollars worth of damaged furniture, shoes, and other furnishings he was a good dog. He spent a great deal of time staring at me making art and writing. He liked to occasionally bark and scare the mess out of me to the point where I would jump and ruin whatever I was working on. I looked at that as his critique. He was one of a kind and knowing him as I did, I believe the paw-sized hole he left in our heart was also, quite intentional.