Harley and Me

Growing up, the only thing in the world my sister wanted was a dog. They were all she ever thought about. She would sit and memorize facts about the different breeds and recite them to us. Being the younger sister, I naturally wanted the same thing she did. Our older brother, however, was not much of an animal person and really did not care whether or not we got a dog. My sister and I begged profusely to welcome a four legged family member to the Lanser household. My parents were not interested. They did not think that a ten year old and a six year old were capable of taking care of another living creature. 

Then my Uncle Bill got in a motorcycle accident. An eighteen wheeler with a drunk driver hit him. By some miracle, our Uncle Bill lived, but he was in very bad condition. When he came home from the hospital, our Aunt Jan sent their dog, Bailey, to live with us until Uncle Bill recovered. Bailey was an utterly neurotic Hungarian vizsla who had jumped out of a second story window, twice. Maria, my sister, decided to prove to our parents that she could, in fact, take care of a dog.  

Bailey lived with us for around three months and in that time, he had been mischievous, but we all fell in love with him. Maria was so good with him that after Uncle Bill’s recovery, when Bailey returned home, our parents struck a deal with her. If she volunteered every week at the animal shelter for six months, we could adopt a dog.  

Sure enough, Maria upheld her end of the bargain and soon, the family began searching for the perfect dog. At first, it looked like we’d be getting a female beagle named Daisy, but the night before we were supposed to bring her home we found out that the shelter had adopted her out to another family. Heartbroken, we had no idea how we’d ever find another dog we loved as much. Then our Aunt Jan and Uncle Bill sent us information about a vizsla rescue that had a little girl they were trying to have adopted. My dad and Maria went to visit, but when they got there, it wasn’t the girl, Shelby, that Maria wanted. When Maria sat down, a very sickly looking male vizsla came over and curled up in her lap. He was five years old and the owners who had had him since he was a puppy had given him up while they built their new house. His name was Harley and immediately, Maria was in love.  

A few weeks later, Maria and my dad were on their way to get him. It was a Friday night in January and I could not handle the excitement of getting a dog. It was literally all I had managed to talk about all week long. When Maria, Dad, and Harley walked in, I remember thinking that he was not as cute as I thought he would be. His eyes were black with terror and he immediately hid under a table. We spent the entire night just trying to get him out from underneath it.  

That night, my dad let Harley out back to use the bathroom. A few hours later my dad realized that Harley had never barked to come back inside and when he looked in our backyard, he saw that our gate was open. Panicking, my dad began to search the neighborhood for the dog he’d only had for six hours. It snowed that night and Dad didn’t know what to do. He thought for sure that Harley was gone forever. Then, as Dad scanned the neighborhood with his flashlight, he saw Harley standing in our next door neighbor’s yard, shivering in the snow. That’s when Dad fell in love with him. 

The next day, my mom questioned whether or not our family could handle this and thought about bringing him back. Instead, Maria, Dad, and I took Harley to the middle school to play in the snow. That was the first time I saw him run. He whipped around the baseball field, a cloud of white leaping behind him as he kicked up the freshly fallen snow. He was transformed and I swear sometimes he went so fast, he floated right off the ground. That’s when I fell in love with him. 

Harley’s eyes soon turned from the terrified black to a beautiful shade of gold. He quickly became a member of our family and he fit in wonderfully despite the fact he had some weird habits. For instance, he would only eat if one of us was standing behind him. He would walk backwards rather than taking the time to turn around. He wouldn’t eat food off the floor. He preferred to eat his breakfast by taking one piece of food out of his bowl at a time and throwing it on the floor, barking at it, and crying until someone added some “people food” to it. But these quirks only made Harley even more of a Lanser. He was just special.  

My mother, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was four years old, has to take a needle every day. When we first got Harley, my mom was still taking her needles at night, but after a few months, she decided to switch to taking them when she first awoke in the morning. Every night, Harley, who was used to seeing my mom take her needle while he was eating dinner, would bark in an attempt to remind my mother to take her medicine. That’s when Mom fell in love with him. 

My mother is not an animal person and she hates to be touched much. However, Harley knew her limitations and would simply snuggle next to her with his head on her thigh. He was calm and sweet and loved each of us in the way we individually needed his love. 

When I was in third grade, my parents started fighting a lot about my father’s incessant drinking. They would scream for hours on end, but my brother and sister were often out at after school activities or with friends. I, however, was stuck in the house. No matter where I tried to go in the small rancher, I could still hear their voices pounding on my ear drums. I was terrified that my parents were going to get a divorce, but Harley would always find me and I’d cry into his fur for hours until the screaming eventually subsided.  

