My Best Friend

 

Have you ever had a best friend who was always by your side? A friend who never asked questions about where you were going or how you were to get there, they just tagged along? A friend who never complained about your bad moods or your choice of friends or your bad breath when you forgot to brush your teeth in the morning?

Dosti was that friend of mine. He was given to me by a guy who couldn't keep him. He was the first dog I had ever shared my life with. He was the kind of dog that understood when I talked with him. No need to give commands.

Dosti was a small bearded collie type mutt with long black and white dreads. About 2 years old he was super smart and we connected right away. He went with me almost everywhere. I never put him on a leash and when he needed to go out to do his business I would just open the door to our apartment which was just a block to the beach and he would go run and come home in an hour or two. I never worried until one day he didn't come back. I went to the pound to find him behind bars. They charged me more money than I had to get him back. I borrowed money from my room mate and took him home. A few days later it happened again. They were on to him. I had no money to pay back my friend or more money to get him out of the pound and they had told me the charges would double if they picked him up again.

I was in tears. I couldn't leave him in the pound. I made my way back to the dog jail. I walked in quickly past the front desk and into the area where the dogs where incarerated. There he was in the second to last cell. He freaked out when he saw me. I noticed the door to the cage had no lock so I slid open the door, grabbed him and lifted him up to the top of the tall the fencing. He pulled him self up and jumped over to the other side. I quickly walked back out, said thank you and darted out the door. There he was waiting for me out front. I shouted, “RUN!” We both took off running to the road and I stuck out my thumb. He was free and I was an accomplice to a doggy jailbreak.

After that I moved to a hundred acre ranch where he could roam all he wanted and was safe from the dog police.

In the 1970's hitchhiking was a thing and I felt safer with a dog in tow. If I had to go into a store or restaurant he would patiently wait outside for me.

Hitchhiking was always a dangerous activity. I needed to keep my spidey senses on high alert. On one occasion I was hitching to my brother's house in Los Gatos over the curvy mountain road. A single guy stopped to give me a ride. I hesitated but decided to take the ride. Dosti jumped into the back seat and I sat up front. The driver took off the first exit heading into the mountains. I got very nervous and when he slowed to stop at a stop sign, I opened the door and Dosti jumped over my shoulder and out the door before I even jumped out. He knew it wasn't safe and so did I.

We traveled in a van across the country together for a summer adventure. When we had to fly home I was forced to buy and put him in a crate. The airline loaded him into the luggage hold.

At the airport in San Francisco, I found the crate in the oversized cargo area and ran to him. He was crying and when I opened the door to the crate he darted to the doors outside. I ran after him. When he got outside he jumped all over me and we headed South to Santa Cruz.

I was going to Junior College and he couldn't be on campus so he stayed on the ranch waiting for my return. I took the bus and this one day when I got off the the bus and started walking home Brian and Barry, two of the guys who lived on the ranch, pulled the old Ford panel van up to me and jumped out. Running up to me with very concerned expressions on their faces they held me as they told me that Dosti had fallen asleep under the tire of Brian's old truck. The ignition didn't work so he just let off the break and coasted down the hill popping the clutch to get it started. They covered him with a blanket waiting for me to return. Dosti was dead.

My body couldn't stop shaking. He was the love of my life. At 19 I had already lost both parents. My brother had his new family and I had Dosti. He was my family. My best friend. I had no idea what to do with myself. After seeing his limp body under the upper house, I ran down to my house and threw myself on the bed. I stayed there for three days. I couldn't face the world without him. This was way worse than loosing my parents because they had made their own choices to drink until they died. Dosti was counting on me to take care of him. Somehow, I failed.

I had another dog I had picked up as a puppy but he was dumber than a pile of bricks and he died because he ran in front of four galloping horses. I didn't shed a tear. I just missed Dosti.