Things I Make

Because my dog is the reason for this post, I will start with the dogs that I have had. When I was born, my family already had two dogs, a german shepherd named Shadow that was my dad's, and a black lab mix named Max that was my mom's.

Shadow was a sweetheart of a dog. She played with me all the time when I was little, and she was very protective of me. That ended up being a trait that cost her her life. I don't remember a whole lot of specific things about what we used to do, but I remember the day she was put down like it just happened. I was maybe 4? I had just gone outside to play with her, Max, and another dog we got named Rascal, and we were running around in the front yard. My neighbors across the street had a little rat terrier named Pepper that used to come over to our yard sometimes, and while she would bark at people, she actually very sweet and loved pets. Shadow didn't like that she was running over and barking at me, so she attacked her and bit a chunk out of her side. My dad came out and got the dogs inside. He wrapped pepper in a towel, got the neighbors, and droves us all to the vet to take care of her. We were there for a few hours, but Pepper was going to be okay. By the time we got back, my mom had already taken Shadow to be put down. It's something that my parents fought about, and something that sticks with me to this day. My mom truly does love animals and wants what is best for them, but that is a decision that I don't support her having made even to this day. She was such a sweet dog. She always wore a red collar.

Max was already a "babysitter" by the time I was born. He loved kids. He loved playing with them. He loved sleeping in our beds. He loved so much. He had such a fun personality. He loved to eat fresh vegetables from the garden, especially potatoes. It was always funny because it was like he was trained on how to pick the best and most aesthetically pleasing potato from the harvest. That was always frustrating to my grandpa because we are a big static fair exhibit family, so we would pick potatoes out to take to fair and Max would always steal the best ones. He would snuggle in right next to you on the bed at night, and you would think that it was cute, but he was actually systematically trying to push you out of bed. Anytime you move away from him, he would quickly scoot closer to you. If you tried to push him away, he would get all grumpy and growly. I would often be pushed to the edge of the bed, so I would get up and climb onto the other side of the bed just for she to shuffle up next to me again. He developed cancer when he was 12 or 13, and he had to be put down.

The next two that we got after I was born were in the same year when I was 2. My dad is always amazed by the fact I remember the days that we brought them home, but they were moments that were so impactful to me. First there was Tank, a black toy poodle. Then later in the year there was Rascal, a golden retriever.

To get Tank, we drove for at least 2 hours to this breeder's house. She ha very clean facilities, and my parents saw tanks mom and dad. We were sitting is the kitchen this woman's house where she had a full grown teacup size poodle when she brought Tank in. He was so small and excited an uncoordinated. He was also bigger than the lady's full grown teacup poodle. That dog was so small, but Tank came home to us napping in my mom's arms while I tried to get looks at him from the back seat. He became my best friend. The first few weeks he was with us, he hadn't figured out how to stop on tile, so he would slip around like a learning ice skater. I was slightly mean as a two year old child, and watching him slide as he tried to stop because one of my favorite things to get him to go. As we got older, he started to spend all of his time with me in my room. I had a pillow on my bed specifically for him, and he would lay on it while we watched TV together. After my parents divorce, he stayed with my dad, so I only got to see him every other weekend. He only passed away last year. He was the oldest living dog I've ever had. He was a blind, toothless, stinky old man when he went, but he was still as happy as the day we got him.

