Skeleton Dogs
I wrote this short nonfiction story for an event called The Pittsburgh Left which invited writers to share 7-minute stories of Pittsburgh. My story was accepted, and I read it aloud on October 14, 2022. You can watch my performance at the reading here (I’m introduced around 1:46:15), or read it below :)
People in New Orleans love to decorate for the holidays. They have two favorites, one of which is months-long, called “Parade Season.” It goes from early January with Krewe of Joan of Arc, through weeks, yes weeks, of Mardi Gras, ending with St. Patrick’s Day which conveniently marks the beginning of when it gets too hot to do much of anything. And, second, Halloween.
Neighbors hang witches’ brooms from long branches of oak trees. Giant inflatable spiders are common. There is one mansion on St. Charles Avenue, right along the streetcar, whose massive lawn is decorated with a whole city block of skeletons in a different themed gathering each year. People make a pilgrimage to admire it. From wrought iron balconies, zombie hands dangle onto passersby. Skeletons are posed on porch swings as they drink from empty bottles of whiskey, or sit at pianos with motion-activated soundscapes.
In October 2019, a new piece of decor entered the fray: skeleton dogs. They were everywhere. Chihuahuas with light up eyes. Dobermans that howl. Poseable German Shepherds. Retrievers with a smile on their skeleton face.
I became obsessed. I was going on a lot of walks that month, freelancing from home and applying to graduate creative writing programs.
I started taking photos of these skeleton dogs, putting them on Snapchat and Instagram stories. I started looking for them on store shelves, making posts where I debated their prices. I started tracking derivatives: cats hissing, bats with outstretched wings, squatting hamsters. Friends of mine around the country and some even around the world began to send me photos of skeleton dogs they saw in their neighborhood, asking me to guess how much they cost.
Because, you see, skeleton dogs are expensive. Especially high quality ones that maybe light up or make sound, or are bigger than a shoebox. I wanted one so bad. Maybe I wanted one so badly because I had always wanted a real dog, you know, with its skeleton on the inside.
I had never been able to get a dog, even though I had drawn countless pictures, wished on every shooting star, and written research reports for fun about different dog breeds. My family moved around a lot; my dad was in the Army, and it was hard to get to do normal things like have a dog. When we finally did try to adopt one, it turned out my sister was deathly allergic. We couldn’t afford a Golden Doodle, and certainly not one that would have to go into quarantine whenever we inevitably moved to Germany so my dad could deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.
So, when I saw these skeleton dogs, I knew they were my destiny. Unfortunately, I was in no position to be spending money on something so frivolous.
But, I was in luck – I was engaged, and our wedding was coming up. I made our registry for all the respectable things my mom told me I should request from Crate and Barrel: plates, silverware, towels, fry pans, bar glasses. And then, I added a second registry. One for Target. And there was just one item I wanted: a Skeleton Dog.
“Are you serious?” my mom said during one of our wedding planning meetings. “Why is this on here?”
I laughed. “Isn’t it fun? I doubt anyone will buy it for me. But … why not, you know?”
She shook her head with a smile.
To both of our surprises, I got lucky – the very first gift bought from our registry was that skeleton dog. A writer friend of mine from college had been following my skeleton dog catalog on social media for weeks and thought it was funny. The dog was shipped to my parents’ place in Atlanta where all of our registry gifts were going; the wedding was going to be there in April, and we figured when we moved up north from New Orleans past Atlanta, we’d pick up everything there.
But if you’re following the timeline, then you know exactly what’s coming next. The Covid-19 pandemic.
Our wedding did not happen in April 2020. Neither did our honeymoon, or my fiance’s medical school graduation celebrations or goodbye parties after years of living there. We quarantined in my parents’ basement in Atlanta on our move to Pittsburgh, but our car was full of clothes, pots and pans, and our pet rabbit and cat, the latter of whom crawled to every peak and meowed with pride every ten minutes. There was absolutely no room for the cardboard box holding something as absurd as a lifesize skeleton dog.
But a few incredible things happened when we got to Pittsburgh.
My fiancé and I married ourselves doing that cool Pennsylvania self-unification Quaker thing in our new row house concrete backyard. A distant relative and a friend of his we had never met were our witnesses. Neighbors saw us and waved from six feet away, shouting congratulations. And, asleep at my feet under our picnic table while we ate croissants from La Gourmandine and drank champagne with strangers, was a rescue puppy we had just adopted.
We named that little puppy Indy, like Indiana Jones, because he loves his treasures. My husband was busy at the Children’s hospital, and so I spent the days of my first summer here unpacking and training Indy on walks. I discovered that a puppy is the fastest way to make new connections, especially when fear and anxiety was prevalent in everyone we encountered.
Neighbors smiled, and introduced themselves. Indy loved meeting Abbie, a big gentle English sheepdog; her human Nicole told me about good Thai restaurants. One elderly woman began to wait in her backyard for our walks with a box of dog treats she bought just for Indy. There was Jules, who put a handmade postcard covered in stickers in my mailbox and said, “Dear Amanda and Indy, I’d like to be your friend.”
Months later, Jules adopted her own rescue dog, one that was deeply scared of everything. Indy was her first dog friend and helped her learn “how to dog,” just as Jules was one my first human friends in Pittsburgh.
The next spring, I got to see my dad for the first time in a year. He drove 12 hours from Atlanta, bringing some of our wedding registry gifts with him.
Skeleton Dog made his debut in October 2021, just a few weeks after my husband and I were finally able to safely have a wedding celebration with our friends and family. At first, Indy hated Skeleton Dog. I was worried Skeleton Dog would get stolen so I kept him inside on the window on Indy’s seat and wow that was the wrong call. I moved Skeleton Dog to the front stoop. Eventually, Indy accepted his comrade in protecting our property. He growls but does a gentle nose boop.
A few months ago, Jules announced she was moving for a new job. We had a goodbye party with Nicole and our dogs in my funny little backyard, drinking champagne and surrounded by fresh basil and tomato plants. At 6am on a Tuesday in June, Jules texted goodbye, said she left a surprise on my porch. When I opened the door, there was a top-of-the-line Skeleton Dog, a giant creature with repositionable limbs and motion-activated barking and the light-up eyes.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what my time in Pittsburgh has meant to me, and what it means to only live in a place during a pandemic. I had two weddings here, am almost finished with my Masters in Fine Arts, and thanks to my Pittsburgh neighbor-friends, my house is protected by not only one good boy, but two of my very own Skeleton Dogs.
