Meet Melanie, my first dog. I got her when I was three years old. She's an interesting mix: half bird dog, half dachshund. Throughout the years, we've shared a lot of memories.
I'll never forget my childhood days with Melanie. I remember when I was little, the first thing I would do when I got home from school was go to the back yard and visit her. Since I never failed to do this, she always knew when it was 4 o'clock. My mom said that she would always get really excited right before 4, because she would always be awaiting my return home.
I'll never forget the way I felt one time when I thought she had run away. My parents and I had gone on a short trip out of town and when we got back home she was gone. I remember bawling my eyes out and crying myself to sleep because I didn't think that I would ever see her again. However, we got a phone call from the vet the next day and they had her. It turned out that somehow she had gotten out of our backyard, wandered the neighborhood, and returned to the backyard of a different house-- one that looked very similar to ours.
My parents and I always called her a mute because it was very seldom that she would bark. But then, as she got older in age, she began to get more neurotic. I would play a game with her where I would pretend to be letting her inside and then close the door, over and over again. This game would get her so wound up that she would begin to bark in a way that I had never heard before. Below is a photoshoot of this game.
I did this photoshoot my senior year in high school for a photography project. I took these pictures on the digital camera that I got for my 18th birthday.
These pictures are the last pictures that I ever got to take of Melanie, because she died the day after my birthday two years ago. She died in the kennel my mom had left her in while my parents came up to Dallas to pick me up for Christmas break. Since I was still in Dallas on my birthday, we decided to spend the night in Austin to celebrate. My mom's cellphone rang late that night, so she decided not to answer it. The next morning she checked her voicemail to find out that Melanie had died in her sleep of a stroke. It was my first Christmas home from college, and I didn't get to see my dog. I felt gipped. I wish I had known when she would leave the world, because then I would have taken more pictures of her on my camera for memory's sake.
I believe that first pets have a significant impact on a child. I believe that they can even bolster a child's creativity: most of my drawings in school consisted of me with Melanie. First pets also serve a loyalty that one could not find anywhere else. When I was 9 and halfway through the third grade, my family and I moved to San Antonio. Since I started at a new school halfway through the year, it took me a while to make new friends since everybody had long ago formed their cliques. For a while, Melanie was my only friend.
Though later in life I will have new dogs, Melanie will always be in my heart.
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