Rascal was a dog that I said was supposed to be "mine" as much as a two year old can have a dog. He and I were going to play together and have adventures and be the best of friend. He was going to sleep in my room with me and like me the best out of everyone in my family. I was emboldened with this thought the day we brought him home. There is a local holiday in my town every summer where people come to watch a parade and there are performances and street vendors and all kinds of things. Someone had brought two litters of puppies they had. A litter of golden retrievers, and a litter of black and tan golden retriever mixes. I wanted to take home a black and tan puppy, but my mom said if we were taking home a puppy, it would be a regular golden retriever, so that is what we did. I was sitting in the front seat of the car with him in my arms while my mom drove us home. He seemed like such a big puppy after Tank and due to the fact that I was so young, so he took up my whole lap. That ride in the car melted my heart because he crawled off my lap, snuggled behind me, and took a nap the whole ride home. I was certain that my plans to be best friends with Rascal were locked in at that point. You can imagine my great jealousy when, while he still loved me and we did play all the time. he absolutely loved my brother the most. My brother is 13 years older than me, and Rascal had such a close bond with him. Rascal would sleep in my room sometimes, but he never liked to sleep on the bed because he would get so hot. He slept in my brother's room the rest of the time, and the injustice I felt that he would sleep in bed with him more often than not was unreasonable, but again, small child at the time. Eventually my brother moved out to go to college, and Rascal did start sleeping in my room most nights, but when my brother came home to visit, he was still the favorite. I remember when he was full grown, but still in the puppy stage, we were going to take a walk with him and Max on leashes. It was one of Rascal's first times walking with a least and I was determined to be the one to walk him. A three year old child trying to walk an untrained golden retriever was a recipe for disaster, and I did get drug along the gravel of the road for a few feet before he realized he was cause me pain. They he came back to check on me and licked my cheeks like he was sorry. He had some health issues from the time he was two years old. He started to have seizures. He would lose control of his bowels. His limbs would shake, and he would get very disoriented. They didn't happen very often until he started to get older. The used to be one or two a year, then one every few months, every month, then every week the month that he died. His organs had started to shut down, but he was still so full of life and energy that my dad decided we would keep him going for as he remained that way. He ended up passing in his sleep. It was during the week, so I wasn't there when it happened, but I had been out to see him the weekend before, so I got to say goodbye.

Two years after we got Tank and Rascal, we went back to the same breeder who we got tank from, and got one of his half siblings, a white toy poodle my dad named Peewee. Peewee was the sweetest little helper you could ever imagine. He is one of the only dogs I have ever had that just naturally knew how to follow and heel. He would never walk in front of you, only beside you or slightly behind, unless you told him to go somewhere. He got zoomies often and was obsessed with Tank. They were always see together, even when Tank would get annoyed with Peewee's unceasing presence and correct him for some personal space. Black and white shadows. Two peas in a pod. Complete opposites in almost every way. Tank was a very reserved dog. He liked to take naps and be independent. Peewee loved meeting new people and was a ball of energy. While I will probably never own another poodle because of coat maintenance, they made me fall in love with the breed. Peewee died a few years before Tank did despite being younger because he had a tumor that was connected to his nervous system and organs that doctors couldn't operate on. It was slow growing, so we got many more years with him before it finally had any severe effects. The attachment to his nervous system eventually cause him to develop very rapid onset seizures, and within a week that they started, he was gone. Tank and Peewee were my Dad's solace after my mom divorced him, and so he took it very hard. Tank became a constant fixture with my dad. He had to run to the store, Tank was coming with him. He was going to someone's house. Tank was right there in the passenger seat. If my dad hadn't gotten another dog last year when he took my neighbor's dog in after she died, I think it would have broken him.

Since we have already gotten into his story a little bit, the next dog we'll talk about is Auggie. Auggie is a red heeler (Australian Cattle Dog), that was bred by one of my neighbors on the hill who raises cattle. He has a couple border collies, an australian shepherd, and his pair of red heelers that he occasionally allows a litter out of. My neighbor often lets his dogs run, which is not unusual in the itty bitty rural "town" that I live in, but he lets them run alongside his four-wheeler while he does cattle chores. The puppies would then end up in the neighbors yards and what not. One of my other neighbors had a puppy that wouldn't leave her yard. She fell in love with it, as she had just had to put her last dog down, so when she called our neighbor and told him the dog was still at her house, he told her she could just keep him. This was not my dog Auggie, but instead a puppy from a litter two years before his named Andy. Andy was such a wonderful dog that when our neighbor on the hill said that no one wanted the last puppy of his next litter, she took it in as well, and thus Auggie stayed around town. Last year, my neighbors health took a turn for the worse. She went downhill very fast, and within a month, she was gone. Before she died, she asked if my dad would take Auggie in so she knew he was going to a good home. My dad was not thrilled to have a new dog in the house, but when I went out to visit and saw him, I was immediately in love. He is the cutest, sweetest, goodest boy, and he became a real blessing when my dad lost Tank. My dad hadn't had a normal shedding dog for over a decade at this point aside from me bringing my dog with me every other weekend, so he still complains about the fur, but he loves him.

