Cathy Porter By Anne Scheck
Amid the coronavirus pandemic of 2019, the death of a little dog seems small and incidental. But it was my dog, and it was killed by a pair of other dogs, and I was there to see it. Though I am haunted by the scene of my tiny cockapoo being torn apart by two brutes, both on a neighbor’s leash, the image is not without a mental picture that will always make me feel better. It will forever be accompanied by a feeling of gratitude.
It comes from a stranger, whose car wheels ground to a sudden halt by the curb that day. In fact, that’s the only sound I remember, as my limp dog was the object of a tug-of-war between two sets of opposing jaws. I couldn’t hear anything else -- someone was screaming so loud it drowned out everything. it was the loudest scream I’d ever heard. It just wouldn’t stop. It went on and on. The person screaming was me.
But a woman had exited the car by the curb, and grabbed a towel, and, placing herself in harm’s way, and shouted at the two big dogs long enough that they loosened their grip on their dying prey. She placed my dog in a towel on the sidewalk, and she began to stroke his head. She spoke softly, with words of comfort -- and she offered me hope, asking if we could take him to the vet. But I knew it was too late. And I think she did, too. Because as she hunched over my dog, stroking and talking … a few moments later, on that blood-covered cloth, he took his last breath, his eyes suddenly far away, like he was already on his way somewhere else. The little heart of our dog, big enough to love everyone, had come to a stop.
I told the man with the dogs that I wouldn’t sue him – that this vicious act wasn’t going to change who I am. But I told him I never wanted to see those dogs again, and that he should do what’s right. My husband called the Independence Police Department.
It must have looked like calmness had settled over me, as I asked for the woman’s name and phone number, and I produced a reporter’s notebook for her to write it in, which had notes from some city meetings scratched across the page. But I was not calm. I was numb.
With the coherence I had long had to muster at car wrecks and accident sites when I was a young journalist, I recounted to the police officer what had happened: Someone sent me flowers, I’d opened the door to the man delivering them. It is a small town here. I knew the man. I’d begun speaking with him. I saw our dog slip out but didn’t try to stop him. Usually, our little furball jumped up and down at the arrival of a new person—so friendly that he had never learned to bark at strangers. When I looked up a fluffy stuffed toy was being bitten by two other dogs, and it took me at least a second or two to recognize the ragamuffin was my dog.
We buried our dog far away from our house, on another property, and before we lowered him into the dirt, I took him out of the box where he lay on that towel and told him how sorry I was that it was someone else who had offered comfort, when it should have been me. “I am so sorry” I said over and again, and I stroked his fur, and felt the beginning signs of his stiffness. I thought of the woman who had helped. And I told my dog we needed to thank her.
Our world is so full of heroes who win Super Bowls or Hollywood Oscars or other golden trophies, but where are the awards for those people who intervene, who help, who make a difference every day? Who change lives with simple but difficult acts of kindness? They aren’t limited to the part the New Testament included as “Good Samaritan.” They are all around us. I know because I met one the day my dog died. She altered a recollection that would have been far more horrific without her. She helped nurse my dog into a peaceful death. She gave me a memory of care and assistance. Where would I be now without that?
I bought her a monetary gift-card and took it to her home. I never could seem to find the right words to thank her, which is inexcusable for a person who made a living by writing. But this is the thing with true heroes – they seem to understand bungling human nature in a way I probably never will. She asked me to pass on the gift card, to where it would do some real good.
So, one day recently we sat on my back porch for a talk. She’d decided the place where it should go: The Marion County Animal Shelter. So, on a rainy afternoon a few days later, I called to let the shelter know it was coming by way of me, and I met a volunteer in the vestibule. She thanked me, but I wasn’t finished. “This comes from Cathy Porter,” I said, “it was Cathy Porter who …“ But words failed me once again, as I was offered another round of thanks.
In a famous essay penned more than a century ago near my birthplace in Missouri, these words were written about a farm dog named Old Drum mistakenly shot by neighbor: “He was as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.”
That was our little dog, too. A bundle of constant love. But this applies to so many dogs, doesn’t it? And so sometime, when the pain of loss no longer cuts like a knife, we’ll adopt another small shelter dog, just as we have always done.
And I know where we will go to find one – to the Marion County Animal Shelter. And I know what we will name our dog., too It won’t matter whether it’s male or female. We already have the name picked out: Porter. The name will be Porter. Thank you, Cathy. We will never forget you.