Post by Pax on Mar 21, 2009 13:43:37 GMT -5
My dog passed away in the vet's office on December 27, 2001.
When I got her, she was full-grown. A "Heinz 57" many-flavored mutt. She was 25 pounds, short-haired, beige in color, and with big, big eyes... she had the face of a chihuahua with the racy lines of a whippet. Sounds strange, right? But, for her, it worked. She was just a little thing in a cage five times too big for her. She looked up at me -- she looked like a little fawn in the grass. I'm big on that. I like fawns. Oh! One more feature: She had a pink nose. "Pink-nosed gumdrop fuzzface," I came to call her. My mom simply called her "piggy."
When I came back from college, we lived at my mom's house for a while. I would mow her lawn. I didn't really think about anything while doing it, I never do, when mowing the lawn; my mind is miles away. After I had completed the job, I came into the house. My mother remarked, "That dog really loves you."
I said, "Oh, yeh?" Well, obviously, right?
My mom said, "You do realize she follows you all the way around the yard."
"Sure. Wait -- you mean she was behind me mowing the lawn?"
"Yes. She followed you the whole time you were mowing the lawn."
"The whole time--? You mean ALL the way around the yard, each loop, all the way from start to finish?"
"Yes. She does that every time. She follows you, maybe three feet behind you, the whole way, all the way, from start to finish. You never knew that?"
I told her, no, I hadn't -- never really thought about it. I was just making sure I didn't mow the dog down. You know.
Now I knew why I didn't have to try to miss her, and why she was never in the way.
When I moved to mom's house after college, it was traumatic for the dog. She didn't like change. In fact, when I first got her, she had three obvious phobias: She hated the bathroom; she hated being outside; and she hated going in the car.
The day I brought her home from the ASPCA, I had to physically carry her. That business ended abruptly exactly seven days later, on a Saturday. All those seven days of course I had to walk her. Once in the morning and once in the evening, and each time, it was the same: I had to gather her, leash her, coax her, pull her, and, finally, carry her, down the stairs just so she could go wee.
The day in question -- that Saturday, the seven days later -- things started out pretty much the same way. Gather, leash, coax, pull, and carry. Oddly, once she was out the door she was fine. Up until this day, we always stayed on the block and did just the businesslike walk-wait-sniff-wait-pee-wait thing. No need to cross the street to wee.
But, this time, we did cross the street. And then, another. And another. South of where we lived was a park. Just a giant greenspace situated like a button in the belly of Brooklyn.
It was sunny that day -- just a perfect day. The lawn was expansive and green. We walked for a while, and she was so excited, pulling this way and that, her nose twitching, wanting to smell everything. She was like a different dog. After about fifteen minutes... I don't know why, but I let her off the leash. No other dogs around, and something told me I could trust her. I did. She went running -- this way and that, up and down. About a hundred feet from me, and then she shot back, right toward me, veering away at the last minute, and out again, and back. There were people around. I heard them say, "Look at that!" Booboo -- That was her name as of Tuesday -- was fast. REALLY fast. Whippet fast. And she ran like she'd just discovered it. And she OWNED it.
After she was done, and came back to me, she licked my hand for the first time. I think that that was the moment when we truly bonded, dog to person, person to dog.
The day after that, the problem wasn't so much gather, leash, coax, pull, and carry. It was more whether I could find the leash fast enough before she broke the door down.
About the leash -- I also knew incidentally from the park experience that she could be trusted off the leash. To be sure, it was used for training in that first year. She had to be taught what was safe and what wasn't. And I had to make sure she'd always obey my commands instantly, no matter what. But by the end of the summer, there was no leash at all, not ever. Those streets? She was never allowed to walk in the street. It got to where, when we got to a crossing, she would just leap into my arm -- we got it down to where I could carry her comfortably, one-armed, against my side, supporting most of her weight in my hand -- and I would walk her across the street, and she'd be out of my arm again, walking, as if nothing had just happened. It was a beautiful thing.
