Do chihuahuas go to Heaven?

No.

“You’re about to meet Jack. I wouldn’t pet him. He’ll bite and he smells,” my wife said.

Highway 45 South in Colquitt, Ga, my wife’s parents live in a house a quarter mile off the highway between two patches of longleaf pines.

I was both visiting Colquitt and meeting my wife’s parents for the first time. It was Christmas. We could see her momma’s Christmas tree in the window of the sleepy little house at the end of the lane. I felt like I was driving into a story from a children’s book where a city kid has to go to the country for a summer and learns to love life amongst rolling hills, good neighbors, and hard work.

I parked my Subaru in the grass in front of the house and felt a chill on my neck, a disturbance in my guts. Was the coffee I drank from the Gas N Go in Cusseta messing with me or was it something more sinister?

A black, oversized burrito on top of the couch was making a raspy yap that sounds like a rubber duck that’s been run over by a semi-truck. It was Jack, the most loathsome chihuahua.

My future father-in-law, Mr. Brian, greeted us at the door. Jack, by some miracle that defies physics, made it off the top of the couch and beneath the coffee table where he was berating me with the ungodly duck call from the safety of his lair.

He had black fur on top and tan on his belly, which was so large that it drug the ground because Jack was also unbelievably fat. His eyes bugged out in different directions and he did, indeed, smell though supposedly he’d just had a bath.

“You ever met an angry chihuahua?” Mr. Brian said which may have been his first words to me.

My wife’s mother has a smile that could make certain woman who are known to sweat in church feel like they were welcome.

“Jack! Hush!” she shouted.

He didn’t. This was and would be our relationship: He hated me, and I hated him.

“He looks like a pregnant sow,” I murmured to my wife.

“What’s that?” My mother-in-law said.

“I’ll get the presents out,” I said, and I walked out to the Subaru.

It was my first Christmas away from Tennessee and my family. My phone was bursting with pictures from my brothers of the snowfall back home. It was the first White Christmas East Tennessee had since 2010 and I was in Georgia with Jack.

“Jack, hush!” Mrs. Karla said as he chased me into the kitchen.

By now you know that I’m a writer of redemptive tales. I want to offer the literary equivalent of a splash of Jack Daniels, lemon juice and honey.

Not this story. I hated Jack, and he hated me until the day he died, which was yesterday.

Are there are chihuahuas in Heaven? No. Chihuahuas are a living, breathing symptom of the fall of mankind.

I knew Jack for 4 years and he was nice to me for a total of 3 minutes and 42 seconds which is how long it took me to eat a slice of key lime pie while he stared at me hoping his bug eyes would cause me to forget that we were enemies.

Yet I can’t help but think that before they met me, my wife’s parents weren’t too skeptical of me. She’d told her parents that I was a Christian, had a college degree and wasn’t a vegan.

Jack didn’t know that. Maybe he was just doing what he felt was right — He hated me and I hated him.

I have a daughter now. She’s only one, but I know the day is coming when she brings a boy home. I don’t know what I will do to make Brad, Chad, or Kyle feel primal terror when they drive their stupid Nissan Frontier or whatever into my driveway. Maybe Jack was really a hero, not the one we deserved, but the one we needed — a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight.

I’ll go to sleep tonight thinking of Jack, thinking of how he hated me and how I wish I had a dog like him to hate my daughter’s boyfriends.

Perhaps I’ll dream of Heaven and see a beautiful city whose light is the Lord, the gates of pearl with foundations adorned with precious stones. And just beyond those gates, I’ll hear beautiful music; the saints offering praises and in-between their verses, I’ll hear a raspy yap that sounds like a rubber duck run over by a semi-truck.

But probably not.

Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.