Sergeant Rex: The Unbreakable Bond Between a Marine and His Military Working Dog by Mike Dowling

Author:Mike Dowling [Dowling, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2011-12-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

IN MY FINAL YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL I INJURED MY SHOULDER PRETTY badly playing football. I had been hoping to play professionally, but by the time I went to Santa Barbara I wasn’t able to make even the college teams. I missed sports, plus I found myself missing all the animals at home, especially my dogs.

I fell into a dark mind-set. I surrounded myself with negative people, and I started to smoke and drink too much. I was at a beautiful college surrounded by these beautiful young people, but I felt the lowest I’d ever been. No matter where I was in the world, inside my head I was not in a good place. I still felt like shit. I was down, and it was hard to get out of the dark place that I’d fallen into.

The one person who remained a steadying influence throughout this period was my father. He made it clear that he wanted me to stick it out at college, but he understood that I wasn’t having a good time. He told me that together we would get through this and that whatever I chose to do he and my mom were there for me.

One day I headed home for term break. I took August—who’d finished his work as a guide dog for the blind and come back to live with our family—for an evening walk on the beautiful beach near our house. It was April and my birthday was approaching; I was just about to turn twenty-one. As I threw a stick for August, I thought to myself: I’m in a gorgeous place; I’m so lucky to live here. So why on earth do I feel so shitty?

August dived into the breakers to fetch the stick, and I gazed across the ocean at the lights of Alcatraz Island, and the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. I told myself that I was a young, talented guy living in the most beautiful place on earth. I had no reason to feel depressed.

I made a promise to myself there and then: I was going to quit everything that was negative in my life. From that night onward I was going to give up the drinking and the smoking, plus the negative mind-set. But I still didn’t have the energy or focus to deal with the academic side of things. I decided to drop out of college so I’d have some time to sort out what I wanted to do with my life.

I moved home and got a job at the Richmond Wholesale Meat Company, a giant freezer-warehouse piled high with wrapped and boxed cuts of beef, pork, and lamb. My job was to take the orders, fetch them from the freezer, and pack them up so they could go out on the trucks. The warehouse was situated in North Richmond, the rougher side of town.

The guys I worked with were mostly ex-felons, and a number came from the Iron Triangle. But for some reason I got on well with those guys, and we had a blast.

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