Dog Murder

This is a story in two parts.  One part is fact, and the other is...  not quite.  Mostly, this is a story about how our memories can be unreliable and that it can be healthy, and emotionally healing, to verify your memories with friends and family (or a professional as necessary).

When I was a kindergartner, my Dad's parents came to visit for Christmas.  They brought their aging, sick dog with them.   They decided this holiday, surrounded by their grandchildren, was the appropriate time to put the dog down.  However, rather than go to a vet as any sane person might, they decided they'd put the dog down themselves by poisoning the dog with anti-freeze.  They fed him a bowl-full of the green liquid and resolved themselves to watch his final moments.  The dog slowed, then went to sleep.  He slept for three days then woke up as if nothing happened.  My grandparents plan was foiled and Christmas was saved for the kids.

For years, I've told this story as a shining, albeit extreme, example of the quirky family that made me.  Even though the events in the story are horrible, it never really effected me.  I wasn't traumatized, and I always attributed that to my young age when this happened.  

When I set to writing an "official" version of this story, I reached out to my parents and my older sister to get more details on the incident and provide more color. Once I had more information, I found out why this didn't effect me.  

It didn't happen.  

At least, not in the way I remember it.

Everyone's recollection was slightly different, although the horrifying heart at the center of the story remains. 

The dog, Toby, was a male poodle.  His fur was off-white, almost "dirty" white, to the point that he looked filthy even when clean.  He was old, around 15 or 16. After a lifetime of eating only table food, he was incontinent and would have a constant stream of feces pouring out his ass.

So why would anyone keep an old, ugly, incontinent, clearly suffering dog?  My grandfather got the dog from his mother.  She loved the dog more than anything, and when her health was ailing, she made Granddad promise he would take the dog and not put it down.

Once she passed, he felt not only the responsibility to keep his promise, but also that the dog was a connection to his mom.  My Grandma did not share this sentiment.  Perhaps it was that the dog was old and worthless, perhaps it was the constant cleaning up of fecal messes, but Grandma hated Toby and wanted him gone.  Since Granddad wouldn't consider the subject, she had to move in secret to accomplish her goal.

One Thanksgiving, they came to visit us in Roy, New Mexico, where we lived at the time.  Roy was a small ranching community of around 300 people.  This was the kind of a town where, as the cliche goes, everyone knew one another and there was literally a town drunk.

Once in town, my Grandma asked my Dad if he'd reach out to one of his rancher friends to get some of the chemical they used to put down ill and ailing livestock.  Dutiful to his own mother, my dad asked around, but all the ranchers were hesitant to simply hand over a controlled substance.  

A call to the town veterinarian was met with similar reservations.  The vet preferred to take a look at the dog first and put him down in a more humane way.  This was not an option if the procedure was to be kept secret from my Granddad.

After these dead ends, my dad suggested one means of achieving the desired results, she could feed the dog anti-freeze as he'd heard this would do the trick.

When my grandparents returned home, and one day while my granddad was away (sometime before Christmas), my grandma gave Toby a whole dog dish full of anti-freeze.  Toby drank it all, but rather than kill him, it cured his bowel problems.  Given that grandma continued to try and kill the dog, we can presume the dog's incontinence was not the sole attribute that made her hate Toby.

Next, grandma found an unopened bottle of morphine pills in granddad's mom's things.  She crushed the pills and mixed them in a can of food.  Toby ate the food and fell asleep not long after.  He laid still, breathing shallow, for four days.  He finally awoke, energetic and with a little extra pep in his step.

As far as we're aware, that was grandma's last attempt to kill Toby.  A short while later he went blind, and granddad finally agreed to put the dog out of its misery and as far as we know they had their vet perform the procedure.

That's the true story.  Not quite a comedy of errors... is comedy of horrors a thing?  The truth is only slightly better for none of this actually taking place in front of children.  Still, it involves a person operating against the wishes of their spouse and trying to kill a dog in multiple inhumane ways.  In that way, I supposed it's still telling about the family that reared me.  

I'm glad I sought out the facts of the story.  How many people are walking around harboring emotional traumas for events that either didn't happen or are different than they remember? Now that I know the "truth", I have that much more power to break this bizarre cycle.