Lil Dub

Marie Payne

August 3, 2018

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My family dynamic completely shifted after we adopted a puppy last summer. My dog’s name is Winston (after Churchill, yes) and he’s about a year and a half old. He’s a chocolate lab mix (confirmed by my mom getting him a doggy DNA test, which basically was an expensive way of telling us that he is, in fact, a mutt). Winston is smart and social, but has a hard time behaving on a leash. He is a fantastic dog, and adopting him has been my greatest attempt at reuniting my family.

In high school my family never spent quality time together. The home I knew was one in which every member of my family had their own spot in the house, minimizing any sort of interaction. I don’t think it was for any particular dislike in the beginning – my brother would have the guest room with his video games, my mom would have the office to satisfy work demands, and my dad would have both the kitchen and the living room (so as to watch sports on the tv as he cooked). Without a space of my own to hang out in, I would leave.

Last summer I was going through a tough time. I broke my leg the first weekend I was home, causing me to miss a family trip abroad and suffer long days of interacting with my dad without having the autonomy to get out of the house. My dad suffers from mental health issues and hasn’t found a method of managing them yet. His mental health would often result in verbal abuse directed towards me in high school, which was extremely difficult since I could empathize with what he was going through, but couldn’t forgive how, or understand why, he treated me the way he did. As relieving as it would be for me to completely separate from my dad and not have a relationship with him moving forward, I know that I am the most important person in his life and need to be there for him.

Since I had a lot of time to think, I devised a plan to fix my circumstances. I knew that life was going to look pretty different over the next few years with me not being home for extended periods of time, my brother going off to college, and my mom working for longer hours. My dad is a teacher and gets home early, leaving him with many hours to get lonely before one of us comes home. To maintain his sanity, I truly felt that my dad needed a companion and it wasn’t hard to convince him.

My dad grew up in Canada and lived on 125 acres in the country with two dogs and three cats. There was the husky who ran off, “the white cat” who once slept on my dad’s face and nearly suffocated him, Dennis (the cat) who lived all the way to 22 and even then was put on life support so he could stay just a bit longer, Thumbs who had 6 cat fingers, and Zipper.

My dad found Zipper one summer on the side of the road where a farmer was selling the puppies in his latest litter for $10 each. My dad observed the puppies and chose the one who wasn’t going wild with the rest, but instead sat calmly off to the side. My dad spent all summer training Zipper, and he grew to be one of the most amazing dogs I’ve ever heard of. He had an immense capacity to understand commands and believed he was a lapdog even though he outweighed the average child. He didn’t like my grandmother’s parties, so he would position himself directly in the kitchen door (where the most foot traffic occurred) and derive immense satisfaction from forcing the guests to step over him. Despite his youthful mischief, Zipper had an old soul and would go out on the porch every night to watch the sunset, with one doggy paw crossed over the other. Nostalgia worked to my favor.

On one glorious day last summer, my family and I went to the shelter. “Just to look” my mom said, but I knew well it was not just “to look.” As I hobbled through the shelter with my crutches, I became increasingly dismayed with our options. None of the dogs seemed right for my family. After going through the whole place twice, I turned my head and saw this tiny brown dog with wide green eyes looking at me upside down as the vet carried him through the hallway. He was mine. I raced after the vet on my crutches, barely getting out “this way!” as I passed my dad. And there he was - a tiny, 18-pound mangy dog with bright, friendly eyes. The vet told us, “if you don’t adopt him tonight, he’ll be gone in the morning.” The slight bit of indecision we all had disappeared, and we brought lil dub, what my brother and I call him, home.

Since then, my family has been functioning better together. Winston consumed everyone’s attention that summer and found a way to connect us. If someone was away, we reconnected over photos of Winston. If two people were awkwardly in each other’s spaces, we talked about Winston. In an attempt to spend time together, we took Winston to the dog park.

The last time I was home was over winter break, making this stretch the longest I’ve ever spent away. I hope that when I return at the end of summer, Winston will remember me, and like our house became a space for him a year ago, I hope it becomes a space for me, too.