February 9th 2023

What Was It about Zebo?

I wrote this essay about my childhood dog Zebo.

I don't remember the first time Zebo sat at the foot of my bed. I don't remember, either, whether I put him or there or he put himself there. There he was, though. Cold nights in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, he was the ball nestled up against my feet. He was warmth on my ankles when my blanket wouldn't do. For thirteen years, Zebo was by my side. He was gruff at times, but in his gruffness, there was love. He took time to himself, marauding around my parents' acre of land, and in summers only reappeared inside our house in the evenings, his gait satisfied and flowing.

What was it about him? I have known many other dogs since then. I have shared my home with other dogs. Yet, he was different. It would be too easy to say that he was my childhood dog and because he was that, he could have just as well been a terrible dog and still held the same position in my mind. That would be an easy thing to say. It wouldn't be true, though.

Zebo was very important to me. I felt like he was always there for me. There were times that I felt alone or excluded at school, because I felt different, like so many people do, and Zebo was always a presence in my life, to uplift me and to make me feel like I couldn't be alone – that alonedness wasn't even possible for me, that in this world, where there were so many people to meet and so many things to do, alonedness I should conclude was an illusion.

My dad would call him “the ghost,” because of the speed at which he ran laps around our house. All times of the year, he was out there working his legs, the muscles bulging, veiny and thick. He wasn't a big dog, but he acted like one – and other dogs treated him like one. His instincts were kindness. Protection, though: his instincts were that too. Once when my sister Kelcy, who was still in grade school, became flustered when a neighbor's dog, a larger dog, jumped up on her, she screamed, and without a moment's hesitation, he lunged at the other dog. It took not even a minute. Zebo bested the larger dog. Though her life was never in trouble, he saved my sister. He earned the pride so plainly painted on his salt-and-pepper face.

Some dogs seem to crave something, anything, the indoors or the outdoors, people or not people, a long nap or a bolt through the door and down the street and around the block, to burn off all that energy or just to feel nature again. Zebo never seemed to crave anything, not anything at all. In his eyes, there was a softness, but his bark was always toothy. He was convincing, as much so when he sprawled out at the foot of the bed as when he threatened another dog with battle. If he seemed to be saying that I wasn't alone, that I couldn't be, and however much I felt that, it was wrong, and this was right, this feeling of sharing the moment, of being there together, I had to believe him.

Zebo never lied.

The feeling of “missing him” never left me completely. There are still some times that I feel different, like I can't fit in, and then guilty over mythologizing that part of myself, like there's something special about self-isolation. I have a response to that feeling, though. It was Zebo's response, and Zebo never lied.