Sheba

To most people a best friend is a person, someone who you’ve shared your life and your memories with, and who has been through so much with you, that when you’re sitting at lunch reminiscing about 5th grade one day in high school neither of you can stop giggling because of all the private jokes you suddenly remember that no one else gets but you don’t really feel like explaining. They are a person that when you both start laughing so hard that your side is going to split you suddenly realize how lucky you are that you have this friend; but you don’t dwell on this thought long, because you know you’d both rather be laughing. To most a best friend is that person who, when you’re crying so hard you feel like you’ll never be happy again because that boy in science with the really cute smile and gorgeous eyes who said yes (thank god) when you asked him if he wanted to go on a date suddenly canceled, because so he claims, something came up, but you really know it’s because he likes that girl on the cheerleading team who always says “Hi” to him before class on Tuesdays. To most this is what a best friend is. To me my best friend was a dog.

In 5th grade, and also prior, I was pretty much a friendless loser who wandered around always reading, or doodling, and had absolutely no interest in being social with anyone anytime anywhere. Some people were discovering that boys weren’t from Mars, girls weren’t from Venus, and that the two weren’t different species, but in fact, two different genders that were both human and could have an enjoyable time together. Some people where discovering YM magazine, fashion, shoes, nail polish and of course – the wonderful world of makeup. All I was discovering was that 5th grade could be a very miserable place if you weren’t popular.

Ok, maybe saying that I had no interest in anything social was a bit of an overstatement, but just a bit. I had like one friend in 5th grade who went to my school. And we weren’t best friends. She was my best friend (because she was my only friend) but I wasn’t hers. I did like a boy, but he didn’t like me, because he liked the girl in my class who was almost-a-friend, (mainly because I was under the false impression that she was suck-up because the teacher seemed to like her better). This made me upset because she knew (at the time) that I liked him. Interestingly enough, she’s now among my closest friends.

I did do things though, outside of school. I was a Girl-scout. I didn’t really feel comfortable with all the girls there though, and the next year we split off into two different troops. I started karate that year and, though I didn’t know it at the time, it was probably the best decision of my entire life at least so far. I haven’t made that many big decisions yet. I’m only 14 after all. I went to Hebrew School on Sundays but I didn’t really like my class that much. They were nice and all, but I didn’t really seem to fit in. Part of it might have been because I truly honestly and really didn’t want to be there. My Hebrew school was just a Hebrew school. We rented a private school, Germantown Academy I think, and class was held on Sundays. I wanted to be part of a synagogue, though. I wanted to have a real Jewish experience with Shabbat, and big family Passovers, and most of all I wanted to have my Bat Mitzvah at a synagogue. [I still don’t have the Shabbat or the big family Passovers, but I did have my Bat Mitzvah at a synagogue. My Hebrew school closed at the end of 6th grade, because people stopped coming.]

But anyway, yes, I did have dog. Her name was Sheba. She was older than I was, probably by about three years, but I’m not quite sure. And she was really my best friend. In the beginning of my life, she was more like a mom, considering the fact that, especially in her eyes, I was not big enough or mature enough to be her equal or greater. My mom tells me that when I was really little, like a toddler, or perhaps even younger I would try to ride on Sheba’s back like she was a pony or something and, until I got too big, Sheba actually put up with it. In case I have not mentioned this (and I don’t believe I have) Sheba was a really great, friendly nice-to-everyone-always-wants-a-belly-rub kind of dog. This might have been because she was a lab, and this is a known trait in labs. She was a yellow lab, more specifically, the runt of the litter, and afraid of a lot of things. My parents took her to the ocean once, and a big salty wave splashed down on her and got in her eyes and everything. She was afraid of water after that. But I’m digressing. Anyway, my mother told me a lot of things about Sheba, some of them I will always remember, and some of them, I ask her to repeat to me, when I’m getting all dewy eyed over not having a dog anymore. Moms are a good source of facts about your childhood since, well, they were there every step of the way! When Sheba was a cute little puppy, she would sit on my mom’s lap. But then she got bigger, and she couldn’t figure out why my mom had shrunk. After all, she hadn’t changed. [At least this is what we think she thought. We can never know for sure at least until scientists come up with a way to interpret dogs’ barks, and teach them sign language with their tails!] In my entire life I never heard Sheba actually bark at anyone. She would start panting, and yelping (if it can even be called that) and wagging her tail and slobbering wet doggy kisses on everyone; but she never actually barked. Well, she barked once. A man we had never seen before rang our doorbell and asked to do some yard work. As soon as Sheba saw him she started barking and even growling like crazy! My parents decided perhaps that they should find someone else for the job.

