That Feel
By Jon Labrousse

There's a feeling, something like love, unconditional love, the kind of love even your mother can't give you. But it's not love at the same time, it'sÖ more, if that's possible. It's sub-lingual, instinctual, animal. It's Animal: a need to give and receive with no strings attached, no secret handshakes, and no unspoken expectations.

That's just it! It's nothing to do with words, or intellect, for that matter. It's inhuman, superhuman; it's better than the lot of us. I'm talking, of course, about the love between a boy and his dog, and a dog and her boy. You know how the story goes.

The boy gets a Cockapoo for his second birthday, before he even understands ownership. Ownership for him is what he's holding onto right now. He's very much in the now, this boy, like most boys his age. We're talking about a time when there were only 12 channels on the television dial, and only few of them moved pictures. It was a time when toys were mainly wooden blocks for little boys (and a box of his mom's old Barbies--mostly an assortment of body parts he assembled like Legos, but you'll have to ask his mom about that).

The dog, Pickles, sleeps with her boy every night until he's fourteen, not at the foot of his bed, mind you, but right there, snuggled in with him, whether there was room or not. He told her things he'll never tell you, dear reader, not because she was a good listener, which she was, and I'm sure you are, but because of her there-ness. There's no other way to put it. She was always there. There in a way no person could possibly be for him.

There when David, who the boy's mother really didn't want him playing with, anyway, made the boy drink David's pee from the back of a filthy, yellow, toy dumptruck, if he wanted to still be his friend. There a week later when David punched him in the face on the swing at Stephen's house, because it was Stephen's house and David had asked Stephen, and Stephen had said it was okay, leaving the boy with nothing to do but run home with a bloody nose, bury his shirt in the laundry, and hide in his room until dinner, when the bleeding finally stopped.

There when he was in his third kindergarten that same year, and Aaron insisted that he beg if he wanted to join the other kids and color a page from his coloring book, and then wouldn't let the boy color even after Aaron taught him what, 'beg,' meant, and the boy did.

There every time they moved and the boy had a hard time making new friends.

There in middle school, when Shanti Meyers said, "Are you kidding me? You're fat."

Pickles was there when he lacked the words to explain what happened or how it felt. There when he lacked the courage to say the words.

I should note that, up to now, I've only shared a few of the boy's moments Pickles was there for. Her there-ness meant a lot to the boy. Everything, in fact. Which is why he tried to oblige her every request for sock tug-of-war, games of "no, I'm not going to fetch, you fetch it," and a gentler version of WWF that was more like a long sustained hug, rolling around on the floor. Pickles's favorite part of their relationship, the boy liked to believe, was sleeping together, because every night, when she was ready for bed, she would lie at the end of whichever hallway led to their bedroom, depending on which house they were living in, and wait for him.

As much as he could, he tried to be there for her, too.

When he was 14, his family moved to Hawaii, and fearful that Pickles wouldn't survive the three-month quarantine at her frail 12 years of age, his family left her behind, in Oregon, with the boy's grandparents. A year later, she died of old age, they told the boy, and his heart crumbled, thinking she'd died from heartache for him.

He would learn, some 15 years later, after sharing a bottle of wine with his grandmother, that she'd accidentally backed over his dog with the car--"Oh dear, didn't they tell you?" Even this news didn't soften the guilty truth he'd carried with him since 14: he'd abandoned his dog, left her to die without him. He wasn't there, when it mattered, in the end. It's a guilt he still carries.

He could tell you stories of all the times he was there for her, to make himself feel better. There was a time, for instance, when he rescued Pickles from the jaws of the neighborhood terror German Shepard, Sheba.  Sheba was so vicious, so purely evil that she ate her own poop on a regular basis.  Every kid in the neighborhood was terrified of Sheba.  One day she had gotten loose and tore after the small pack of kids trotting down the trail that ran past her house to the creek.  Sheba went straight for the waddling Cockapoo trailing behind them, and knocked her over onto her back. Luckily, she was struggling to get her jaws around Pickles's ample belly.  It gave the boy the time he needed to get there.  Blinded by love and fury, he kicked and pounded on Sheba until she ran off yelping, while the other kids stood by, blank-faced, stricken, amazed.

If he was there, he'd have saved her from his Grandma's Cadillac. No doubt.

He's grown now, with kids of his own, and no pets. His wife won't abide them (the pets, not the kids). Last week, his wife bought a robot vacuum, a Roomba. His son, Kegan, was particularly taken with the thing, chased it around the house while it cleaned, encouraging it, "Good job! You're a really good cleaner! Look, everybody! He's eating"

When the robot, exhausted, returned to its charging dock to refuel its batteries, Kegan laid on the floor next to it, stroking it. "You're a really nice robot. You did a really good job." It was the, "I Love you, Bumblebee," which he'd named it, that got to the boy, now grown to a man. He knew exactly what was missing in this relationship. His wife agreed.

  This weekend, his family went to the Humane Society and adopted a cat, not a kitten. She's three years old. She's the exact same age-ratio to his son that the grown boy and Pickles were when he was a boy and Pickles was alive. The grown boy hadn't planned it that way; it just happened. The age thing wasn't important at all. What was important was that feel, not the feeling, but the action. His kids needed to know it, to do it.

The robot-vacuum had been having a hard enough time proving itself against the clutter and dust of two kids. With the addition of a cat to its workload, it didn't stand a chance. The grown boy returned it the next day. Kegan helped pack the box.