Kara Arvon
ENG 200-501
Mr. O’Malley
June 25, 2014

For the Love of Dogs

The short stories, “Stay,” by David Schuman, and “Shepherd,” by Joy Williams, both demonstrate relationships between a dog and their owner. Pets, especially dogs, play a huge role in the lives of their owners. Just like every person is different, every dog is different as well. All dogs have their good and bad qualities and even though the dogs in these stories have differing personalities and get treated differently, both of the owner’s lives revolve completely around them.
Throughout both stories, you learn about the dogs qualities little by little. It is important to understand the personalities of these two dogs in order to better grasp the owner’s feelings toward them. In “Stay,” the man goes to an animal shelter and asks for “the dog that would take up the most space in his house.” He names this horse-like dog Deli; reason being, that the dog seems to really “perk up” when the man mentions or gives him bologna. Deli is a very easy dog to read. Multiple times in the story, the man mentions Deli’s expressions. For instance, the first time the man and Deli ever see each other, the man explains, “He swung his gaze in my direction. His expression was frank. It said, Get me out of here” (Schuman 106). Sometimes, while eating breakfast, the man tells, “Deli would put his chin down on the tabletop and give me a look like, Why don’t you go get a wife?” (Schuman 108). Those expressions do give you some insight into Deli’s personality, as well as the man’s, but what really displays his sweet and loving character is when other people would complement Deli to the man. Near the middle of the story, a young drunken man jumps off of a train into the man’s yard and explains, “It’s a rare dog that can make a person get off a moving train” (Schuman 108). Then at the end of the story, when the man takes Deli to the vet, the vet complements Deli by saying, “You ever need a dog sitter, you let me know. This one’s a sweetie” (Schuman 109). These comments are what really portray Deli’s personality. Similarly, the remarks made about the dog by others in “Shepherd” are also some of the most important parts in the story.
Unlike all of the positive remarks that are made about Deli, everything said about the shepherd displays his personality in a negative way. The story begins by explaining that it had been three weeks since the girls German shepherd had drowned and how she couldn’t get over it. The narrator explains that girl and her dog had a famous trick, “When the girl said, ‘Do you love me?’ he would leap up, all fours, into her arms” (Williams 70). At this part in the story, the personality of the dog is thought to be fun and loving, but near the end, the girl’s fiancé tries to make her remember the annoyance of the dog by saying, “It was a justifiable annoyance, darling. You must have repaired that screen half a dozen times. He was becoming a discipline problem. He was adopting ways that made people feel uncomfortable” (Williams 75). This definitely exposes a different side of the shepherd, and therefore reveals the biggest difference in personality between the two dogs.
The temperaments and behaviors of the dogs in these stories justify the different ways the owners treat them. With the shepherd, she explains, “She remembered the Shepherd, his exuberance, energy, dignity. She remembered the shepherd and remembered being, herself, good” (Williams 72). Her fiancé remembered things differently though and needed her to remember those times by saying, “I think you’re wonderful, but I think a little self-knowledge, a little realism is in order here. You would stand and scream at that dog, darling” and “The night it happened, you looked at the screen and you said you’d kill him when he got back” (Williams 75). Even though the girl only wants to remember the good things, it is clear that because of the dog’s bad behaviors, she treated the Shepherd badly. In contrast, Deli was a very kind hearted, calm, loving dog and his owner treated him with the same respect. The man would spoil Deli by throwing bologna at him every day until Deli started getting too fat. The man explains, “I was happy with my dog, and he seemed happy with me” (Schuman 107). He and Deli were best friends the man was perfectly fine with only being with Deli for the rest of his life.
These two dogs have one thing in common; their owner’s live for them. The man did not have a significant other in his life but he was not opposed to it. He had women come and go and he explains, “… sometimes a woman would live with us for a while, and they loved us in different ways” (Schuman 108) and then, “After a few months it would always go back to being just the two of us in the house” (Schuman 108). When Deli was old, he got really sick and the man took him to the vet. The man thought that Deli would have to be put down and he says, “I wanted the place to be a church” (Schuman 108). He wanted nothing more than to keep Deli with him. When the vet came out with Deli and he found that Deli was okay, they drove home and the man thought to himself, “I thought about what we might do differently, but then I decided our best bet was to do everything exactly the same” (Schuman 109). All he needed was his dog. Similarly, the girl says, “Her life was purely her own and the dog’s. Life seemed slow and joyous and remembering those days, the girl felt that she had been on the brink of something extraordinary” (Williams 72). The girl was in a relationship with Chester, her fiancé, but explains, “Chester always looked out of place in the girl’s house” (Williams 73) and during a conversation with him she says, “There is no consolation, there is no recovery. There is no happy ending” (Williams 74). When she says those things to Chester, it is clear that the only thing that mattered in the girl’s life was that dog. Her heart revolved around the Shepherd.
Although these two dogs are very different in many ways and are treated differently by their owners, what they share in common with each other is being loved by their owners unconditionally. Everyone has their good and bad qualities, just as dogs do, but when someone loves you, they love your flaws as well. These two stories had many differences, but they both had the same meaning. When you love someone, they are your whole world and nothing else matters.