Muttkins

One of my dearest friends from law school is Jean, my “honorary sister” from Cain-tucky. Jean has done quite well for herself. I tease her that she met a wonderful guy who set her up in a palace in Versailles. (South of the Ohio River, that’s pronounced “ver-sales.”) Many years ago, I told Jean that she is possessed of such uncommon common sense that she has a lifelong license to play “Dutch Auntie” whenever she has advice.

In recent years, she has gone through some pretty tough times with her parents. Her father died a year after suffering a terrible, incapacitating stroke. In the past year, she’s had to deal with her mother’s worsening Alzheimer’s. Once, after I’d sent an e-mail to Jean commenting that I’d had a difficult time dealing with my father. She told me that any day I didn’t have to change my parent’s diaper is a good one. That is good advice I have taken to heart.

Today, Jean has every reason to be proud of herself. On Saturday, when I visited my father and gave him a ride to the local grocery store, I could, figuratively speaking, hear a calm, steady voice from the back seat (with a banjo-twang Kentucky accent) tell me to settle down and go off on him, even if he can be quite annoying. Just before I dropped my father off, for some reason, we were talking about dogs. I heard him comment, “I was surprised at how attached I got to Muttkins.”

At that point, I gritted my teeth, felt myself putting a death grip on the steering wheel and (figuratively speaking) heard Jean shouting in my ear not to lose it.

When I was growing up, after years of pleading from my three brothers and me, my father finally allowed us to get a dog. We got a mostly beagle mix who we dubbed Muttkins, as the feminine from “Mutt.” Muttkins was excellent at barking nonstop and for evading capture if she got loose. (Unless, of course, an animal control officer showed up, in which case she would roll on her back with her paws in the air, sticking us with a twenty-five-dollar ticket.)

In the summer of 1977, I was a student at Ohio State and the only Mitchell brother still at home. Muttkins was over ten years old. Though gray at the muzzle, she was still in good health. I was due to spend the summer on the Ohio State Oxford program studying at New College. About two weeks before my flight, my father left on a study trip. Shortly before I left, he told me, “When I get back, I want that animal disposed of.”

I had a week or two to try to find a new home for a past middle-age mutt. I’m afraid I didn’t have the moral courage to take Muttkins in to be euthanized. After some frantic asking around, an Ohio State classmate agreed to take Muttkins in temporarily. I asked her to find a new home for her if she could. To this day, I don’t know what became of Muttkins. To this day, I still second-guess my decisions. Should I have bitten the bullet and taken Muttkins to the vet to be euthanized, as my younger brother says, “In real life, you don’t get to look at your report card.”

Anyhow, this past weekend, I managed to bite my tongue instead of telling my father how I feel about the whole thing.