You may not remember this, dear apostrophic reader, but last year, our football team was not so good.
In fact, there was a portion of last year’s Furman University game where it looked like we were not going to win against Furman(!!), and like so many of you, I turned the game off during the second quarter and went to take my dog on a long walk.
Her name was Elly (short for Eleanor Rigby). She was the most adorable little basset hound you can imagine.
She was also a ball of destructive energy. I have a hard time believing she was anything other than an avatar of Shiva whose eventual goal was to destroy the entire human race.
On that afternoon (Nov. 7, 2011? Somewhere thereabouts. I remember the weather was that beautiful combination of crystal clarity, sunlight and 60-degree temperature that you can only find during the winter in Gainesville), I took her out to a retention pond by my house and absorbed myself in thoughts of anything other than Gators football.
Elly was not that old at this point. She was still a puppy, maybe 4 months old, and so her fitness levels had been slowly building. Until that day, she didn’t want to do anything but run and run and run…
There was a sheen of cold resting like a mist five feet above the ground, and the grass seemed to me vigorous and dancing under the cold light.
The weeds were nothing but flowery tendrils of the earth, and a light rain either the day before or the day before that had made the dirt below delightfully moist; just enough that in bare feet my toes almost giggled with pleasure to slowly drag across the earth as Elly ran in asymptotic circles around me.
She’d run a little ways away, notice that I wasn’t following fast enough, then hurtle back toward me, a satellite of pure love and energy to my plodding planet.
She was wearing a leash, but I let it drop because I knew she would never run too far from me: I’ve mentioned that she was evilly destructive, but she was also scared to be far from me, and so, as she ran, I lost myself in thoughts.
That day, Elly warmed my spirit. When she ran away, I knew she would return because she didn’t know there was even another option.
Me and my roommates liked to imagine Elly talking and complaining to us in a high-pitched voice.
We’d make each other laugh for hours playing with her and saying things like, “Um, sir, you may not have noticed, sir, but, um, my food dish is empty, and I’d really like it if you’d fill it, sir.” Or “Um, sir, I know you’re having fun, but if you don’t give me Mr. Duck back RIGHT NOW, I’m gonna chew off your ears while you’re asleep.”
(Mr. Duck was her stuffed toy duck. She loved that thing, but it had no squeaker or wings left by the time we had to throw it away.)
She loved toys that made noise most of all, especially if said noise was annoying and loud. Sweetbay had these squeaky toys on sale for 50 cents, and we bought like five of them, but she destroyed them all in less than three hours.
She’d look up at us with the saddest eyes and say, “Um, sir, I hate to bother you, sir, but my toy seems to have stopped squeaking,” and we’d laugh, then throw another one at her to watch the gleam in her eyes as she tore the thing to bits. She was beautiful, man, just beautiful.
Elly’s dead now.
She wasn’t a year old before a snake bit her one day while she was playing or exploring.
I’m just thankful for the time I got with her.
Save a space in heaven for me for the next time we meet forever, you beautiful, awful dog.
Dallin Kelson is an English senior at UF. His column appears on Mondays. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
