Those small tiny eyes, the newborn breath–he was born in arms. And just a few years later, I would cradle his dead, limp body in those same arms.
It was just like any other ordinary day. Overworked, and resentful for this new life, this new work schedule. Just trying to keep food on the table and the lights on, it was such a struggle. Due to an unforeseen financial emergency in my family, I was working almost 70 hours a week. I barely slept and it just seemed like I was working all of the time.
My partner was also working as hard as I was, yet we had different visions on methods of generating income. We slowly grew apart not just in mind, but in heart. She was drinking 2-3 bottles of wine every night, in one go. Not 2-3 glasses, but 2-3 whole bottles. And when she was drunk, she enjoyed dancing and singing very loudly. However, it would carry on until the early morning hours, while I was coming in from working a 15 hour day. I was mostly tired and just wanted some quiet time, but it was always a party for her by the time I came back. I think it also affected the dogs and how they reacted around noise.
The younger dogs and senior dogs needed to be kept apart because the youngest dog had repeatedly challenged the senior dogs and it was the safest option. Their lives were miserable at times due to having to take turns coming out to the living room or going outside. It was a constant struggle to make sure the bedroom doors or office doors were closed at all times when either sets of dogs were out on their turns.
I don’t remember if it was when I came back from working a long shift or I had already been home for a while but I would discover Leon, the youngest dog, was suddenly out in the same room as Lucy, one of the elderly dogs.
Leon, who was only a few years old at the time, but could easily scale a 7’ fence without a running start, leaped from one end of the room to the other, pouncing on Lucy, both dogs sliding on the floor as he crashed onto her. He took a hold of Lucy’s ear and began to drag her and violently trash her from side to side–which is something dogs do in the wild, to break the bones of prey, or when they’re playing with a dog toy. Lucy, who’s at least 13 years old now, was howling and whining in pain.
Adrenaline kicked into my body as I tried to remember our steps to break them apart. It’s a bad idea to stick your hand in the middle–I would learn that lesson from years ago. You can use a breaking stick or anything that’s long and strong to try to wiggle into the dog’s mouth to try to get it to bite into that stick instead. As they are biting, they’ll continue to bite anything that’s already in their mouth, but if you do it quick enough, the other thing they’re biting onto could slip away as they bite into the breaking stick as you rotate the stick around once it’s in their mouth.. I grabbed our golf club and tried that method, but it was of no use. It didn’t work, Leon was a smart dog, and I think he knew I was trying to use a breaking stick, as my tears came down, it became blurry to see the gap at the back of his jaw where the breaking stick could be inserted.
At this point, Lucy was whining very loudly and drenched in blood. She was suffering. I wanted him to stop what he was doing to her. This was a terrible nightmare. I was all by myself, the only one in the house besides the dogs.
I remember throwing water on dogs in this situation as it confused this. So I grabbed a pitcher of water and threw it on Leon, but it only excited him and made him bite down harder. The expression on his face was not of anger or madness, but of play, but I was not sure if he knew he was about to kill Lucy.
I was crying and pleading with Leon to let Lucy go. From the day he was born to this point I had never laid a violent hand on him. Every touch I had given him was gentle up until this point. I grabbed the golf club and broke my heart into a million pieces when I swung it down hard, rapidly–back forth on him, hoping he would unclench his jaw.
I was trying to get him to free her. There was so much blood, it had looked as if I had started to mop the entire living room floor with bloody water. I was growing tired and slipped and fell and lost my grip from the golf club that I tried putting in his mouth again.
Lucy was now panting and starting to shut her eyes. It was as if she was giving up.
With a deep stabbing sensation in my chest, I ran over to the kitchen and flung the knife drawer wide open. I looked down at the contents of the drawer and knew what had to be done but didn’t know if I was emotionally strong enough to do it. I was carefully trying to find the right knife that would hurt him the least but it was so blurry. My tears couldn’t blink fast enough to dry off dinosaur sized, monsoon tears of misery. I put the knife in my hand and walked over to Leon who was still trashing Lucy around.
I pleaded with him one more time, and even tried to grab his collar with the golf club but it was of no use. This is the moment when he let Lucy go:
My hand was shaking and I took a few deep breaths so I could calm down. I sunk the kitchen knife deep into my baby boy’s back. The physical act itself was surprisingly easy to do, it slid in almost like butter. But doing it itself, I was terrified and screamed out, “MY BABY!” as I stabbed him. I was shaking so hard afterward, and felt warm water flow down my pants. You can conclude that I did indeed pee my pants.
Leon froze, dropped this hold on Lucy and looked back at me and for a few seconds just froze and stared at me– His expression, “why did Dad just stab me in the back? And just like that, his jaws slowly opened up, freeing Lucy and she slumped to the ground. Her panting was slowing down now, eyes glazing over. I just thought that her blood pressure might be dropping and she was probably in dire, critical condition.
Leon was still looking up at me but his tail, normally up and wagging, had started to drop down. And he was drawing some heavy breathes. He hobbled and limped away his doggy body and dropped to the floor. That was the last time his tail would ever wag again.
