All Dogs Go To Heaven
And we're better for having had them here on earth. Except when things go wrong whilst grooming.
Y’all.
I lost three of my four dogs in the last year.
Along with the Covid-19 crisis and everything it smacked us with, I had to say goodbye to three of the sweetest friends I’ve known this century. Every pet parent reading this knows the dense pain of these tender farewells, the last time holding a familiar paw, kissing a grizzled head and the final “thank you” we whisper in our pet’s ear.
It sucks.
Boomerang, Lucille and Ponyboy were all senior doggos when I had to say goodbye and they had good, long, lives after being adopted by me and my late husband.
But it wasn’t always easy.
After John died, the old house and property we bought to fix up, the (then) five dogs and two cats we rescued, the flock of chickens we raised by hand…it was so much to handle alone as a new widow. At times I thought it would drive me completely mad. I was grieving hard and could hardly take care of myself, never mind a herd of animals now with only one owner to take care of them and pay for everything.
I worked two jobs to pay expenses and John’s leftover medical costs. I took care of myself, to the best of my meager ability, and I looked after my Vietnam Vet brother, who is disabled. I had a house that wasn’t a home without my husband and two overgrown acres to figure out.
It was a lot. Too much.
Occasionally a pal would take me aside and gently suggest I re-home my pets. Friends saw how I was pushing the struggle bus uphill and some days it looks like it would end up in a ditch.
Yet I just couldn’t break up the family l had left.
The day John and I rescued each pet, we made them a promise. And I was going to keep it.
I had no idea how, honestly.
I didn’t even take Sundays off in those days. That’s when I would groom and take of animals. Clip nails. Clean out the chicken coop. Bathe a dog or four. John and I used to hum along on that stuff. More than once I wistfully knew I would never have gotten so many animals, would never have taken on that old house or property if I had known my husband would die so young.
But I didn’t know.
It was such a grind some days I’d hang my head and weep with exhaustion and fear of the future.
But occasionally, as life will, it got a tad amusing. At least in retrospect.
One Sunday morning I had my giant white Pyrenees, Ponyboy, on a short leash in the driveway, held fast by my brother, so I could keep the big guy still while I brushed, de-tangled and clipped his seemingly endless double coat of hair. Pyrenees need consistent grooming and I was in no way up for it. Some days I would forgot to brush my own hair.
I took a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and tackled the delicate work of scissor-cutting Pony's potty trail. It's not a pretty task and I didn’t look pretty doing it. That dog had more hair around his butthole than any ‘80s metal band ever had on their heads. There would be nothing but excrement-encrusted dreadlocks under his massive tail if I didn't make the potty trail happen.
That morning I grabbed my sharpest scissors (this is no time to work with craft scissors, friends) and hoped to get in and out without what I can only delicately call #poopyhairproblems. I was solidly tucked under Pony's lion-length tail with a knife-sharp instrument in my hand, concentrating hard.
The dog is nervous. Wouldn't you be?
This is absolutely not the moment to realize a caterpillar has crawled down your shirt.
Those of you who know me know I have stood up to corporate power and knife-wielding thugs but I am flat-out terrified of caterpillars.
I simply cannot handle something with all those legs and no feet.
I felt a tickle but it was background because I was focused on dog butt and nothing but dog butt. Still crouched under Pony's tail I took a moment to quietly brush at whatever was making its way from under my arm to nest in my cleavage. I thought it was maybe an ant.
It was a caterpillar. My nemesis.
Why does God hate me.
"MOTHERRRRRFUCKING SHIT!" I shrieked and shot into the air like the space shuttle. Ponyboy freaked. He pulled away from my poor brother Chuck, who probably hasn't jumped so high since Vietnam. I flung the caterpillar through the air and ran around in circles screaming and ripping at my clothes as if they're on fire.
I ran up and down the driveway flailing my arms yelling JESUS IN HEAVEN WHERE ARE YOU. The dog found a hiding place. My brother, not knowing what else do to, turned on the hose. To this day I don’t know what he was going to do. Wash me?
I was a mess. The caterpillar in my bra sent me sailing right over the edge I’d been teetering on for months.
When I finally slowed down enough to think, I stumbled over to my brother.
"Do you see any more on me? Are there any more?" I asked, breathlessly.
He looked.
"No." He said.
"You're blind in one eye," I said bluntly (he is) “Are you sure??"
"No more." he said, probably wishing he'd never left Southeast Asia.
Well, that ended the dog grooming for that day. Maybe forever, I thought.
As much as I hated how hard those days were, I’d give a lot to spend some time brushing my beautiful Ponyboy today. I miss his genial gentleness (except towards the mailman, who he lay in wait to bark at). I miss Boomerang’s sweet, nervous, eager-to-please nature. I miss Lucille’s incessant demand to eat half of any banana I peeled for a dozen years.
Please adopt your pets from shelters or rescues or such.
When my husband died, having so many pets was a burden, but also a unique blessing. They reminded me I was still needed. They sat with me as I grieved. They made me laugh, a scarce commodity in those days.
In the end I kept the promise I made to them. And they kept the promise they made to me.
Animals always keep their promises.
You are the only person I know who can make me laugh and cry several times in one post. Your gift is awe-inspiring. There have been times in my life, including right this now, when my animals have given me perspective and joy. They help me hang on. Thank you.
Oh yes! Moving beyond belief, and so right. If you've adopted an animal, well, they've adopted you, too. That's a commitment made before God, or Whoever. When I had to leave my home, my job and the country I had lived in for twenty-five years to take care of a husband who was dying, very slowly, of dementia, I had to leave behind our two senior dogs and an old, baggy, misshapen cat. I had no choice. What I could do was choose to house them with people who loved and cared for them, and that I did. My West Highland terrier, the most arrogant, stubborn animal every to walk this earth, died less than a year later, without me ever seeing him again. My Cairn, the Goddess of Love, epileptic and blind, was heroically brought over to the States by my son. Her first night in the Bronx she saw off a drug dealer's pitbull. She lived three months with me before I had her put to sleep. All joy had left her. And the cat? She soldiers on, as lumpy as ever, back in France. Her new BFF is a German shepherd. She would never have made it to America; she rarely ventured more than ten yards from our house in Provence except once when she was catnapped by tourists who thought she was abandoned - she has a heart-rending miaow - and were going to take her back with them to the other side of France. She was rescued by my friend Frank who had been searching for her for days and heard the inimitable yowl from behind the door of an Airbnb. Now I have two comparative youngsters - Paulette, a floppy poodly sort of a thing who dropped from the sky into my lap the first time I was able to go back to France (My French vet "So you want another dog?" Me "Yes, probably, sometime soon." My vet "I've got a dog. Here's a photo." Me "I'll take her", and take her I did, the next day). She flew with me to Massachusetts three days later. And Tylo, a strange-looking animal sown together from different dog parts with a pig's tail. He came from Texas, supposedly, via the humane society, and is a goofy wuss with a huge grin and a very scary bark. May more dogs and happiness grace your life, Therra.