This brings me to the last three dogs.

One was a temporary re-homeing situation that ended up not working out with a small brown terrier mix named Brutus. He was aggressive towards anyone visiting the house, so my mom said we couldn't keep him. He was a nice dog when you got to know him.

The next addition to our home was a little red miniature pinscher. Her name was Bella and she was not supposed to be our dog at all. My sister, who is 11 years older than me, was living with a friend in the city, and they decided to get a dog. They had Bella for maybe a week or two before her claws got caught in the carpet at the top of there stairs and she fell down them. This cause her to break a bone in her shoulder. They didn't have the money to have the vets work on it or the time to rehabilitate it, so Bella came to our house. My mom took care of her, helped her shoulder heal, and you would never have been able to tell that she had ever broken a bone. I still have not seen a dog jump as high as Bella was able too. So she healed up at our house and never left. My biggest pet peeve is that every one called her a chihuahua because she was red instead of brown and tan, but such is life. She was my mother's everything, but as she got older into the double digits, she started to have some health issues. The vets said that the signs she was showing were likely because her organs were struggling a little bit. They didn't tell us at the time because they wouldn't have been able to confirm it, but those were the first signs of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) or kidney failure. She went on a kidney friendly diet for the next two years until her kidneys were too far gone to save. Again, at the time we didn't actually know that. I was the one to take her into the vet when she was showing the worse symptoms. She wasn't eating or drinking really. She was very lethargic. She just was not herself, and then the vets told me her kidneys were failing. I had to talk to my mom over the phone about what she wanted to do, and we tried a fluid challenge, but her kidneys were too far gone so it had no effect. Then she was put down. Now I have quite a few animals. In the house at that time was Bella, two cats, and my dog, so there wasn't this overwhelming quiet or stillness, but there are so many little routines throughout the day that you make that suddenly don't happen anymore. No more little angry growls when the cats tried to lay down on the blankets next to her. No more getting canned food out for her on my lunch breaks. No more small slow toe taps while she walked from the carpeted living room to tiled kitchen. Just a void of all these small things that aren't there anymore.

That brings us to the last dog I've owned. The dog that is actually mine. Mine to take care of, to buy food for, to take on walks, to take to the vet, to train, to love, to make my whole world. My Willow.

I got Willow two years after my parents divorce when I was 14. I had been feeling very lost and lonely in my life at that time. I didn't really have many close friends aside from my childhood best friends that I used to live next door to before my parents split. I should say that we just moved 10 minutes away, but my parents divorce was messy, so seeing her outside of school became very challenging. My mom had also always worked from home before so there was always someone else in the house, but when we moved, she got a job that kept her out of the house from early morning until late at night. I felt so alone. Then my mom came home and said that a friend of hers had an accidental litter of puppies. His dog was an intact female lab who lived outside and the neighbors intact australian shepherd had slipped his chain and climbed the fence to get to her. I asked if I could go see them, and my mom almost told me no because she knew I would want one. We went, and sure enough, I desperately wanted a puppy. I did nothing but beg and plead and barter for the week before finally wearing her down. It helped that there were puppies in the litter that reminded her of Max. These puppies were the cutest things ever. Some had brown eyes, some had blue eyes, some had both. Some got the shepherd color, some got the black lab color, some were black and white with little spots places. Some were the smooth coat of the lab, so where the fluffy coat of the shepherd. There were so many different combinations. There were 14 puppies if I remember correctly, but I got to pick which one I wanted. To be honest with you, Willow was not the puppy that I first wanted to chose. I wanted to take home one of the fluffier, more energetic puppies, but Willow was shy and sweet and looked like Max. She also snuggled up to me, so for me and my mom's preferences, Willow came home with us. She used to be small enough to fit under the couch and foot stools, so I would find her sleeping under them a lot. She learned how to sit within two days of being home. She could lay down within a week. She was incredibly smart and very food motivated. A great combination for training. The one downside that she had was I am incredibly socially anxious, so she wasn't socialized as much as she should have been. That took many years to remedy, and she still isn't the greatest with super young children or really hyper dogs, but she definitely isn't quite so anxious about them anymore.

