The thud woke me up.
While I was still trying to sort myself out from sleep, my dog Ralphie came into the bedroom, insistent and urgent.
I followed him into the den, where I saw my other dog, Oakley, lying in the doorway of the kitchen, next to her water bowl. I lifted her 65 pound body off of the slick kitchen floor and moved her onto the carpet but her legs still couldn’t support her.
I gently laid her back down, then stretched out beside her. I stroked her head and calmed her. As she settled down we began talking. I shared all the love that I had in my heart for her; or if not all of it, at least all that would fit into words. I thanked her for the ways in which she’d blessed my life and changed my life.
We lay on the floor together for a while in honor of a long life well lived and well loved.
And then it was time. In the wee hours of the morning I drove to the Emergency Vet, only able to choke out the words, “I need help with my dog.” An older couple stood in the lobby, and their compassion and pity was unbearable. I ducked around a corner to hide.
One’s heart ripping open is much too vulnerable a sight for strangers to witness.
Technically, Oakley was my first dog.
When I was a preschooler, the next door neighbor’s collie, Lady, would come over to play with me. I have a picture of us together in the backyard. I’m leaning comfortably against her. I’m barely shoulders and head taller.
We are clearly friends.
When I moved into my first house, I had no fenced in yard and had no time for a dog. My next door neighbor adopted a beautiful husky, although it was hard to know why. The dog spent a good deal of time tied to the big tree in the front yard.
I was the one who played with the dog and took him for runs.
When I moved, I got the fenced-in backyard, and a few months later, got a puppy. I found Oakley on a local rescue site. A shepherd-husky mix, she was both beautiful and already house trained.
Still she was a puppy. I came home one day to find a pile of shoes in the backyard.
You have to understand that I’ve never been a woman with a million pairs of shoes. From my earliest years finding shoes that fit my wide feet was a trial and tribulation so I never considered shoe shopping a recreational endeavor.
Because of that, the pile of shoes in my backyard represented at least 75% of the shoes I owned. Oakley had taken the buffet route, chewing one shoe from each pair.
I’m sure I made a million mistakes with her. At about two years old her German Shepherd side of her kicked in, and she felt the need to protect me from men.
This was not great for my social life.
Her husky side showed itself when it snowed. She'd stand outside with an inch of snow on her back, refusing to come in. We never had to worry about other dogs on our snow walks.
She was reactive in meeting other dogs, and became That Dog in the neighborhood, the one that people took alternate routes to avoid passing. In her middle age I picked up a tip from observing a woman on the trail and learned a way of calming her that worked. Even the neighbors noticed.
I got the two of us in obedience class as soon as possible, as much for me as for her. We repeated Obedience 1, but after that sailed out way through to the training for the Canine Good Citizen training exam. In one of those classes they brought out a wheelchair and crutches so that our dogs could get used to them.
That’s nice, I thought, but Oakley will never be a therapy dog in a hospital so there’s no need for this training.
The day before she was scheduled to take the exam, I was hit by a car while riding my bike. With a fractured pelvis, I was in a wheelchair for two months and on crutches for three months.
The training came in handy.
While I was at my parents’ house regaining my ability to do the basic tasks of life my next door neighbors kept Oakley. It was two weeks, or maybe three, when I returned home. My neighbors let Oakley into their backyard. When she caught sight of me, her whole body vibrated with joy.
I saw her do the same thing later when I introduced her to her new brother, Ralphie, an Aussie-Lab mix whom my neighbor dubbed the quirkiest dog ever.
For Oakley, our family could never be too big. She loved my cats, and when she heard the sound of a new kitten behind a bedroom door, she danced in the hallway with delight. You got me a kitten!
Seeing me for the first time after my absence, she vibrated with joy and covered my face with kisses. One of the challenges of loving an animal is that we cannot talk back and forth. Sometimes, like that day, it’s no challenge at all.
At 12 she was diagnosed with leukemia. The treatment regimen was neither as grueling or as expensive as I feared. Even better, it worked and she went into remission.
Still, two years was the outer limit of the time we could expect to buy. As we hit the 18 month mark, the treatment started taking its toll. Her legs got weaker and our walks got shorter. Ever since she’d been a puppy she’d slept with me. One night she tried to jump into my tall, antique bed, and didn't get close to making it.
I think both of our hearts broke.
Eventually she became fecally incontinent, which is a fancy way of saying you never walk through the house barefoot. I’d always said I’d never sacrifice my dog’s dignity to my need to have them here, but now the line wasn’t so clear.
Every day I wondered if it was time. But every single morning she greeted me with a smile. She was just so darn happy. She was just so darn happy to be there with me. How could I put down such a happy dog?
She still wanted to walk, and so I snapped on her leash and we took a very slow walk around the block, a farewell tour. I knew it was the last time. Not so very long after that she collapsed. She’d made it 22 months.
Others have said that part of the terrible gift of pets in our lives is that they give us practice in grieving, and it’s true. But there’s more than that.
As I’ve been writing this, I've been weeping for missing Oakley, gone four years now. At the same time, as I’ve been writing this my present dog, Bear (a truly exceptional dog beloved by many) has been snoring by my side.
What is present in our lives doesn’t erase the pain of what is absent. Dipping from the waters of grief doesn’t mean that we’ve done something wrong or not grieved well enough.
Our lives are not an etch-a-sketch. If you’re not familiar with it, watch-a-sketch is a toy from pre-electronic days. It looks like a TV screen. By twisting the knobs at the bottom you control a stylus that “etches” a picture onto the screen. Starting over is as easy as shaking it. Everything on the screen disappears.
Our lives are not an etch-a-sketch. We don’t shake them after loss to clear things for a new picture.
Our hearts are an ever changing collage. Some of the pictures we collected years ago are in the background, until something brings them to the front for a moment. It’s an ever expanding space, so there’s no need to get rid of something to make room for something new.
When love touches our hearts, our hearts are changed. It doesn’t matter if the love comes from a parent who welcomes us into the world with delight or if it comes from a pet who is in our lives for but a short time but also forever.
