On Chan Chan

Chan Chan was a small dog lost in the woods rooting around for scraps of food. A dachsund mix, he was small, long, but with the ears of a German shepherd. He was a good dog, though not much to look at. He liked humans, but he never had much luck with them.

Chan Chan went through a lot in his life. His birth itself was controversial, as his parents’ love was starcrossed and physically challenging. His mother gave birth to him and his four siblings in a cardboard box on the back porch of a small two-story house nestled in a quaint cul de sac just outside of Nashville.

His mother’s owners decided to keep only one of the puppies; they didn’t have to room or time to care for more. Chan Chan had irregular, unattractive features and was never in the running to be the chosen one. He spent the next year of his life in a no-kill animal shelter being cared for by a woman named Sarah who once worked as a roadie for The Band. She cared deeply for her animals, but was a drunk, and a mean one. She never struck Chan Chan, yet verbal threats were commonplace. He spent many a night shivering in his crate, tail between his legs, tuning out Sarah’s garbled screams while “Music from Big Pink” blared noisily on the shelter’s stereo system.

He got away from Sarah one day on a trip to the vet, and wandered aimlessly around the Nashville city parks system for several months. His intention was to search for his mother, but had little sensory memory of her. Chan Chan survived on the kindness and litter of strangers, mainly eating the unwanted bags of Baked Lays that came with Subway meal deals.

In the summer of 2000, he befriended a trucker named Grayson outside of a 50’s themed diner. Desperate for company, the man brought Chan Chan along on his route. The dog rode up front until a dispute over a missing bag of turkey jerky prompted Grayson to banish him to the back with the shipment of unvarnished furntiture he was hauling. On the second day of the trip, Chan Chan fell asleep in a chest of drawers and woke up at 4am in the apartment of young married couple in Des Moines. He raided the pantry, gorged himself on dry vermicelli noodles, and let himself out the screen door.

Chan Chan wandered and sniffed, slept and searched. He worked briefly on a soybean farm in Eagle Grove, spent time in a pound in Kalona, and hitched a ride on a freight train to western North Carolina.

Chased out of the station by a cleaning woman, he ran due North for a half-mile and, when he stopped, found himself in the middle of a pine forest. Every direction looked and smelled the same. He was hungry. He found pine needles and pine cones and the occasional wild stramberry.

Chan Chan never made it back to his mother. He lived out the rest of his days in the forest, living peacefully, chasing birds, and avoiding campers. He didn’t bother anyone, did his best to live in harmony with those around him, and even went out of his way to help the smaller animals in the forest.

And yet despite all this, when Chan Chan died, he went to Hell. He spent the rest of eternity being stuck in the ass with pointy glass shards while lava dripped incessantly on his very sensitive nose. Every morning, his belly was sliced open, and lye-covered fire ants feasted on his convulsing intestines. Such was Chan Chan’s lot.

So you see, all dogs don’t go to Heaven.

What a bullshit series of movies that was.

Fuck you, Don Bluth.

Did you like this Thought? Sure did. No, I did not.