That’s when Leon’s mom, Mattie, started walking out from her room and I growled at her to stay back. She had been known to gang up on the senior dogs if her son was involved. Apparently this is a parental instinct, and not necessarily a characteristic or trait of the dog itself as she was fine around the senior dogs if her son was not in the same room. Mattie was very sweet, otherwise, and was usually a scary cat. She generally hid around kitchen noises of pots and pans and thunder and lighting. Mattie cowered that day when I screamed at her to stay back and she quickly went to hide in the bathroom.
I ran by Lucy’s side, who was shivering. I threw a blanket on her and cleaned up her wounds, then drove like a homicidal maniac with mad road rage, speeding over to the Emergency Vet. They had told me I made it just in time. They needed to give her a lot of fluids and keep her overnight. But she was going to be ok.
After Lucy was checked into the vet’s, I called my partner who was still at work. She was in the middle of teaching and I had someone get her on the phone. I told her what happened. I told her that I had zoned out asleep and didn’t know the bedroom and office doors were not closed. I told her I stabbed Leon and took Lucy to the vet. She came back to the house and saw that the knife was still in his back when Leon had managed to walk back to his kennel–or his puppy palace as he knew it as. I didn’t have the heart to pull the knife out and felt both shame and fear that he would quickly die if I pulled the knife out. I left the knife in there, thinking the vet would safely take it out.
From this story, you can probably tell that I was very close to these animals and that perhaps some may not consider animals like family but just pets. But the thing is in my upbringing, I wasn’t even allowed to have animals around, let alone have any pets. I was conditioned to believe that dogs were to be scared of, they were dirty and we should stay away from them, that they will bite you.. However, that practice shared by my family, while I was growing up, was a complete lie. It wasn’t until I was almost in my 30s and had a place of my own, that I had animals in my life for the first time, ever. These dogs became my family.
And so, Leon wasn’t just a pet, he was a member of my family. Did I intentionally want a dog for a family member? Did I dream that one day a dog would be my family member?
I remember pulling out the tiniest thorn in his paw when he suddenly stopped on a walk and lifted his paw up. I made a dowel rod cardboard pen so his mother wouldn’t squish him and his siblings when they were born. And don’t forget the puppy poop. No one told me that there would be so much! I was constantly cleaning up his puppy poop the first few weeks he was born. FYI: have a plan for vinyl flooring because it was very difficult to clean and sanitize it without tearing it up. By the time I moved out, the kitchen floor was a Rorschach test! Leon wasn’t just an animal to me. I fed him, played with him, taught him things to exercise his mind and body, and fell deeply, madly in love with him. I loved him with all my heart even up to that very point when we made the difficult decision to say goodbye to Leon at the vet’s office.
When Leon’s warm body gave its last breath in my arms, my eyes were swollen red with tears, but my heart was still full of endless love for him, my son.
Leon died at age 4 in January 2017.
Mattie, Leon’s mom, had finally been given her independence in that old house. When the ex moved out and took the senior dogs with her, it was just me and Mattie. We went on so many adventures. I tried to give her the best, fulfilling life and felt guilty for what I did to her son. With carefully planned doggy dates with willing friends to help, Mattie was socializing well with other dogs. She was gentle around everyone, adults and children. I could take her off leash in the wilderness and she had learned our secret whistle and secret word that she would come blazing back anytime she heard it, no matter how far she was from me. She learned how to swim with me and even helped inaugurate my nomad camper van/van life/travel trailer life in 2020 being my full time travel companion as we slowly started to travel across the states.
Lucy and Otis would pass away due to health complications of old age in 2020, and I found myself burying them with a shovel in my ex partner’s parent’s yard. They were about 12 and 13 years old when they died.
Almost 6 months later, Mattie’s heart finally gave out with a terrible heart tumor in November 2020. She was about 8 year old when I had to make the difficult decision and let my baby go.
You don’t know what devastation is until you’re suffocating from it.
You’re so deep in this cave of suffering that hopes oxygen is just sucked away.
Those rays of sunshine, those glimmers of happier times can’t reach this cave.
Countless times I’ve wanted to go to the police and turn myself in for stabbing Leon to death.. Countless times I’ve wanted to trade places with all of them, especially my son, Leon.
I know what you are going to say. That it was a difficult choice, that I saved Lucy. Yet, I knew what I was doing. I was of sane mind when I went over to the kitchen knife drawer. I wanted to stop him from killing Lucy. But did I want to kill my own son??? When Lucy ended up dying a few years later due to old age, I was torn up over Leon’s sacrifice all those years back. Did he have to die? What gave me the right to choose Lucy over Leon? In human years, Lucy was in her mid 70s. She was like a furry little grandma. She still had some spunk sure, but Leon had his whole life ahead of him to grow and change and provide so much joy to this world.
You’re going to say that I need to try to move on?
What gives me the right to move on and be happy after what I did?
You’re going to say go talk to a therapist?
Thanks to Obamacare and currently having shitty income, I get McDonalds and Walmart level therapists. (I am actively changing my income to change that situation). I’ve been through several of them that I question which board gave them their licenses because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. I got matched with an “EMDR trauma counselor” who wanted to use rapid eye movement on me. The last thing I want to do is NOT talk about what I did and to me, EMDR seems like I get off easily.
Ever since Leon died, something inside of me died and I am not the same person anymore. To this day, I constantly cry ugly tears and have bulging neck veins with the pain in my chest from crying so hard. I made a choice to stop trying to improve myself, physically and career wise. This, I think, is the only way I can be punished for what I did to my son.