I don’t remember personally a lot about Sheba- from when I was little, or even when I was older, because I don’t have the greatest memory in the world, and the last time I saw her was in 5th grade. But if a picture can tell a thousand words, then a photo album can bring back a thousand memories. I have this one picture and it’s probably my favorite that I have of Sheba. I was four years old, and I had just come back from some other four year old’s party, and I had gotten a party hat (the kind that are all triangle-ish, with the elastic chin strap that leaves elastic marks on your skin; they remind of the things doctors use when they want to block your circulation) and a two part friendship necklace. I put the hat on Sheba, and somehow got one of the friendship necklaces around her neck, and dragged her to the bottom of my steps at my old house. I showed my dad, and he got out the camera (or it might have just been floating with him, cameras seem to follow parents when their children are little, then they just suddenly disappear when you stop being a little girl/boy) and he took a picture of us with my arm wrapped around Sheba. Sheba was wearing one of those goofy, tongue-out-of-face, I’m-a silly-doggy smiles, and that pretty much sums up everything I’ve ever felt about Sheba for as long as I can remember having feelings.

I also remember that when I was younger and my family used to go on vacation together (to a place in Vermont called Tyler Place), we would typically drop Sheba off at the kennel that is right down the street from us. Sheba could tell when this was coming, and she never really liked going. As soon as we entered the kennel, she seemed to start feeling as if we were abandoning her. My mom used to like to pretend that she knew what Sheba was thinking and she would say that Sheba was thinking that we were leaving her here for good this time. Sheba seemed confident in the fact that we weren’t coming back. Of course when we did come back for her, it was like this whole big reunion even though we’d only been gone for about a week. But, I guess in a dog years, it seemed more like seven weeks. This might explain Sheba’s anxiety over being left alone.

I used to play with Sheba all the time when I was little-little, because when you’re two years old, and you don’t have any brothers or sisters, playing with your dog is a pretty good way to go. When my mom filled in my schedule for when I was little in my baby book, there was even a slot, assigned to play with Sheba.

Going back to pictures, I have one more picture of Sheba that I really like. During the winter of ’96 there was a huge snow storm that every adult I’m sure remembers because my mom always talks about it as the most snow we ever had. My sister and I had gone outside for a little bit (I guess on a day when there wasn’t huge amounts of snow) and we took Sheba outside with us. Sheba hadn’t been out in the snow a lot and she thought this was the neatest thing ever. Shes had another big grin on her face in this picture, too.

For a long time, Sheba slept inside the house in our basement usually, but then (as all living things do) she started to get old. Eventually my mom had to move Sheba to the garage because she kept getting sick all the time and she started shedding alot. This was in 5th grade or a little bit before it. Sometime in the earlier part of that school year my mom did a badge with me and a few other girls from my Girl Scout troop on taking care of pets. Before this I had never really taken care of Sheba, except for occasionally filling her bowl or letting her out. Sometimes I would brush her hair, but that was just for fun. During the badge, though, we had to take care of our pets for about a month and keep track of all the things we did for them. So I started doing things like feeding Sheba, exercising her, brushing her hair and letting her outside. This was also around the same time my dad moved out so it was almost like a power switch. Suddenly I was the one who Sheba gave respect to because I was the one who did everything for her.