Booboo got her name this way. She was an affectionate dog. It was Tuesday. Three days into our new relationship. She was still settling in. She was a big cuddler even then, though. We were in bed slowing down for sleep. I can't imagine people who don't allow their dogs on the furniture or not the bed. Being in bed and cuddling with your little animal is about pretty much the best part of having a dog. And Booboo was the perfect size to fit in the crook of my arm... in the years that would pass, that's where she would always be.
I was scratching her under the chin and watching those big brown eyes watching me. I'd tried different names and none of them seemed to fit. Suddenly it came to me in a whisper. "Booboo." Her head nestled in my hand, and she truly relaxed for the first time. She knew finally who she was and where she was. She was home, and her name was Booboo.
Her other phobias weren't as easy to cure. The bathroom thing took a long time -- about three years. She was comfortable everywhere else in the house, but for two years she wouldn't even think about coming into the bathroom even if her tail was on fire. Not even to satisfy her unpredictable I NEED TO BE PETTED NOW addiction, which most of the time was ok of course, but if this happened to strike while I was in the bathroom, well, this was raised to an epic-level emergency.
It was a good thing, though, because it provided her extra motivation. That third year, she was finally starting to get the idea that the bathroom door wouldn't shut implacably behind her. Baby steps. It began with her able to put her two feet onto the tile just inside the door, accompanied by nervous wagging and panting. Then all four feet -- though watching the door carefully and ready to spring back out at any sign of treachery. Eventually, she could manage ten seconds of sitting and getting scratched between the ears before she couldn't take it anymore. Ultimately, though, she made it. At the end of that third year, the bathroom had just become another room to her.
The last phobia was the last to go only because I was living in Brooklyn and didn't have a car. It was cured fairly quickly when I moved to Cleveland. It's possible to get around in Cleveland on public transportation, but it's not nearly as convenient or as part of the air as it is in New York. Once she'd gone for a few car drives -- sometimes to the park nearby -- and her person always came back to the car and to her, and home was always the last stop before sleep time, she got over that phobia soon enough.
That's not to say that the move to Cleveland wasn't rough. She was never big on change. I think dogs aren't, generally. They like things to have a certain rhythm. Moves are much harder on dogs who have a history like Booboo's. What does that look like to a dog that's been abandoned once -- a strange house, strange neighborhood, new smells, new person? Smells like a nightmare all over again, that's what it smells like.
I didn't wear just one pair of shoes. I had shoes that I wore over the weekend for getting around -- decent sneakers, that I called my "walkabout shoes." And I had a cheap pair of Payless hiking boots that I'd use for mowing lawns and other "serious" work. And I had my "going to work" shoes, which naturally were the ones that were out of the house with me when Booboo was stuck in her new house with that new Mom person.
So for several weeks, Booboo would spend her weekdays with that strange Mom person utterly dejected, and always curled around those cheap old leather work boots from Payless.
I imagine there's a reason why she chose those boots over my walkabout shoes to represent me in my absence, but I prefer not to think about it too much.
Eventually she got over that, too. In a few weeks, she realized that her person would always come back, and sometimes there would be trips to the park, even if it meant a ride in the evil car. And she realized this was home.
In such a way did she live a long, full life. I met the woman who would become my wife, who loved Booboo as I did, and we made a home together, the three of us.
I would still drop off Booboo to my mom's house for dogsitting.
A couple years before her death, she would get what my mom would call "her monthlies." Booboo would vomit for no obvious reason. This went on for a very long time -- just a little bit, and never more than once every few weeks. A little oopsie and it was over. She was a very sprightly dog.
The evening of Thanksgiving 2001 she got pretty sick. The day started normally enough. We all woke up. My wife and I took the dogs for a walk (we had two by then). They got their usual breakfast and snacks. Later on, we hosted a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. My wife is an incredible cook and an attentive hostess. Following the dinner, the dogs got to enjoy the turkey giblets. Booboo and the other dog ate their special meals with gusto.
