Rez Dogs

She always loved it when he told her stories. She also smiled because she knew how true it was about the dogs on the rez being different from those in the cities.

She’d noticed that when she was little and made her very first trip to Boston with her parents for her father’s interview with that big law firm.

She was only five, but she had to ask, “Why are all those dogs tied to people like that? Don’t they have any lives of their own? How come they’re not just allowed to run free?”

Her dad went down on one knee, put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s just kind of the way not only the dogs but the people have to live in the city where they’re all so close together. If they’re not controlled, they might get hurt or maybe even hurt each other.”

That was when her mom smiled down at her dad and said, “Well now, Thomas, it seems to me you could say that we are rez dogs too.”

“Woof,” Malian said.

“Woof, woof, woof!”

Then all three of them started barking and laughing together, no one else walking by understanding why they were barking, maybe not even knowing the three of them were Indians-Dad in his suit, Mom in her best jeans, and Malian in her new Catholic school uniform, three rez dogs in the city. That was how she saw them back then and saw herself still.