We Don't Deserve Our Dogs

 Anyone who's had a dog knows we don't deserve them.  There are copper statues of dogs like Balto and Bobby, and sled teams aplenty, not to mention the movies- oh, the movies.

I read an article, or scrolled a slideshow or something, entitled "We Don't Deserve Our Dogs".  It is true.  We just simply do not deserve them, as selfish and wicked as we are.  They are pure.  And for some reason which can truly only be explained in this muser's mind, by a heavenly calling and a gift to fallen people, they love us.  They just love us- not one here it there like the raccoons or a skunk I met once, who just like people- it's a rare dog that does not unconditionally love humans.

This blog was once about my attempts at weight loss.  Then I gave up on that more-or-less and it was about cake.  Then pregnancy, then birth, and now, strangely, this blog has become about the deaths in my life.  I've included sweet links so that if you find yourself supporting me by reading it, you might get a break to grab another tissue while reading something that lifts you up.  The only thing more terrifying than the leopard seals in the movie 8 Below, is the devotion and purity of the dogs. 

A sudden confident knock came to the door, mid-day last Thursday.  No one has knocked on the door except package deliveries in months, so I wasn't in a hurry to answer.  I glanced through the window and saw a woman I didn't recognize, but she had her dog with her, so I was ready for the question.

"Do you have two little white dogs?'

I don't think of them as white so I did the "kinda" sign with my hand tipping from side-to-side while stepping out the door saying, "Yeeeah... Are they in the street?"  Dog people are great about watching out for little dogs on a pretty busy street and to be honest, I dismiss these meetings as minor (slightly irritating) blips on my day.  Sometimes people bring them back when the batteries in their collars (that buzz when they) near our buried fence are low or dead.  Like Thursday.

I had already passed her and was headed up the driveway when this woman replied, "No, but... one of them just got hit by a car."

I'm sure I only glanced at her in horror but the look on her face told me that the look on my face at that moment will haunt her dreams. 

"I pulled her out of the street", she said in a weak voice.

I hoped she was wrong.  I imagined that she was kidding and it was a gross joke.  I was progressing up the driveway and couldn't see anything yet, so maybe it wasn't true.  Which dog?  I hated myself for hoping it was Ripley and feeling her loss before I knew what had happened.  But I passed our big bushes and saw long white hair floating in a slow breeze.  Ripley's hair curls, just slightly.

I felt so horrible that she had gotten hurt when I could have- should have- protected her, that I couldn't even approach her at first.  My hands were on my mouth and I was squeaking "Baby..!" through slimy tears, as I collapsed to the sidewalk.

The woman who pulled her from the street was locked off her feet with trauma at witnessing what she had, and now seeing me crumble in front of her, and she fumbled, "I'm so sorry.. I'm so so sorry..." and I managed an "It's okay, thank you..." before she quite actually stumbled away with her dog. 

I crawled to her.  She was warm, and I couldn't see anything wrong with her, other than the fact that she wasn't trying to lick my face.  She was soft, and even her eyes looked normal.  She looked and felt so normal that after a moment I checked her for a pulse.  I checked her chest and then her neck, sure I would find her heart beating, strong and loving, because she looked and felt exactly like my friend.  But there was nothing.  Nothing.  I lifted her and the limpness in her body made me sick.  

There was a little blood on her shoulder, and one of her eyes was a little red, but not bad.

It occurred to me that I should do something, but I had no earthly idea what I would do.  I know that I was wailing loudly at some point and I remember another woman with a dog appearing out of my periphery.  At this point she started asking questions- just came to my side to help me.  "Is this your dog?  Did she get hit?  Did you see it?  Did that lady help you?  It's okay, I'll help you.  What's her name?  Do you want to go inside?  How can I help you?  Is she alive?  Here, let me take her.  It's okay I'm going to help you.  This is Caya- she's one of Gidgit's friends."

I got a towel and gathered Gidgit and whispered

between wails (I make weird noises when distraught.  I don't recommend attendance), "Wash."

The young woman asked more questions and I knew there was nothing else she could do so I insisted I could handle it from here, though still quite loudly beside myself.  I made sure there was no more blood on her hands, and pet her sweet dog before they left, the young woman who told me her name twice insisting she could help with anything we could possibly need.  Gemma and Wyatt were there, see, and asking heart-rendingly direct child questions, like, "Is Gidgit dead?  Did she die, mom?"

Death is horribly undignified.  She was smelling, but what do I do with the body of my dog?  Give it a bath?  That seemed pretty sick, but also... half of the family was gone for the day!  I can't bury her without them!  

I decided I didn't care how weird it seemed I was going to clean her up, so I laid her in my shower and cleaned her up with the wand handle.  

This was when I put together what must have happened.  The blood on her shoulder was from a clean gash deep down to her joint that exposed her scapula, the joint and about half of her humorous like it had been done in one swish of a scalpel by a gifted surgeon.  I didn't look closely, but nothing looked or felt broken.  The side of her head on the same side of the wound was as soft as... well she was a lithe little thing.  There wasn't much of her body that was soft, so her head being that soft was a clear sign of the problem.  She had been hit and died in the same moment.

No suffering.

