Revisiting Fargo

We were those people who loved their dog like a child.  Fargo was mine before The Accountant became mine and while he tolerated The Accountant, Fargo always knew who was allowed to sleep in my bed first.  When The Accountant asked me to marry him (while sitting on the end of the aforementioned bed), Fargo was right there with him, rolling his eyes in doggy annoyance at the fact that we were still awake at that late hour.  When we went on our post-9/11 back up honeymoon of driving around the Southwest United States because we didn't want to deal with travel restrictions, Fargo came along with us, riding in the backseat but finagling a front seat spot close to the spent McDonalds bags every chance he got.  Fargo was the original inspiration for our tendency to provide our "children" with multiple crazy nicknames, with most of his involving his fuzz, his butt, or some combination of both.  Our children are still referred to by nicknames that originated with Fargo, although neither of them have a fuzzy butt, thank goodness.

When The Accountant's job moved us to Brazil, we were fortunate in having his brother and family offer to provide Fargo with a home.  When we came back from Brazil a few years later, they asked us to reciprocate.  This is when we became those people who used-to-love-their-dog-like-a-child-and-now-consider-him-to-be-yet-another-source-of-whining-that-Mommy-just-doesn't-have-the-patience-to-deal-with.  K was just shy of 3 years old, and had only seen little yappy apartment dwelling dogs in Brazil.  Fargo was, to her, a loud, pushy MONSTER and she had no love for his antics.  The Monkey was barely old enough to focus on Mommy's face, but she could track that dog wherever he went...we are still not sure if she liked him or was just keeping a wary eye out.  I was less than thrilled with Fargo's once endearing traits, like his hand flip move, where he'd put his nose under your hand and flip it up to the top of his head so you would pet him.  His Evil Eye, the term we used for his eye bulging out of his head while he gnawed on a rawhide bone that you were so politely holding for him, grossed me out to no end.  His tendency to knock K over in his exuberance to get in or out of any door you opened just plain pissed me off.  So, when, at the ripe old age of 11,  he started to consistently lose his bowels on our dining room rug, be unable to climb up and down the stairs in the wintertime due to arthritis and start terrifying the neighborhood kids, uncontrollably chasing them and nipping at their fingers, we made the decision to put him down.  We rationalized that he had a good life and we didn't want to see his health decline, nor did we want to get sued.  At that time, we decided that we would not get another dog until the kids were older and BEGGED for one.

But, pet ownership is important, it teaches kids about compassion and caring for other creatures.  So, this summer, we decided to purchase an aquarium and two goldfish, one for each girl, figuring that fish would be an easy way to keep pets without adding to the whine quotient (and thus adding to Mommy's wine quotient).  Less than a week later, K's goldfish went belly up.  When we returned her to the pet shop, we were told that a 2.5 gallon aquarium was not sufficient for two small fish.  Huh?  I used to keep a goldfish in a tiny bowl and that thing lived a long happy life until she became lunch for my cat.  A trip to return the fish corpse and pick up a replacement fish turned into a $20 outing, as we had to buy the remaining fish, Abby, some "toys" so she wouldn't be lonely.  Now, 2 months later, Abby wafts in and out of disease, lying on the bottom of her tank one day, looking to be tomorrow's newest sewer inhabitant, and swimming around as happy as can be the next day.  I have spent more money on fish antibiotics and more time on internet research, special water treatments and aquarium maintenance trying to get this $3 goldfish to live.  Chances are, she'll do this for months, inspiring weekly conversations about illness and death with K, who now points out all of the dead parents in her Disney princess stories.  Lovely.

The moral of this story, smaller isn't always easier.  Also, death is inevitable and five year olds are surprisingly surrounded by it.  And, everything, including fish ownership, is more costly and intricate than it was in the good old days.  I guess we should have counted our blessings with Fargo...although it is nice to have clean carpet.

Fargo at the Grand Canyon...he enjoyed our honeymoon more than we did, but then again, all it took for him to have a good time was an occasional stray french fry.