I went through so much with her those first few months. Taking her out to pee at night on a leash was horrible because I have a very severe phobia of being outside at night. Waking up just in time to see her have diarrhea all over my bed sheets and 2 am. Deworming her and having her throw up on my leg in the car and watching a worm slowly do a death curly cue on my jeans before we stopped. But also cuddling and snuggling and feeling more joy than I had in a while. As she grew, she still tried to fit under the ottoman until only her nose would fit. By then, she could jump up on the couches and things, so she switched to laying on top of it. Now, at 11 years old, she barely fits laying down on it. She went through a phase while growing where one of her ears would always stick up while the other one flopped. I hope for so long that her ears would stay like that, but they didn't. There are sometimes still when one of her ears, or rarely both of her ears, will stand up. It is the cutest thing in the world, and I love it so much. Since that day, she has always been by my side. I have rarely ever left her for more than a week at a time. Even when I tried going to college on campus, I was coming home every weekend to see her. She taught herself so many things like to go to the door when she needs out, but to back up when I start coming so I have room to open the door. I can actually give her the back command at any time and she will take a few steps away from me. When there are toys involved, she get very creative about how big her steps are, and when she has decided she is far enough back, but I am still giving her the command she just jumps in the air and pretends. I always makes me laugh. I genuinely don't know how I would have made it through so many things in my life without her. I was not always the best owner. I didn't do everything perfectly, and that will always linger in my mind. Little regrets like not socializing her enough so that I could bring her to more things with me. Not training with her more with the herding instincts that she has just for fun. Not buying her more treats and toys and special things. But no matter my own shortcomings, I have always loved her so much. Last Wednesday, she started to throw up. She became very lethargic. She wasn't really drinking much, and she wouldn't eat. I took her to the vet on Thursday when I realized it wasn't just an upset stomach, but there was something really wrong. I was hoping it was just a virus or something that they could give me medication for, but I had a bad feeling about it before I even took her to the vet that day. I felt a weight in my stomach as I sat in the waiting room. The longer it took for someone to bring me the results of her blood work panel, the more sure I was that I was about to get bad news, and then they told me she had CKD. My vet tried to be very gentle about it, but as Bella had died from CKD, I already knew what was happening. Her kidneys were failing. There was nothing I could do to fully make her better, and she was going to die. I was honestly very scared that I would have to say good bye to her that day, but I did the fluid challenge with her. I was going to give her every chance that I could because she has given me so much in her life. So she stayed the night at the vets getting fluid and medication pumped into her, and I went home and had a break down.

That night, it was very startling to see how much of my life would change without her in it. Her bed sits right next to mine, as she has hip problems that make getting on and off beds and couches difficult for her now, so she has lots of dog beds throughout the house. I reach down and pet her quite frequently throughout the night. I have insomnia, so I am up quite late or wake up multiple times in the night. I always reach out to pet her or talk to her during those times. She is one of the main reasons that I remember to eat myself, and I usually make something when I give her her food. It is so quiet without her barking at the neighbors or walking to get a drink or breathing while she sleeps. I am glad that I get more time with her. I hope that I get another year with her. I'm glad that when I brought her back home she had her energy back and was so alive again. I pray that she goes peacefully in her sleep when it is time so that I don't have to make that decision. But I will make it if she needs it. I would never want her to suffer.

I know that some people do not get as attached to their animals, but I get very attached to mine, and there hasn't been one who has been so intertwined with my life before. Losing her is going to suck. It's going to leave a hole in my heart. Its going to fundamentally change the way that I live my life, but I am so grateful to have had her in my life. She has made it so much better. She has kept me alive on many occasions when I would have otherwise made some irreversible decisions. I hope that even though it wasn't a perfect life that it was one she still enjoyed. For her being born on Friday the 13th, I think both of us ended up pretty lucky.