This was the only pic I had of Chessie on my computer for some weird reason.

My life is fraught with animals. Bugs, birds, the occasional elephant, but the ones I hold dear are the ones I remember the best. This is a story about (or, for the sake of precision, for) those mostly lovable beasts. The first of these, or at least the first I can remember, was a dog.

Now I’m not saying that she was wholly dog. She looked like a mix of all sorts of things. Fox, weasel, puppy, sausage, but primarily, she resembled a dog. To give you an accurate image of her, first imagine a short Jack Russell Terrier. Now stretch it out until it’s on the verge of a caricature. Give it blonde fur, a white underbelly, long, random whiskers scattered on the muzzle, and you have Chessie, the first of our four-legged family members. She was a village mutt, one-hundred-and-ten per cent. Chessie was so remarkable that even her name has a story behind it. The Cheechessie river of the lowcountry is where my father calls home, so we abbreviated it. My first memory of Chessie is of us picking her out of her littermates. I can’t recall exactly, but I am fairly certain that they were all completely different, but they were so mixed up that they couldn’t not be related. At the time, she wasn’t as elongated, so we thought she was the most dog/adorable of the lot. Time passed, and, I’m sorry to say it, I grew to like Chessie less and less. She growled at me, nipped me pulled me around when I (she) walked her (me), and gave off an overall sense of anger around me. This was, I completely admit, my fault.

One time, after a considerably bad day, I was walking Chessie at night for some reason. Suddenly, she took off with the leash, knocking me over. I chased her for what seemed like hours, yelling at her the whole way, until I finally tackled (yes, tackled) her and tightly wrapped the leash around my wrist. I walked back to what I thought was my house in a brisk, angry walk, tugging her the whole way. When I had finished the short elevator ride to the eleventh floor of the apartment building, I quickly knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again, louder. No answer. By then I had begun to worry, as I often do. I knocked until I was bangeing on the door, crying and praying that my family was not killed by some thieving murderer! Eventually, I realized that I was in the wrong building. Poor six-year-old me, poor, poor dog, but most of all, poor people on whose cursed door I struck.

Chessie passed away in the village where she was borne after we had given her away. She had become mean to all but my little sister, who is willing to justify any wrongdoing Chessie did in the past to this day. When I heard of her death, I drew a picture that is now lost to time. The picture was of a fox-like dog, with a clumsy note underneath that simply said: I’m sorry.