It was eerily like bathing her like I have done a hundred other times.  Her hair- for hers is hair, not fur- is light and becomes as translucent as glass when wet.  I could see the funny little grey spots on her skin.  I could see the little bubbles that gather under her hair like it always does when I wash her with the wand.  I washed her paws, and the nails I just trimmed.  And I brushed and brushed and brushed her.

I checked her teeth to see if she had been damaged, for this would have seemed extra sad, for some reason.  But they were all there, all in-tact, though her gums were light, from lack of blood flow, I realized.  It was just so strange.  It just seemed that if she was dead, she should look different.  But she was still warm, still flexible, and her eyes looked just like they had every day for the last 10 years since I brought her home.  She lay there, as I dried her hair, looking exactly like she looked every time I dried her, exactly like she looked laying next to me during all my pregnancy naps, and newborn nursing stupors, and exactly the way she would lay in the sunshine in the windows or in the middle of the patio where I would wonder if the concrete bothered her the way it would me.   

Eventually, I had to get Gemma ready for school, but being disoriented by something that should never be part of a day, I took her to school an hour early.  I made up for it by taking her home and getting her back to school, again, 5 minutes late.

(the morning Gemma was born)

I blew Gidgit's hair dry.  Her under/winter coat is gunmetal grey- quite dark- (I don't actually know the correct names for these things as she is a haired dog, and doesn't have an under-coat, maybe?  But she has dark hair close to her body) but her outer coat is celestially white.  She also has the sweetest, most delight ears.  They are big.  Not at all the tiny, civilized ears a proper Yorkie should have.  One stands up proud and curious, and the other flops down over her head like a sun-hat, slightly askew.  The hair grows out over the edges in these satisfying waves that suggest the direction they typically blow.  Out.  Just, up and out.

I would always trim around her ears with my fingertips on the edges, so I couldn't nick her.

I have been crocheting a big blanket for several months and haven't gotten far.  A towel wasn't good enough for her, and I wanted something that would go back to earth with her.  The blanket is cotton, so I wrapped it around her in a way that held her secure in her favorite position- curled into a tiny little circle, just big enough to fit into the hole between my legs and my chest.  I left enough out for her to have some good soft pets from anyone who wanted to, and a paw, for me to squeeze one last time, the way I used to when she would get done with her baths, to dry them off and reassure her, like a lucky rabbits foot.

I laid her to wait for the rest of the family to come home, outside on the benches on the deck.

We had an important meeting right after school that needed all our focus, so I had to pretend all was fine and couldn't tell the older kids, AND kept telling Gemma "We aren't talking about that yet, my love."  The other kids didn't believe her, and weren't bothered.

When the time came to tell them, exactly as I expected, Georgia was heart-broken and very hurt that we hadn't told her sooner.  The other children seemed confused, and quietly upset the way children are by big things.  They kept asking their sad, quiet little questions.  "Did Gidgit die, mom?  Is she gonna wake up?"

We dug a place as best we could in the sand in the pasture, but the ground is frozen.  I cradled her and silently begged everyone to pet her, and feel again how soft she is- to squeeze her little foot.  But no one would.  I gently set her in the little hole, and Hyrum told us all to say goodbye.  As the dirt fell onto her it was the first time she looked wrong, and I cried out.

I explained that in Scotland when someone or something special passes away, they bury it and make a pile of rocks called a cairn to mark its place.  They helped me to find rocks and we added them atop.  I plan to add more as time goes by, to show her that she deserves to be remembered.  Every time I go to the sink in the kitchen I can see the spot where we left her, and I have cried almost every time.

We didn't deserve her.  Like every dog, she was the embodiment of joy every time we walked through the door.  When we come home from the cabin every weekend in the summer she gets "the zoomies" is I guess what people call it. When she was little, she would get the zoomies and run around so fast that she could jump up on the couch and run across my chest and the back of the couch before jumping back to the floor.  It was one of the most purely delightful things in life.  She was our first kid and was there for the birth of all of our other kids.  We used to get her presents when we went on vacation, but she was happy just to sit with us when we were at the computer, or come with us on errands.  

She spent 10 years paying attention to us.  She knew what I meant when I said, "Let's go."  She knew I didn't like it when she would stand up on my knees when I was in the bathroom, so she would sit in front of me shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot trying not to do it.

She could "sit", and "up" and "lay", but she wouldn't "speak" because she knew she wasn't supposed to bark in the house.  If I needed her to go outside and I said "outside" she went, even though I never trained her to do it.

She loved us, and I know that even though she was killed, she wouldn't be sorry about a minute of being with us, or be mad that she died because of our negligence.  It makes it hurt a little more. 

Ripley looks for her sometimes.  On Friday I saw her sitting in the driveway just away from the street, and barked one time at every car going by as if to say, "It was you.  You took my friend."  

We have been paying special attention to Ripley since Thursday, of course.  We got her a year after Gidgit so Gidge wouldn't be alone all day, but obviously, we love her, too.  She has her own personality and quirks.  She has no qualms with "Speak!"

I wish I had paid more special attention to my Gidge.  There is no amount that could match hers for me.  And that is why we do not deserve our dogs.