A few hours later, Booboo didn't seem very well. She was lethargic and unresponsive. I feared that she had had a bone lodged in her throat. We took her to the 24-hour pet emergency room.
It took a while as these things usually do. We had to wait in the waiting room for about forty-five minutes before she could be seen. I petted her constantly to let her know I was there... and also, I admit, to kind of check to see if she was still breathing. She was.
The doctor did an exam. By this time Booboo had a bit more energy. The doctor didn't find any obstructions. He did take a blood draw just to see if there was anything up in her blood. My wife and I talked while we waited for the results. By this time the worst seemed to be over. We thought maybe there had been an obstruction but it had worked itself loose at some point, maybe in the waiting room. We were relieved that she seemed to be ok.
The doctor brought the results back. He said her liver chemistry was way off. He said that more tests with our regular doctor would have to be done to see what was really going on. We peppered him with questions of course on what it "could" be and what the results meant and what the prognosis was. He said really that it could be a number of things and frankly the prognosis depended on what really was wrong with her. He did say though that a liver problem was serious.
We took our now fully-recovered dog home. She and the other dog sniffed a wagging greeting to each other's butts. We all went to bed.
Booboo lived for thirty-two more days.
The day she died was a day we'd scheduled a follow-up appointment to try to adjust her treatment. The doctor had decided to try to control Booboo's chemistry issues through diet. It seemed to work -- kind-of. She was, at least, able to keep down the new food -- most of the time. But I was still worried. I rescheduled our next appointment to occur sooner than originally planned. It would now be for the next day, the morning of Thursday December 27th.
That morning, my wife had walked the dogs, and gone to work. It was a vacation day for me. Booboo bounded up the stairs to the bedroom, hoping to partake in snack-giving. My wife didn't give her one, though. Special diet.
I woke up about an hour later to shower, so I could take Booboo to her appointment. I noticed that she was panting. I realized that that was not a good sign.
When I got out of the shower, she was panting even more heavily.
In the car, I petted her. She was panting like she'd run a mile flat-out. I petted her gently. I told her it was ok. I knew it wouldn't be. But I'd had time to accept it. I was sad. But I was ready.
She was at the hospital minutes before she died. She died on the exam table. One moment, she was breathing. The next, she was not.
During that month that I knew things were dire, I made sure that the people who loved her most got to say goodbye. Just in case, we hoped. They were all kind of mystified to be saying goodbye to such an obviously health dog.
My best friend was one of them. He had a particularly close relationship with her. I called him from the hospital the moment we arrived. He said he was coming.
My friend loved dogs mightily. He grew up with a small purebred Chihuahua named Chaochi. She died in a vet hospital, too. The "normal" way -- by injection. She was old and had lived her time. And despite his deep love for her, or more likely because of it, my friend couldn't bear to be there when it happened. I understand. Different people deal with grief differently. I was there when Chaochi died. She went peacefully.
Remembering Chaochi, I told my friend that, if he was coming, well -- Booboo probably wouldn't be here when he comes. He came. He sobbed on the train coming over.
The next time I saw Booboo, she was swaddled in a blanket, her beige body still. Three of her dearest loved ones were there: Mom, me, my friend. We looked down at her body for what seemed to be a long while.
You know, we've all seen dead bodies, in funeral parlors. Even when someone dies in their sleep -- the most peaceful way to go imaginable -- funeral parlors dress up the bodies so they "look peaceful." There's a reason for that. Death is not life.
I looked at my darling baby's body lying there, and remembered what she was in life. The hurdles she'd overcome. The rapturous joy of experiencing the park. The walks we'd have in the city, and her jumping into my arms at every street. The ear-scratching next to the tub. The drives to the grocery store with the tongue lolling in the wind. The curling up next to my representative stinky shoes. My lawn-mowing helper.
I asked myself, is that her, on the table, right now, this body? Is this all that there is to her? Is there nothing more?
