Blog #7 - Final Draft

Nikita Atrash

What True Friendship Is

As I opened the door and walked up the carpet stairs, the sound hit me like the blue table on my leg back in eighth grade.

That sound was silence.

There was no noise. No clickety-clacking of claws on the hardwood floor, no jingling of two collar tags hitting each other as he came down the stairs to greet us. My father was not home and my mother and I had just gotten home from dropping the noise-maker at the vet. The house was mysteriously quiet; there were no sounds to speak of. I was silent for a moment, before commenting to my mother, who had followed me in, “It’s lonely around here…”

What is it like to lose a friend? What does it take to be a friend? I find that in life, there is truly no human example of friendship. So instead of looking for something that is not there, I turn to an expression we have all heard many times – ‘Man’s best friend’. To look at the canine method of being a friend is something that I find rather incredible. A dog is always there for you, follows you around and never betrays you, and never questions you about anything. They also make incredible listeners – If you have something that you’d like to talk about, you can just sit down next to them and talk about it, and provided you’re giving them love and affection, they will sit there and listen to your problems. As a friend, I believe that being a listener is better than just constantly asking how a person is, as it does get rather annoying after some amount of time.

An eternal example of friendship is the bond that FDR shared with Murray the Outlaw of Falahill, or just plain ‘Fala’. Fala was codenamed as “The Informer” by the Secret Service because when the President went on trips, there were two things that gave away his presence in places – One was the wheelchair ramps that had to be built to accommodate his wheelchair, but these could be avoided by going in places with elevators. The other was Fala’s presence. Fala, like any dog, demanded walks after being cooped up in one place (namely trains). “The sight of a closed train standing at a siding, heavily guarded by military sentries, as a Secret Service agent walked a little Scotty dog was a dead giveaway to any American of the 1940s.”

There is nothing more important to anybody than a good friend. Many times, a canine comrade, who simply sits and listens, is the best friend you can have. That is why, while they may not be famous, every dog is an American Icon in his or her own right.

Sources

Unknown, "FDR's Fala, World's Most Famous Dog". Bushy Barney. 9.3.09

Memories from 8.25.09