Noise

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of her whimpering, broken bark. My dachshund Winnie came waddling through the door, crumpled up like a piece of paper at the bottom of a wastebasket. My mom had opened the door for her and came in behind her, holding the leash to my other dog, Baby’s, leash. 

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she whispered as she closed the door behind her. Winnie had dashed under the computer desk I was sitting at and buried herself under a coil of black wires. As soon as I hunched down to see what had happened, the stench overwhelmed me. The rotten smell of a septic tank pervaded the small space beneath the keyboard. Blood was spattered on her back leg, and a huge slit went from her chubby little belly to right past the top of her leg. “What do we do? What happened?” I asked my mom, already on the verge of tears.
“There were three big dogs in the fields behind the fence, where I take Baby and Winnie to walk,” she began in her distinct Korean accent.

Bending over and crawling under the desk, she continued, “Winnie started barking at them how she always does to other dogs, and it turned into a big fight. One of them picked her up in its mouth and shook her around. I thought she would be dead for sure. It was so violent, and they were huge and she’s so tiny. Baby’s the one that saved her. She jumped in and growled and barked until they got scared and dropped Winnie and ran away.”

Baby was a big dog, part rottweiler and part chow. I was amazed that she had saved Winnie. No matter how much Winnie irritated Baby with her little dog syndrome, Baby was her protector.

“Oh my God, she needs to go to the vet. I think her intestines are falling out of her side.”

“No, it’ll be fine,” my mom replied, walking away to get her nurse kit. 

About an hour later, Winnie was stitched up and bandaged. I continually asked my mom if we could just take her to the vet, someone trained with dogs and dog attacks. But she wouldn’t hear it. 

Winnie slept in the garage for days, constantly crying and whining. She wouldn’t stop licking her wound, always ripping the bandages off and causing the sore to blister and bald. After a week, I cried to my dad, begged him to please take her to the vet. She wasn’t getting better. In the end, he did, and it surely saved her life. Sure, she has a scar on her rear right leg, but she’s still here. Baby, on the other hand, had to be put down a few months ago. She was fourteen and had started growing skin tumors. They had even begun to cover her eyes. Her arthritis prevented her from taking the stairs in the backyard or to the garage. She was suffering.

My sister and I told my parents we thought we should put her down. Her time was coming and she was having a hard time. My mom was immediately angry.
“If I had cancer and arthritis, would you just kill me?”

In the end, they agreed. My dad took her to the vet and told him he found her in the street. He was too ashamed of the state of her to admit that we had allowed her to continue without treatment for so long. 

We buried her in my parent’s land, near the pond, her favorite place to run around.