Dog House

(Oscar Mills)

I'm about to foster a dog in my home, a beagle named Emileigh.

The Dog History runs deep and dysfunctional in my family. My twin sister has two Bostons. They're wild and fierce, but at night they are like any tired dog. They sleep. We had dogs growing up. There was Dukes, then Angie, and finally, Bear. All were mutts and when the kids grew tired of feeding them, my parent's surrendered all three to sympathetic friends with larger yards. (In a similar move, my older sister "got rid of" a Papillon mix that "drove her nuts." In a car ride the other day, her two-year-old proclaimed out of nowhere, "No Dogs!", to which her mother chimed in, "Or cats!" Unable to train dogs, she's at least trained her daughter.) Like my older sister, my mom has never been a fan of canines, and I suspect it was my father's persuasion that allowed any dogs to set foot, let alone stay, in our house. Today, they have a miniature Daschund, a runt named Brutus.

Brutus belonged to one of my brothers, but between his yearly sojourn to Switzerland and moves around town, Brutus relocated to my parents' house, and more specifically, my dad's lap. In Mississippi, I had my own dogs for a time. There was Bass, a gentle German Shepard, and Badger, a Lab mix whose name fit his rambunctious personality. For four years, I was a dog owner, sharing the responsibility with a boyfriend. They were clearly his dogs though. Four years later he split and took the dogs with him.

The only dog I was truly fond for the last few years is Oscar, a dog rescued from the rubble of Katrina. He belonged to my friend Alysson, who previously lived in my house. I remember the first time I saw Alysson. She was walking north on Lamar with this handsome, blond dog at the end of a leash. For a moment, I was transported to Paris. (Later I learned that Oscar responded to some commands in French.) The pair was the picture of chic in a small, north Mississippi town and I wanted to know them. We met shortly thereafter, and have remained friends, sharing recipes, glasses of wine, and stories. Oscar, I'm told, is settled into his new digs in Jackson, but when he stops by his old place at Pierce, you can tell he remembers it.