We're Going Straight To Hell

My love affair with Abigail began twenty years ago with a short little drive down the road to visit with a breeder on a chilly October afternoon. He had a batch of fresh-cooked liver-colored German Shorthair Pointers, GSP’s for those in the know, and we were dying to see them.

My father-in-law, Rodger, was in the market for a new dog, and he’d read that GSP’s were smart and sporty. Turns out they are. And how.

We pulled off a city street and drove down a long driveway with twists and turns and scores of boastful trees shamelessly displaying their fall wardrobe. I thought I was back in the hills and hollows of Kentucky instead of right here in the Buckeye State.

It was almost heaven.

When we arrived at the end of the driveway, three big brown GSP’s greeted us with smiles and woofs. One of them was Jewel, introduced to us as Momma. She snuggled our hands and begged for ear scratches, playing her part in our seduction to perfection.

Jewel’s owner, Lonnie, had some showboating in store for us in the form of a bird’s wing tied to a long stick that he cast out into the yard for the dogs to point and fetch. George and Roy, the two big boisterous boys, ran endlessly after that decoy, never tiring, always begging for more.

Lonnie had to hold sweet Jewel back since she was lactating and oh boy did she cry about not being able to play with the boys!

We watched the boys game the wing for twenty minutes but before Lonnie headed into the barn, he stopped to make three special throws for Jewel. She was as adept at honoring her genes as were the boys and pointed with magnificence before fetching that silly wing and running back to us like Secretariat during the final lap at Belmont. We fell head over heels for those GSP’s.

We followed Lonnie into the barn and he immediately started passing out puppies like penny candy. I somehow got Abigail and off we went for puppy shenanigans.

Abby was in charge of all of the other pups, and there were eleven in all.

She bit every pup in the ass at least once while we were in the barnyard. She bullied a little boy until he ran crying back to Momma Jewel and hid between her legs. She tried to fetch the bird’s wing but all she managed to do was drag it through the dirt because it was ten times longer than her and weighed twice as much.

All this while the other pups, who were cuter than bunnies, by the way, were milling around the yard, chasing each other, trying to eat grass.

Funny how my father-in-law thought Abigail was his dog. The truth is she was mine. From the second I laid eyes on her three-week-old puppiness, that girl was mine.

After we wore those sweet puppies ragged, they all climbed into their stall in the barn and underneath the warm red glow of a heat lamp. Abby watched them all nestle in together like one massive squirmy blob of chocolate and once they settled, she crawled on top of them all to make her bed.

Yep, that’s my girl.

Abby had a little patch of rough fur, a cowlick on the back of her neck. Lonnie thought maybe it was from the way she squirmed around in the womb, probably worming in between the other pups, jockeying for the best position. Since Lonnie was a breeder, he couldn’t ask full price for Abby because the cowlick was considered a birth defect. He asked us to promise we’d spay her if we chose her since she shouldn’t be bred with a birth defect.

Rodger said he didn’t care which pup we picked, only that he preferred a female.

Homerun, boys, Abby was mine-all-mine.

We drove back to pick up Abby a few weeks later, at the beginning of November. She was the first pup we’d had in the family since I joined as an outlaw when I married my husband.

Turns out Abby was an outlaw just like me so we were partners in crime.

That suited me just fine.

Abby grew like a weed that winter, never tiring as she learned new games and tricks. She liked to pull hair ribbons out of my sister-in-law’s hair and we all thought that was way cute until the six-pound pup turned into a sixty-five-pound pup who thought it was still fun to pull hair ribbons out, along with big chunks of hair.

One late Sunday morning, as summer meandered its way through August, Rodger and Abigail came over to our place for a visit.

We lived next door to a preacher-man by the name of John who grew a small garden beside his house, in between our two homes. We watched him nurse his garden all summer long, paying particular attention to a large spaghetti squash.

Abigail rounded the corner of the house that morning and scooped up that squash faster than Deion Sanders on his way to the end zone. My husband and I stood there, horrified as she ran through our back yard, tossing it up in the air, catching it, dropping it, picking it back up.

When we came to our senses, we chased her through the yard, but by the time we caught her, the squash was bruised and dented, completely ruined.

My husband looked at me for a long minute and then walked over to the trash can, his head hung low, and threw the squash away.

He walked back to me and said, “ I guess that’ll teach us to skip church on Sunday morning,” and then, morosely, “You know we’re going straight to hell, don’t you?”

Sharing your life with a GSP is not for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of willpower and a truckload of patience. It helps to have a great sense of humor, too. You must know before you bring that puppy home that he will be smarter than you and everyone in your house.

Always. Not just today, but always.

You must be strong, you must be humble, and your heart must be bigger than his because it will shatter into a million little pieces when you lose him after a lifetime of big, beautiful friendship.

Abby was and is one of the very best loves of my life. Our family still talks about her and her antics. She was an endless bundle of laughter; part comedian, part buffoon, all joy, and a lot of asshole.

She stole every steak I grilled for myself. Every. Single. One. Over ten years. That’s a lot of red meat, my friends. I can’t even fault her for it because while I was finishing up the grilling and letting the steaks rest, my oinky family was hogging down their own food, never minding about the cook. Every man for themselves was their motto. Still is.

Until almost the day he died, my father-in-law blamed me for picking Abby. But then he always smiled and thanked me for the adventure.

We all still miss her every day. We laugh about her and we cry, too, because we knew her when we were all young and we had the entire world ahead of us.

I can’t wait to see her and Rodger again. I’m coming with a Frisbee in one pocket and a squash in the other.

I really hope it’s not too hot when I get there.

*A version of this story originally appeared here.