Dear old Dottie is a cockapoo of atypical coloration. She’s white with black spots. In fact, she has a large black spot on her face, and that eye is dark. Her other eye – on the white part of her face – is light in pigment. Like David Bowie. She is dying this weekend, before our very eyes. We will end her suffering either way on Monday, bec it is agonizing to watch her in bewilderment, suffering and sickness. She had been such a good doggie for all of us.
We are tempted to give animals human qualities and experiences, especially as they are dying and we are forced to realize what a large role they play in our lives and in our hearts. Dottie was born in a breeder’s house in a rural NJ town. In her early days, she barked at every person entering the house for as long as they stayed – sort of ruining my social life. She jealously guarded me from all comers.
She never really quit her barking at strangers… so not many people outside our family connected with her.
She was smart, played ruthlessly with toys. She could handle a ball like a sportsman. And she actually laughed. No laughing sound emitted – not like a cartoon dog – but her mouth hung open, her eyes were merry and she nodded and quaked like laughter. This was never more apparent than when visiting my parents. Their two dogs were not allowed upstairs, so Dottie would chase them around, annoying the bigger dogs until they gave chase. She would leap over their backs, or run beneath them and get to the stairs. From three or four steps up, she would laugh at them. Stuck below. Wanting to retaliate.
Dottie is dying. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. I won’t go into the signs, except to share the losses we feel. She is weak, and quit eating her food. We went out for bologna, and she ate it eagerly. We were well pleased. About an hour later, up it came, undigested. We exchanged worried looks.
She no longer barks. At anything.
She doesn’t hop on the couch to be with me, as I write in the mornings, as she has for 15 years. But she still shows up for work. As I work at my desk, Dottie is a constant presence in the small bed behind me. She is my only staff, editor, and my first reader. I’m not sure how I’ll do what I do without her help.
She was my first dog, ever. (And of course, my kids’ first dog.) A few years ago, we adopted a shelter dog, a feisty Shi-Poo named Ted. They were never close friends, more like colleagues. The two of them came across the country with Adam and me in 2015. The were perched, in their dog beds, way up high on all the “stuff” inside our very full car, and traveled patiently along, day after day. They started in Atlanta at a business retreat I attended en route. As we plodded west, grass gave way to sand and dirt. Heat and humidity gave way to dry, furnace-like heat. In and out of hotel rooms, casinos; through plains and mountains and finally desert. Dottie saw it all, sniffed it all. I wonder if she could make her way back to NJ to find us, like in the movies. Well, of course not, she can barely make it across the room, now.
We are all on Dottie death-watch, and as I cry on one of my group phone calls with my mastermind group, and any one of us might cry at the drop of a hat, the house is not quite the dirge you’d expect. We also are fostering 6 week-old kittens. Dottie hasn’t noticed them. I am so grateful for the joy they bring our kids. They are teeny and spunky as Dottie once was. My daughter Sophie is a new mom. She feeds them, makes sure they get weighed each morning, and has named them Opal and Klaus. (Are those millennial names or what?) She is joyous when a teeny grey furball rewards her with purring for the first time.
We have a dying dog and new life in this house. We are zinging between tears, and smiles so big they make our faces ache. I can’t help but feel this is all important. Dottie has lived a big life for a small dog, but she has always been content to be with me, wherever I was. Her ambitions were small. Loyalty gave her life meaning. (And liver snacks, tbh.) We always ask what will you regret on your deathbed. For Dottie, I think it is just that she cannot continue to be my companion and helper. If I had to guess, she is worried for me, not herself.
Thank you for indulging me in this share. Loss is an important part of life. It helps us empathize when others face loss. Without feeling losses of our own, we could not write about loss, or know to throw an arm around someone who is fighting back tears. Or feel our way back to someone who is isolated by their grief and loss. I can only notice this loss as it happens to me, and hope somehow this ache is making me a better, more engaged and empathetic person.