I once went to Alaska to work for the summer. I got a job house sitting in this beautiful home in the middle of acres of forest. The family had two dogs, a Labrador and a mixed mutt. I took care of the house, fed the dogs, and watched tv.
After a couple of days I got a call from a friend of mine.
He said: “Hey, there’s a salmon cannery nearby that is hiring. I’m going to apply and was wondering if you wanted to go with me. It would mean more money and you could still house sit.”
I agreed and he said they would pick me up in the morning.
The next morning the doorbell rang. Opening it I saw my friend standing there with a strange look on his face.
He said: “Why’s the dog dead?”
“What?” I replied intelligently.
“Yeah, the Labrador is in the driveway, dead. I flipped him over with a stick a couple of times just to be sure.”
“Um,” said I.
“Well, let’s go. We don’t want to be late.”
His mom was parked out front in their huge suburban capable of carrying the population of a small village. Three of her seven children had their noses pressed against the windows asking: “Why is the doggy sleeping?”
I sat up front next to her and after a moment she asked me what I did to kill the dog. She was a bit mortified because she was friends with the family and had been instrumental in them hiring me to house sit.
“Did you feed him?” she asked.
“Of course I did,” I responded.
“Give him water?”
“Naturally.”
“Where did you get the water from?”
“I filled up the dish from the hose.”
She gasped. “Don’t you know better than to give an animal water from a hose in Alaska? They had it hooked up to a herbicide.”
I was devastated. I made her promise to go back to the house after dropping us off and dump the poisoned water dish so the other dog wouldn’t wind up dead. She promised.
I was sick.
Well, I got the job at the salmon cannery. I was put on the Slime Line, where I stood with a rubber apron and a spoon. My job was to take a salmon from the conveyor belt, where it had just been slit open, and scrape out all the blood deposits and place it back on the belt. Twelve hours a day.
Every dead fish made me think of the poor dead dog lying in the sun.
When I got back to the house the dog (who’s name was Lucky) was gone, friends of the family had taken it away. So far the other dog seemed fine.
The backyard, where the dog dishes were kept, was down a flight of twenty steps. I went down them, got the water dish, went back up them, filled it at the kitchen sink, went down them, put the bowl down for the dog and then came back up the stairs.
Three times a day. For a couple of weeks.
Down the stairs, up the stairs.
After the house sitting job was over I learned an interesting fact about dear departed Lucky the Labrador. My friend’s mother had fibbed. There was no herbicide. The hose water was perfectly fine. Lucky was old and everyone had been expecting him to pass away.
I left Alaska a few weeks later and she was still laughing.