The Black Marshmellow - Part I

In a tribute to one of my best friends, I'm going to write a little bit about my dog Charlie. I'll do it in installments, as much as I feel like, because you really could write a novel about him.

Sometimes you don’t know you have a void in your life. You go around thinking you are perfectly fine, but have no idea that if something changed, some little new piece was added, everything would be so much more meaningful. You may have built up a tolerance to an aching pain you have, and after years of living with it, one day you discover a remedy, and now it feels like you have a new lease on life. For me, my pain was lonliness, and the remedy came in the form of a floppy eared Labrador – Springer Spaniel mix, named Charlie.

On a cool summer’s day, my mother took me, along with my little brother and sister to the pound in hopes that we would find a puppy. I did not come to this decision easily. Years before we had a dog. She was a fiery German Shepherd mutt, who was too smart for her own good. She devised numerous methods for breaking out of our yard, some of which included digging under fences, chewing through chain link fences, and even climbing trees. Her life came to a sad end, in a pound, when the law determined, correctly, that we just could not contain her.

I did not want to make the same mistake with our next dog, if we even got one, that is. I read book upon book, learning all about the things we had done wrong with our previous pet, and what we could do to prevent those mistakes if we got a new one; until I finally felt comfortable to take another under our care.

The pound was a cacophony of dog barks, wines, and whimpers. A plethora of shiny large eyes glared in our direction as we guiltily walked by looking for that eight week old puppy we had come for. In a corner kennel, was a pure bred English Springer Spaniel, with 5 black little puppies waddling around beneath her. Just like I had learned from one of the dog books I had read, I snapped my fingers around each black little head, and took notice of which one was most attentive. One of the five seemed to have a magnetic draw towards us, as he scuttled on the slick concrete floor towards us. He’s the one we took home.