No, I told myself. This shell isn't her. She has gone to a better place. And she is waiting for me.
When I got her, she was full-grown. A "Heinz 57" many-flavored mutt. She was 25 pounds, short-haired, beige in color, and with big, big eyes... she had the face of a chihuahua with the racy lines of a whippet. Sounds strange, right? But, for her, it worked. She was just a little thing in a cage five times too big for her. She looked up at me -- she looked like a little fawn in the grass. I'm big on that. I like fawns. Oh! One more feature: She had a pink nose. "Pink-nosed gumdrop fuzzface," I came to call her. My mom simply called her "piggy."
When I came back from college, we lived at my mom's house for a while. I would mow her lawn. I didn't really think about anything while doing it, I never do, when mowing the lawn; my mind is miles away. After I had completed the job, I came into the house. My mother remarked, "That dog really loves you."
I said, "Oh, yeh?" Well, obviously, right?
My mom said, "You do realize she follows you all the way around the yard."
"Sure. Wait -- you mean she was behind me mowing the lawn?"
"Yes. She followed you the whole time you were mowing the lawn."
"The whole time--? You mean ALL the way around the yard, each loop, all the way from start to finish?"
"Yes. She does that every time. She follows you, maybe three feet behind you, the whole way, all the way, from start to finish. You never knew that?"
I told her, no, I hadn't -- never really thought about it. I was just making sure I didn't mow the dog down. You know.
Now I knew why I didn't have to try to miss her, and why she was never in the way.
When I moved to mom's house after college, it was traumatic for the dog. She didn't like change. In fact, when I first got her, she had three obvious phobias: She hated the bathroom; she hated being outside; and she hated going in the car.
The day I brought her home from the ASPCA, I had to physically carry her. That business ended abruptly exactly seven days later, on a Saturday. All those seven days of course I had to walk her. Once in the morning and once in the evening, and each time, it was the same: I had to gather her, leash her, coax her, pull her, and, finally, carry her, down the stairs just so she could go wee.
The day in question -- that Saturday, the seven days later -- things started out pretty much the same way. Gather, leash, coax, pull, and carry. Oddly, once she was out the door she was fine. Up until this day, we always stayed on the block and did just the businesslike walk-wait-sniff-wait-pee-wait thing. No need to cross the street to wee.
But, this time, we did cross the street. And then, another. And another. South of where we lived was a park. Just a giant greenspace situated like a button in the belly of Brooklyn.
It was sunny that day -- just a perfect day. The lawn was expansive and green. We walked for a while, and she was so excited, pulling this way and that, her nose twitching, wanting to smell everything. She was like a different dog. After about fifteen minutes... I don't know why, but I let her off the leash. No other dogs around, and something told me I could trust her. I did. She went running -- this way and that, up and down. About a hundred feet from me, and then she shot back, right toward me, veering away at the last minute, and out again, and back. There were people around. I heard them say, "Look at that!" Booboo -- That was her name as of Tuesday -- was fast. REALLY fast. Whippet fast. And she ran like she'd just discovered it. And she OWNED it.
After she was done, and came back to me, she licked my hand for the first time. I think that that was the moment when we truly bonded, dog to person, person to dog.
The day after that, the problem wasn't so much gather, leash, coax, pull, and carry. It was more whether I could find the leash fast enough before she broke the door down.
About the leash -- I also knew incidentally from the park experience that she could be trusted off the leash. To be sure, it was used for training in that first year. She had to be taught what was safe and what wasn't. And I had to make sure she'd always obey my commands instantly, no matter what. But by the end of the summer, there was no leash at all, not ever. Those streets? She was never allowed to walk in the street. It got to where, when we got to a crossing, she would just leap into my arm -- we got it down to where I could carry her comfortably, one-armed, against my side, supporting most of her weight in my hand -- and I would walk her across the street, and she'd be out of my arm again, walking, as if nothing had just happened. It was a beautiful thing.
