The Holler Dogs and Home Trails
A narrative about scenes from my childhood in eastern Kentucky
Trigger warning: suicidal behavior, mention of blood
Part of my grief has involved daydreaming about the past.
My head is perpetually stuck in the clouds, thrust into a soft sky above the dense bluegrass of home.
Appalachia. Eastern Kentucky.
Some see stereotypes of brewed moonshine and cousins who marry each other. People who don’t finish high school and work in the coal mines until they die of black lung. I see intelligence and passion underneath the thick accents. I see grit that can be traced across calloused palms and resilience passed down through generations.
Sometimes at night, I wake up and feel like I’m back home again in my bed with the fleece wild horse-themed blanket. A teenager who hasn’t lived anywhere else, doesn’t know anything else, and who just desperately wants to leave. I had dreams that were so much bigger than the small town around me and all I had to do was make it to graduation day.
But when I wasn’t thinking about life beyond the confines of the mountains around me, I was just a kid who wanted to play in the woods. The only place that felt safe was within the clusters of poplar trees and thornbushes that made up most of the hills behind my house. Often barefoot, I’d run with my dogs in the side yard, playing keep-away with twisted plastic bottles and deer antlers. When we ventured into the woods to explore the rocky ruins of the mountains, an old pair of running shoes helped me tag along with the pack of holler dogs as they chased squirrels.
Annie, the fierce tan colored she-wolf with Aussie eyes, we got from a friend who couldn’t take care of her anymore. Before that, she had come from the county animal shelter and was born during a thunderstorm that flooded the creeks for days. Snoopy, a happy-go-lucky white beagle mix who came to us as a stray and easily assumed the position of Annie’s right hand. Bernie, a skin-and-bones pup with golden fur molting off his body in the summer heat. He was also a stray, but kept his distance from everyone, no matter how many chicken thighs we threw out to him as bribes. Occasionally, he’d let me get close enough to pick a few ticks from the corners of his eyes and unknot the burs from his thick coat.
Together, we all would launch ourselves into the forest for a day of exploration. Along the way, I’d smell honeysuckles and take quick bites of small, bitter blackberries. My legs would burn as we trekked to the top of the hills and surveyed the dense array of trees on the surrounding mountains. I knew every inch of this place. Like the ripples in a pond or the crinkles that form when you smile, my body and soul belonged to these hills. The cave my ancestors mined coal in, the rock formations covered in moss, the old family cemeteries with lilies growing back year after year; these were my bread and butter sugar sandwiches after school. My dogs and I were a part of this land, and nothing could take that away.
But then I started to grow up. It wasn’t until my therapist said the word “depression” that I realized how long it had been since I’d run with my dogs in the woods. I was a junior in high school with tiny wrists and an introverted mind that thought everyone hated me. I had dark thoughts swirling behind my eyes, and all it took was a fight with my mother one day to cause me to retreat into the woods for safety.
I ran for my life with my dogs galloping behind me. We crashed through the leaves and underbrush farther than we had ever gone before until we reached a rusted wagon sinking into a puddle of black muck. Falling to my knees, I leaned my head back, facing the sky and begging for something to take my pain away. Annie came up to lick the salt from my cheeks as tears dribbled down the freckles on my pale skin. “I can’t do this anymore,” I cried, heaving into the fur along her bushy neck. “I just can’t.”
While Snoopy and Bernie sniffed at tufts of grass around us, I found a sharp rock nearby. Turning it over and over in my hand, I thought about how lovely it would be to bleed out with my dogs close to me. Annie would cradle herself against my body and the other two would watch as I sliced my tiny wrists.
I tried. I dug deep and pressed as hard as I could, but my veins were too resilient. I remember walking back home with a nasty red and raw patch of exposed skin to match my blotchy, tear-flooded eyeballs. The rock hadn’t even drawn blood, so I guess I didn’t really want to die. Either that, or I couldn’t even kill myself right.
After a few months of swallowing various antidepressants, I no longer thought about dying, and I started to dream again while venturing into the hills with my dogs by my side. Traversing the trails made by deer and other stray dogs helped sort my jumbled thoughts. They calmed my adolescent brain and created a place for me to feel like myself again. As long as I had Annie, Snoopy, Bernie, and an old pair of running shoes, I was okay.
After a few months at a treatment center in St. Louis, Annie died. She had cancer and was slowly drugged to sleep with my parents stroking her ears. They played a video of my voice so that she could hear me as her eyes closed. A couple of weeks later, Snoopy died. We think it was a Where the Red Ferns Grow kind of thing. She just couldn’t live without her best friend, so my parents found her curled up in the leaves near the same trails we all used to run on together.
Bernie lived for a long time. By the time he was killed by a delivery driver at the beginning of April, his snout was turning white and he was deaf in both ears. I haven’t been able to forgive myself for not being there when Annie and Snoopy both passed. But just as I once wanted to bleed out with my dogs close by, that’s how Bernie went. It was horrible. At least I was there to hold him.
When I think about what happened, it feels like a bowling ball dropping into the pit of my stomach. At first, I couldn’t push the thoughts away and would be forced to relive the memories. Now, I clinch my fists and whisper “stop” underneath my breath until they go away. And then I run. I run through the hills in my mind. I race through the trees with Annie, Snoopy, and Bernie. Over and over, I’m back home with my dogs. I so desperately cling to these memories because they are all I have left of them.
It hurts so much to think that I knew what pain was when I held that sharp rock a few inches away from my wrist in the woods that day. I thought that I was drowning then.
I wasn’t.
I am alive today, but my dogs are not. I have Honey. I have the wild forests of Missouri. I have the Ozark Trail. I have a handful of cute puppies as pet sitting clients to show me what love is. But even in the midst of all the joy, I return to the hills in my mind. I think about my holler dogs and almost feel a smile start to form on my face. I can’t quite get there because the memories of them still hurt. I am told that it will take time. I’ll get there eventually.
Thanks for reading. I know some of my pieces can be heavy. I appreciate anyone who listens. It helps, just a little.
See you out on the trail!
Another beautiful heart wrenching story. You are such a good writer. You tell such deep personal stories. Thank you for sharing! Dinner soon love, Leslie.