It was in those nights, crouched under end tables as he licked the tears off my cheeks, that Harley went from my pet to my best friend. There was never any doubt in my mind about whether Harley loved me. I could always see how he loved and trusted me in his golden eyes. I guess that’s what is so magnificent about dogs. They love you just because they can. 

That Christmas, Maria and I both got new slippers. As my mom went to take a picture of our feet, Harley began whining. After several minutes of trying to figure out why he was crying, my mom asked him if he wanted to be in the photo. He walked up, put his paws next to our feet, and sat down. All he wanted was to be included in the photo.  

Harley knew that he was superior to all other dogs and also most humans. When Harley would go to the vet’s office, he would refuse to sit on the floor with the other dogs. Instead he would sit on the bench with the humans, look up at the ceiling, and pretend he wasn’t there. He had no patience for puppies or babies. But he loved kittens and singing to my mom’s clarinet. He adored his bow tie that he was allowed to wear on special occasions and his Halloween costumes. He loved when people told him how handsome he was, but he hated taking baths. He loved to run and chase squirrels and he loved his family. And we loved him. 

In middle school, I would come home from school and tell Harley all about whatever boy I liked and how mean my friends could be and how I hated how fat I was. No matter what I told him, he still loved me. He was still there waiting for me every day when I got home from school. There is nothing like the unconditional love of a dog to take even your worst days as a thirteen year old and make them better. 

As Harley grew older, he seemed to stop caring about consequences and he began stealing food off the stove. In fact, he ate two entire beef roasts. Never have I ever seen a dog look more pleased than the nights when he successfully ate those roasts. 

Toward the end of my freshman year of high school, Harley began to grow ill, so we took him to the vet. They told us he had cancer. They could operate, but it would be expensive and painful and would only give him a few more months, at best. Harley was thirteen at this point and it seemed unfair to put him through such a painful surgery, so we resigned to spend as much time as possible with him over the next couple of weeks. That was a Wednesday. That Saturday, I was going on a field trip to an amusement park. When I woke that morning, Harley was doing better than he had been. He was eating yogurt, his favorite food. I gave him a kiss good bye and told him I’d see him later.  

A few hours into the fun and exciting day, my mother sent me a text message telling me that Harley wasn’t doing well. This made no sense to me; he was doing better when I left that morning than he had been in weeks. Then my mom told me that they had to take him to be put down and that they couldn’t wait for me to get home because the vet would be closed by then and we’d have to wait until Monday. We couldn’t let him stay in all that pain for the entire weekend. It had to be now.  

I have lived a very fortunate life in that no one close to me has ever died, but at this point, I felt a pain I had never felt before. It was an inevitable crushing sensation that made it difficult to breathe. I broke down sobbing in the middle of the amusement park. I cried for the last three hours. I shook uncontrollably when my mom sent me a message that said just two words, “He’s gone.” I cried the entire way home. 

When I walked into the house, the blanket that he had come from the rescue in was on the couch. It turns out that for whatever reason, the vet had let my parents take his body. I peeled back the blanket to see my best friend in the entire world lying still and motionless, no love left in his eyes. I wrapped my arms around him and sobbed into his fur just like I had been doing for so many years, only now there was no one to lick away the tears.  

When I was finally able to pull myself away, my father scooped him into his arms, and we all walked out back. In the very back of our yard, there was a large hole my father had dug. In the moonlight, I watched through blurry eyes as my father lowered him into the ground. My mother, sister and I all stood sobbing as my brother and father poured cool dirt over his body, packing him forever into our soil. My mother looked at me and said, “I’m sure glad he ate those roasts.” 

That night, my brother went out and when he came home, he thought he heard Harley’s collar jingling. He called out to him in the dark house, but received no reply. He remembered that Harley was truly gone and it was then that he realized how much he had loved Harley, too. 

The next day, we sat around playing cards and discussing our favorite Harley memories, but something was undeniably different without him around. There was a silent emptiness in the house and his special spot on the couch seemed perplexingly vacant.  

As summer came in hot and fast, the spot where Harley was buried began to sprout grass. My brother came home with a bird bath one day and planted it into his grave along with the cement imprint of his paws the vet made for us the day he was put down.  

It’s been almost five years, but sometimes we all still forget he isn’t around anymore. Every time we remember, it hurts just as much as those first few hours as we stood around a ditch in the silence of the warm, June night, the lightning bugs illuminating his way.