My Two Writing Teachers colleagues and I are hosting the 16th Annual March Slice of Life Story Challenge, in which teachers from around the world participate by posting a story per day.

This year, the SOLSC gives me a chance to record memories of our little dog, Indie, who died in January. I want to write these down while they are still fresh, so that my family and I can read them later and remember not only Indie, but little slices of life across the years. 

Indie loved to fight. For such a small, adorable cuddly little dog with humans, he was vicious with animals.

For years we couldn’t have other dogs over. It was too stressful. Once he was thirteen or fourteen years he became and too old and too tired to care anymore. It was one of the many lovely unexpected things about Indie in his old age.

But until then, he was a fighter.

The first time we ever left baby Lily with my in-laws, we came home that evening to be told that Indie had battled a porcupine and that my father-in-law had spent the afternoon at the vet. Indie looked no worse for the wear. You’d never know that anything had happened.

Two or three years later, we had just moved into our house—which means it was October or November of 2012. I was painting the dining room when it happened, and it was my husband’s cousin’s birthday. He was having a terrible birthday already if I remember, which was why he was at our house that night, after Lily had gone to bed, for some consolation. If I remember correctly, Indie was out in the yard when we heard him barking that certain bark — the killer bark.

I had all the windows open because I was painting, and smell immediately filled our house. It made our eyes water it was so strong. Brinton ran into the backyard and grabbed Indie in his arms to keep him from continuing the battle and brought him into our garage to give him a bath because it was freezing cold outside, snowing a little. The garage idea was a HUGE mistake. The smell would linger for months. In the garage, Brinton gave him a bath using regular shampoo which did absolutely nothing. By this time Justin, the cousin had left.

Then, an even BIGGER mistake. Brinton put Indie into the back of his station wagon and drove him to his parent’s house where they had special shampoo for skunked dogs, and stunk up their house too. And his car just stank for the rest of the time we owned it.

Then, not long after that, Indie got sprayed again at Brinton’s parents’ house — while they were watching Lily, of course.

He got into it with a porcupine again, too. The second time his mouth was so full of quills that he couldn’t close his mouth, and he had them stuck inside his nose. The vet took hours and hours to remove them all. MONTHS later, a different cousin of Brinton’s pulled a remaining quill out of Indie’s quill that no one had discovered, and hadn’t seem to bother Indie a bit.

Another time, I was standing in the front yard, once again at Brinton’s parents’ house and young toddler Lily pointed out into the field and said, “Look Indie carrying something.” I turned and immediately knew that he had a dead animal in his mouth, even though he was thankfully too far away to actually see for sure. I took Lily into the house and asked my mother-in-law to keep her away from the windows because “Indie has something.” Then I had the terrible task of getting him to let go of a baby groundhog.

Countless squirrels, rabbits and chipmunks in the backyard. We’ll never know how many.

But the one that topped them all was the bear.

Brinton and his dad were mountain biking on the trails near home when the chain fell off Brinton’s bike. Indie strayed away, as he does whenever we’re not moving fast enough to keep his interest on a trail. Soon enough, Brinton and his dad heard the killer bark—only much more of an alarming bark than his usual killer bark.

Brinton, I’m told, went running toward the sound and spotted Indie standing between him and an adolescent black bear. What he did next was so stupid. He ran TOWARD Indie and the bear. He stopped Indie up, and ran to his bike, not looking back. Then with NO CHAIN attached he pushed with his feet and rolled as fast as he could down the trail.

Indie had major surgery after that one, with manny stitches, broken bones, and internal injuries. But he bounced back within a few months, good as new.

He was truly tough as nails that dog. What else can I say?