Booboo got her name this way. She was an affectionate dog. It was Tuesday. Three days into our new relationship. She was still settling in. She was a big cuddler even then, though. We were in bed slowing down for sleep. I can't imagine people who don't allow their dogs on the furniture or not the bed. Being in bed and cuddling with your little animal is about pretty much the best part of having a dog. And Booboo was the perfect size to fit in the crook of my arm... in the years that would pass, that's where she would always be.
I was scratching her under the chin and watching those big brown eyes watching me. I'd tried different names and none of them seemed to fit. Suddenly it came to me in a whisper. "Booboo." Her head nestled in my hand, and she truly relaxed for the first time. She knew finally who she was and where she was. She was home, and her name was Booboo.
Her other phobias weren't as easy to cure. The bathroom thing took a long time -- about three years. She was comfortable everywhere else in the house, but for two years she wouldn't even think about coming into the bathroom even if her tail was on fire. Not even to satisfy her unpredictable I NEED TO BE PETTED NOW addiction, which most of the time was ok of course, but if this happened to strike while I was in the bathroom, well, this was raised to an epic-level emergency.
It was a good thing, though, because it provided her extra motivation. That third year, she was finally starting to get the idea that the bathroom door wouldn't shut implacably behind her. Baby steps. It began with her able to put her two feet onto the tile just inside the door, accompanied by nervous wagging and panting. Then all four feet -- though watching the door carefully and ready to spring back out at any sign of treachery. Eventually, she could manage ten seconds of sitting and getting scratched between the ears before she couldn't take it anymore. Ultimately, though, she made it. At the end of that third year, the bathroom had just become another room to her.
The last phobia was the last to go only because I was living in Brooklyn and didn't have a car. It was cured fairly quickly when I moved to Cleveland. It's possible to get around in Cleveland on public transportation, but it's not nearly as convenient or as part of the air as it is in New York. Once she'd gone for a few car drives -- sometimes to the park nearby -- and her person always came back to the car and to her, and home was always the last stop before sleep time, she got over that phobia soon enough.
That's not to say that the move to Cleveland wasn't rough. She was never big on change. I think dogs aren't, generally. They like things to have a certain rhythm. Moves are much harder on dogs who have a history like Booboo's. What does that look like to a dog that's been abandoned once -- a strange house, strange neighborhood, new smells, new person? Smells like a nightmare all over again, that's what it smells like.
I didn't wear just one pair of shoes. I had shoes that I wore over the weekend for getting around -- decent sneakers, that I called my "walkabout shoes." And I had a cheap pair of Payless hiking boots that I'd use for mowing lawns and other "serious" work. And I had my "going to work" shoes, which naturally were the ones that were out of the house with me when Booboo was stuck in her new house with that new Mom person.
So for several weeks, Booboo would spend her weekdays with that strange Mom person utterly dejected, and always curled around those cheap old leather work boots from Payless.
I imagine there's a reason why she chose those boots over my walkabout shoes to represent me in my absence, but I prefer not to think about it too much.
Eventually she got over that, too. In a few weeks, she realized that her person would always come back, and sometimes there would be trips to the park, even if it meant a ride in the evil car. And she realized this was home.
In such a way did she live a long, full life. I met the woman who would become my wife, who loved Booboo as I did, and we made a home together, the three of us.
I would still drop off Booboo to my mom's house for dogsitting.
A couple years before her death, she would get what my mom would call "her monthlies." Booboo would vomit for no obvious reason. This went on for a very long time -- just a little bit, and never more than once every few weeks. A little oopsie and it was over. She was a very sprightly dog.
The evening of Thanksgiving 2001 she got pretty sick. The day started normally enough. We all woke up. My wife and I took the dogs for a walk (we had two by then). They got their usual breakfast and snacks. Later on, we hosted a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. My wife is an incredible cook and an attentive hostess. Following the dinner, the dogs got to enjoy the turkey giblets. Booboo and the other dog ate their special meals with gusto.
