My Dog, Buffy
“It’s a little odd, but when I think back now about her, she felt more like an older sister or an aunt than a pet.”
When I was still a toddler, my dad brought home a miniature Schnauzer puppy. My parents named her Buffy. I think that they felt bad that my dog, Samantha, ran away and wanted my brother and I to have a dog that wouldn’t push us over all the time. More about Samantha another time.
Buffy and I grew up together. She went with us when we moved from one house to another and finally to the house I lived in when I was a teenager. Buffy had a regal demeanor. She had a lot of bark whenever someone showed up to our house, as a good dog should. Other than that, she remained quiet and observant and not noisy or obnoxious.
In the last house she lived in with us, she had a favorite spot in my parents bedroom on the second floor. She could see the neighborhood well from the top of my parents bed. If someone walked by the house or knocked on the door, she would sprint off the bed and her claws clicked on my parents tile bedroom floor as she ran to the stairwell and down to the front door to inspect and confront whoever dared to approach. More often than naught, her routine began with a single bark as she kept from the bed. The sound of her routine became predictable.
It’s a little odd, but when I think back now about her, she felt more like an older sister or an aunt than a pet. It felt as though her job was to look after us, my siblings and I. I was about twelve or thirteen when she passed. I’m not sure how it happened, but we all knew she was getting on in years. One day I came home and was told she was gone. I felt in my heart that she was still nearby, as if her presence in the house remained vigilant. I couldn’t have been more right.
Both of my parents worked during the day and over summer vacation, I spent a lot of time on my own in an empty house. My brother, being two years older, had a summer job and my sister, five years younger than me, had a babysitter elsewhere in the neighborhood.
One summer day, I sat alone in the living room rewiring dad’s stereo to enable me to record a tape with the equalizer adjustments applied to the recording. It was windy outside. After a while I heard the front screen door get caught by the wind. The metal door clanged against the frame and caused a loud bang. Immediately I heard the familiar click-clack sound of Buffy’s nails on the floor of my parents bedroom upstairs. I heard her sprint through the second floor hallway and her small feet quickly tapped their way down the stairs. I froze in place. Buffy had been dead for several months. I waited to see her form emerge from the stairwell, but she never did. It happened a couple more times after that, but I never saw her again. Once I stopped hearing her running through the house, then I missed her. She had finally crossed over.