I think that this is the time when I became closest to Sheba. Sometimes I would go to our garage and just play with her, or sit in a wheelchair that my dad had bought at a garage sale once, and just talk to her. My dad says that he bought the wheel chair because it was only five bucks and he couldn’t resist the bargain. He said he might fix it up and sell it someday, but like so many other of his big dreams he never has. It’s current residence is in the office at my dads house. It felt good to be the one in charge because Sheba was always so happy to see me. She would have a big smile on her face, and she would start yelping, in the kind of excited way.

I would always feel terribly guilty, though, when I left the garage, because I knew that Sheba must be sad shut off from everyone else in the cold garage. She still loved us just the same because that is one of the great things that dogs do. But I still felt guilty just abandoning her. Usually I would take out some of her dog treats and while she was eating them I would leave. Once I took out like twenty, and spelled her name with them. I’m extremely lucky she didn’t get a stomach ache after that.

Even after the badge was over I continued taking care of Sheba, because that was something I was used to doing, and it was fun. It felt good to be needed. My mom would still have to take care of her during school hours, but whenever I came home I would feed her and do things like that. At night I would always let her outside to (as my mom said) do her business. Then I would play with Sheba for a little bit. Luckily, 5th graders get very little homework.

One day my dad had come over to do something or another in our backyard (this was when he still came to visit us every single day without fail) and he had brought Sheba with him, because he had not spent a lot of time with her lately. He assumed that like usual Sheba would just sort of trot behind him, grinning happily, having the time of her life spending time with my dad. He was her favorite person in the world, even after I started taking care of her. In her eyes, he was the most important, most in charge, most powerful person ever. But this is not what Sheba did that day.

At some point during the day when my dad was outside Sheba ran away.

At first we weren’t concerned, because Sheba had run away many time before (more frequently as she got older), but always she either showed up at the side door early the next morning covered in mud and grimacing in guilt and anticipation of the inevitable bath of come (she hated the water with a passion) or someone had read her identification collar and called us within 24 hours. Three days passed, still know sign of Sheba. I was beginning to get worried. I began to think that some other family had taken Sheba away and wasn’t going to bring her back, even though she had her name on her collar. My mom tried to convince me how unlikely this was but I didn’t completely believe her. My dad even put up a few flyers in some places with Sheba’s pictures but no one called. I was distraught. I cried a lot and got angry at my dad when he didn’t cry too. I was convinced that if he didn’t cry that it meant he hadn’t really loved Sheba.

Like every spring, I went clothes shopping at Kohl’s with my mom that year. This was normal. On our way back though, I saw my dad out behind one of our neighbor’s house with a bunch of tools and I couldn’t figure out why. My mom did not know at first but apparently she figured it out. When we got inside my house I asked my mom why dad was out in a field behind our neighbor’s house but she wouldn’t tell me. Finally my dad came home and he told me. It turned out that no one would be calling our house our house to say that they found Sheba, because Sheba had already been found. She was found in the meadow behind our neighborhood; and she was found dead.

I was upset, but I don’t remember if I cried, I had already done a lot of crying before then. My sister Kara was upset too, but I don’t think it affected her as much because she three years younger than me when this happened, and hadn’t gotten to know Sheba has well as I had.

That same day it started raining, and in my mind it was because the earth missed Sheba. This was probably not the case, but at the time it seemed a fitting thought. My dad took a thin wooden plank from our garage, and we all wrote about Sheba on it. I don’t remember what anyone wrote, and I’m guessing it’s not there any more.

My mom and my dad and Kara and I all put on our rain gear. Armed with the wooden plank and a box of dog cookies, we all went out to visit Sheba for a final time. We all spoke about her. I don’t think I said a lot. At the end I took twenty dog cookies and spelled Sheba’s name on the ground. Then we went home.

I haven’t been back since.