A few hours later, Booboo didn't seem very well. She was lethargic and unresponsive. I feared that she had had a bone lodged in her throat. We took her to the 24-hour pet emergency room.
It took a while as these things usually do. We had to wait in the waiting room for about forty-five minutes before she could be seen. I petted her constantly to let her know I was there... and also, I admit, to kind of check to see if she was still breathing. She was.
The doctor did an exam. By this time Booboo had a bit more energy. The doctor didn't find any obstructions. He did take a blood draw just to see if there was anything up in her blood. My wife and I talked while we waited for the results. By this time the worst seemed to be over. We thought maybe there had been an obstruction but it had worked itself loose at some point, maybe in the waiting room. We were relieved that she seemed to be ok.
The doctor brought the results back. He said her liver chemistry was way off. He said that more tests with our regular doctor would have to be done to see what was really going on. We peppered him with questions of course on what it "could" be and what the results meant and what the prognosis was. He said really that it could be a number of things and frankly the prognosis depended on what really was wrong with her. He did say though that a liver problem was serious.
We took our now fully-recovered dog home. She and the other dog sniffed a wagging greeting to each other's butts. We all went to bed.
Booboo lived for thirty-two more days.
The day she died was a day we'd scheduled a follow-up appointment to try to adjust her treatment. The doctor had decided to try to control Booboo's chemistry issues through diet. It seemed to work -- kind-of. She was, at least, able to keep down the new food -- most of the time. But I was still worried. I rescheduled our next appointment to occur sooner than originally planned. It would now be for the next day, the morning of Thursday December 27th.
That morning, my wife had walked the dogs, and gone to work. It was a vacation day for me. Booboo bounded up the stairs to the bedroom, hoping to partake in snack-giving. My wife didn't give her one, though. Special diet.
I woke up about an hour later to shower, so I could take Booboo to her appointment. I noticed that she was panting. I realized that that was not a good sign.
When I got out of the shower, she was panting even more heavily.
In the car, I petted her. She was panting like she'd run a mile flat-out. I petted her gently. I told her it was ok. I knew it wouldn't be. But I'd had time to accept it. I was sad. But I was ready.
She was at the hospital minutes before she died. She died on the exam table. One moment, she was breathing. The next, she was not.
During that month that I knew things were dire, I made sure that the people who loved her most got to say goodbye. Just in case, we hoped. They were all kind of mystified to be saying goodbye to such an obviously health dog.
My best friend was one of them. He had a particularly close relationship with her. I called him from the hospital the moment we arrived. He said he was coming.
My friend loved dogs mightily. He grew up with a small purebred Chihuahua named Chaochi. She died in a vet hospital, too. The "normal" way -- by injection. She was old and had lived her time. And despite his deep love for her, or more likely because of it, my friend couldn't bear to be there when it happened. I understand. Different people deal with grief differently. I was there when Chaochi died. She went peacefully.
Remembering Chaochi, I told my friend that, if he was coming, well -- Booboo probably wouldn't be here when he comes. He came. He sobbed on the train coming over.
The next time I saw Booboo, she was swaddled in a blanket, her beige body still. Three of her dearest loved ones were there: Mom, me, my friend. We looked down at her body for what seemed to be a long while.
You know, we've all seen dead bodies, in funeral parlors. Even when someone dies in their sleep -- the most peaceful way to go imaginable -- funeral parlors dress up the bodies so they "look peaceful." There's a reason for that. Death is not life.
I looked at my darling baby's body lying there, and remembered what she was in life. The hurdles she'd overcome. The rapturous joy of experiencing the park. The walks we'd have in the city, and her jumping into my arms at every street. The ear-scratching next to the tub. The drives to the grocery store with the tongue lolling in the wind. The curling up next to my representative stinky shoes. My lawn-mowing helper.
I asked myself, is that her, on the table, right now, this body? Is this all that there is to her? Is there nothing more?
No, I told myself. This shell isn't her. She has gone to a better place. And she is waiting for me.
