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Give him everything…
Christmas 1991
Little Riz has been at the shelter for a few months. The nice humans have decorated all the cages and Riz has gotten a special hat. He likes it. He wants to eat it but the nice lady who gave him his name won’t let him and offers him treats instead. He decides the treats are more delicious. All the humans are very excited, there is music and he can smell a tree. Some of his friends are wearing sweaters with little blobs. The lady with the treats is petting him and saying something he can’t understand. He likes her, but is sad when she leaves every night. He has space on his little bed, he would give it to her, and he gets cold sometimes because the floor is not soft. She pets him and leaves. He whines and she turns and smiles. He wags his tail.
The day goes by fast, a lot of new humans pass through. They all smell so different and amazing. They smell like when he gets the chance to leave his cage. He likes it. There is a nice pair of humans who stop and pet and play with him for a while. The human with longer hair smells really special and he feels really protective of her. The humans laugh when he licks her stomach. He licked it because he smelled another human.
That’s when things move really fast. The nice pair leaves but the lady with the treats comes back and pets him a lot and is saying things he doesn’t understand really fast. He keeps wagging his tail, he feels something sad off her so he puts his head in her lap and she hugs him hard.
She puts his favorite leash on him and he gets really excited! He rarely gets to go outside so he jumping and pulling on his leash. Except when they get to the doors the nice pair of humans is there. They smile and take his leash. They walk out and the floor is cold, but he’s excited to be outside. He pulls to go to the direction of the park they usually go to but instead they go into a larger box? He is a little scared, but they are smiling and saying things in a nice tone so he wags his tail to let them know he is ok.
They move for a while and when they stop and let him out it smells really different. He wants to run all over, but remembers that’s something the human at the shelter taught him not to do. So he goes where the humans go. He feels happy; they lead him to a nice bed and tell him to sit, so he does. The bed is nice. It is warm, but so is the floor. It’s not hard like at the other place.
18 years later…
Riz is so excited to catch the ball the little boy throws. Even though the boy is not so little anymore and it takes him a little longer to go get the ball now. He’s the happiest he’s ever been, the sun is good and hot and the boy is happily yelling at him, but his legs hurt sometimes, and the boy knows so they stop playing and he rubs his belly instead. The boy grins and puts his hat on his head, he nips at it and the boy laughs like the human with the long hair. He licks his face.
The human with long hair calls out and the boy runs into the house so he saunters over to where his water is and drinks as much as he can then lays near the door where the boy is inside. He starts to sleep when he hears yelling. It’s coming from behind the yard. It’s loud and painful he whines and hopes the humans inside will hear him, but they don’t. He knows he’s not supposed to go beyond the wall, but the crying sounds very bad. So he runs to wall and goes into the tunnel he dug years ago when he missed the lady with the treats, but when the little boy cried for him he came back. The humans never found the hole so he goes through it and runs towards the crying. There is a bigger dog growling at a human, he is not nice. He lunges at the human and she screams again. So he runs towards the dog and growls and barks at him, the bigger dog attacks him. There is a lot barking and biting, but in the end Riz chases the bigger dog away. He feels pain in his paw, but sees the human crying. He walks over to her licks her face. He knows what crying is he has seen the little boy cry before, so he puts his face in her lap. He doesn’t want her to be sad. She is safe now.
She pets him and nuzzles into him. He likes when humans do this. Then he hears her say something and HE UNDERSTANDS!
“Hello good friend, thank you for saving me. I know you can never understand us humans, but I am special, I can speak to you.”
Riz cocks his head to the side, confused and excited.
“Yes, friend, I know how you feel. I am very thankful for what you have done and because I am special I can give you something you want, a wish. Something you’ve always wanted.”
Riz turns to the direction of his home.
“You’re getting old my friend, and you want more time with the boy? No, that’s not what you want. You want to be with him forever, but not like this. You want to be human and play with him for all the days and all the years a human can.”
Riz wags his tails the hardest he ever wagged.
“Yes, friend I understand. You will have this and more. You and the boy will have much happiness and much success.”
Riz doesn’t understand the last part, but the happiness part he does and when the human kisses him he feels very warm and sleepy. So he sleeps.
When Riz wakes up everything aches. He is in the boys’ room and he stretches to make himself feel better except everything feels different, he wants to lick his stomach, but can’t. He opens his eyes and there are colors. The human outside of the yard was real! He yells! The boy jumps out of the bed.
“Hey man! What the hell?!?!? Who are you? Riz?!?!? Riz?!?!? Boy, Riz!?”
The boy calls for him and he walks towards him, walking on two paws is weird.
Riz gets closer and the boy looks scared, but not too much.
The boy looks closer, into his eyes. “Riz?”
Riz speaks. He can speak. “I’m here.”
The boy hugs him.
“I dreamt about this last night! Holy shit! It’s real! Dude!”
Riz feels himself smile, “Dude.”
It’s an adjustment. Riz needs a full name now. They give him the full name of Anthony Rizzo. The boy is not actually the boy, he has a name and his name is Kris. The lady outside of the yard made things easy, the dream that Kris had was the dream everyone had. Family, friends, everyone had a dream of how Anthony came to be in their lives. For anyone not within the house Anthony was a distant relative who was in need of a family. To the Bryant’s he was Riz, the puppy from the shelter who had spent a little under two decades with them. They didn’t question it, after all Riz or Anthony was still family except he didn’t eat kibble anymore or needed to be taken outside to go to the bathroom. They loved him just the same, maybe even more now.
For Riz, he got his wish. He played actual catch now with Kris and they were good. They played for the same team and even though they were drafted to different teams the lady outside of the yard kept her promise. Within a few years they ended up together in Chicago.
So here they were, October 22, 2016. Anthony ran towards Kris, he felt totally human 99.9% of the time now, but for this second. This last out in the NLCS he felt like his old self, devoted and utterly happy for his human. He hugs Kris, squeezes hard and Kris squeezes just as hard.
“I know buddy, I know. It’s everything we’ve wanted.”
Riz is crying. “Not yet man, but soon.”
The W flies in the cold Chicago air.