Callum Ross-Rowland
I watched rain batter the patio roof as water spilled from packed gutters. Mud tracked from the back door and throughout the house. The smell of wet fur and disgusting breath filled the kitchen and conjoint loungeroom where the dogs would sleep. Blood stained my hands and clothes, and a quick-clipped dog lay anxious behind me. I held the clippers as I watched out the window, locking eyes with the neighbour’s dog.
I continue to watch it watch me. Its soaked coat dripped and twisted the long black fur into clumps. The quietness of it standing there, fascinated with the whines that came just minutes ago, confused me. It stood in the same spot that Mandy did many years ago. Mandy, the beautiful golden retriever.
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I had watched neighbours come and go since moving to Brisbane from Sydney. My family knew no one, as my mother liked to mention to my father often. We had little interaction with most neighbours, although the occasional wave promised a better life here.
There were many firsts at our home at Rivergum Drive. We had just been enrolled at a school down the road; where I would make friends, have my first sleepover, and experience love from another.
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At ten years of age, the only dogs you see are the ones in books and, if you’re lucky, in your backyard as a surprise from your parents. The thought of owning or living alongside something like that scared me. How could you coexist with an animal when it couldn’t understand you?
My fears were confirmed the first day I met Mandy. Her low-hummed growl and irrational barking terrorised us whenever we played near the mango tree. My older brother feared dogs as equally as I did. It was because of this that we decided to settle our issues one afternoon and slay her. We chucked on our extra layers of clothes, taking our makeshift sword-like branches to the back fence.
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Mandy’s owner saw us that afternoon before we had decided to trek to the fence.
I wanted to think it was luck, or that this wasn’t a rare occurrence for children to think violent thoughts. She was understanding and sweet. My mother laughed with our neighbour at this moment. Her smile calmed us and let us know we were safe in their presence. I learned Mandy’s name and felt her coat as my mother showed me how to pet her. My hand glided along her head and back – my fingers tracing silky waves of blonde hair. We hugged as she leaned her weight on me. She just wanted to smell and roam beside us without the restriction of a gate.
I spent the following years growing alongside her, telling her about school, friends and the inexorable decline of my family dynamic. She would listen, with her weight against me – sometimes in the heat of summer, just beside me.
I learned that dogs could be loving. I also found that they lived short lives. Mandy’s face changed, and her energy was depleted. Some days, she wouldn’t be at the fence, as she struggled to move from her bed on the other side of the yard. Her nose grew dry, flaked textures covering most of it. Her eyes were darker, and her nails were longer than usual. On days when she had the energy to stand, you could hear them scraping the concrete as she turned in circles – unaware of where she was. I sat beside her in her last moments, my neighbours watching from the kitchen window. I placed some of my weight on her, as she did, and I told her about my week.
I want to think she knew me entirely.
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I smiled at the dog behind the fence. I wondered if he knew of the dogs before him and smelled their owners in the house he inhabited. I wonder if he, like Mandy, just wanted to roam free alongside us.
I didn’t spend much time at the mango tree anymore. I lived here on and off, always coming back when I couldn’t survive outside of the family home. It had changed, grown old and broken. The grass was never cut, and doors creaked as rusted nails twisted in wood.
I decided to introduce my dogs to the one at the fence. I dropped the clippers to open the door as they both rushed to get outside. We opened the gate that led to the backyard, one I had built for their safety. We all ran to the thin, broken mango tree that once reached the sky. They ran and sniffed along the fence, the other dog wary of these strangers. One of them bowed down – an offering. We continued to run for some time, rushing through the grass and using whatever energy we had left as the sun fell beyond the horizon.
In the last moments of golden light, I sat with them beside the fence, each dog panting. I grabbed my dog’s paw to examine the clipped nail and touched the others. They were longer than they should be, and discolouration grew along the sides. His rough nose brushed along my arm. His eyes were dark but still hazel as he looked up at me. Eddies of browns, blacks and yellows offered fear and anxiousness among a cover of orange fur. He whimpered every time I held out his paw.
‘We’ll try again tomorrow,’ I would say.
Author: Callum Ross-Rowland (he/him) is a Meanjin (Brisbane)-based creative writing student at QUT. He was the 2023 Literary Salon’s Photographer with his recent Diploma in Photo Imaging from Billy Blue (Torrens). He was recently shortlisted for Photographer of the Year in the Animal and Nature category and regularly photographs for Artful Heads magazine, where he captures portraits of artists from different mediums. Find him on Instagram @alrightatart.
Artist: Callum Ross-Rowland
Edited by: Georgia Formby and Ricky Jade