Tanya Writes About Seau again...

Current read: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Katherine Howe

I had lunch with my good friend Maxine yesterday and she extolled about Marrying Minda...and the bio page...except that it mentions my two very spoiled black Labs. Minda was already in production before our sweethearts had to cross the Rainbow Bridge.

How I still mourn and always will. I still see Marl standing at the end of the breezeway between our house and the fence, running into my arms after I loaded the garbage can. Seau's tail still echoes each morning, bashing happiness against the wood floors.

But I realized I had to do one last sad thing: notify the doggie-day care kennel that, this summer, they wouldn't have our sweet boy to tend. I not only got lovely condolences in an e-mail, but we also got a hand-created card signed by all the attendants. Eveybody included a comment. Oh, how my heart is warmed.

Sorry for your loss. Seau was a wonderful dog. He will be dearly missed. Love, Dawn

Seau was so sweet and we will think of him fondly. Thank you for letting us take care of him. Love, Judy

I'm sorry for your loss. Seau was such a sweet boy. I will miss his cute face. Tina

Seau was a great dog and we will all miss him. Anthony

I am so sorry to hear about Seau. He was such a wonderful dog. He made such a good friend and was a joy to just hang out with. I will miss him. oxox Jenny

Love back to all of you at Flying High Pet Resort.

Tanya Writes About Her Canine Angel, Seau

My Seau became a canine angel Monday morning at eleven...my brave hero took him because I just couldn't. And at that same moment, I got this Facebook post from my friend Sherryl. She knows my Seau well; she'd been his groomer for years now. It wasn't just Fate that had me read this, just then. It was God, and love, and all that is good.

It was weird this morning, waking up and automatically going to the crock full of dog bones. But there was relief too, not hearing his gasps, not watching him try to get across the floor with his front legs. As my grandbaby said, last time he was here and saw Seau's tail wag: He's better now.



A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them..

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.

When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side. When he was close enough, he called out, 'Excuse me, where are we?'

'This is Heaven, sir,' the man answered.. 'Wow! Would you happen to have some water?' the man asked.

Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up.' The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

'Can my friend,' gesturing toward his dog, 'come in, too?' the traveler asked.

'I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets.'

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence. As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

'Excuse me!' he called to the man. 'Do you have any water?'

'Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in.'

'How about my friend here?' the traveler gestured to the dog.

'There should be a bowl by the pump.'

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it. The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog. When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.

'What do you call this place?' the traveler asked.

'This is Heaven,' he answered.

'Well, that's confusing,' the traveler said. 'The man down the road said that was Heaven, too.'

'Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell.'

'Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?'

'No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind.'

Tanya Writes About Her Darling Dog

Ditsy Tanya's Almanac #13

If your dog leaves you, he won't take half your stuff. --Cyberspace

But he will take most of my heart.

My beautiful boy Seau is dying, and he's the only one that doesn't know it. The hip displasia has taken a horrific toll, crippling his backside. The strain on his upper body has lately caused dreadful gasping and choking and upchucking and accidents in the house because he can't drag himself outside.

Last night was the worst, and my hero told me softly this morning before church, I think it's time now.

I don't want to believe it, think it, decide it! Because some days he's still so darn strong. Hardly ever though. And he's still so darn beautiful.

We adopted him when he was about five, the vet said. From the boarding school where I'd been on staff. With a new headmaster coming on board that fall, it was decided by all who loved the two campus black Labs that the pups would be better off at the homes of those they'd bonded with best...rather than left to the mercy of a man with a bad reputation who turned out to be even worse than imagined.

So Seau, always my own true dog, came home with me. He fit in like the outer edge of an Oreo cookie with our yellow Lab girl Tawny (RIP 2004, a sudden cancer) and black Lab girl, Marley.

Marley left us suddenly last August to another devastating cancer. There was no hope, no cure. And after those months of my hero's own battle with cancer, the surreality hung over us for along time after she passed. So this decision has been brutal because, as I said before, some days Seau's a bit stronger. His eyes are so bright. He's taken glocosamine his whole life with us, and lately we tried expensive shots and pills, but Nature and Time have taken their toll.

Last weekend the grandbaby was here, cuddling the big black dog he used to call "Sia" last summer when he really was still a baby. He looked right at me and announced with the authority of a 2 1/2 year old. "Seau's sick. But he's better now."

So we took another slew of pictures of them together, because any day it would be time.

Time. How my heart breaks. But he's a grand dog who deserves to preserve his dignity. Pooping in the house doesn't quite cut it.

And he does have his two "sisters" waiting for him at the Rainbow Bridge. Somehow, because God is good, I know I'll hear a faint bark from above sometimes, letting me know he loves me still.

And he'll peek down and see an empty dog bed because we'll be going petless for a while. The heart can only bear so much.

Good night, sweet prince.

Tanya Writes About Mourning Marley

I came down with a viral respiratory infection on Monday and keep saying I'm sick as a dog.

But it isn't true. I'm not as sick as my Marl was. She had to die.

I'm approaching the second month without her. Often when I come downstairs in the morning, I say Hi Marl, like I did for ten years. I just expect her to be lying on her favorite rug.

Now, for most of those ten years, she and the boy black Lab Seau, and the yellow girl Tawny (RIP May 2004) slept in the room with my hero and me. When he was at the firehouse, she slept on the bed. But when his ordeal started, that harrowing chemo, the snorts and sneezes and panting and farting and running against the wall just got too much for him. So we put up a baby gate. And now because of the grandbaby, it's still in place. It was a good idea; neither dog needed to run up and down the stairs any longer.

...There's a long concrete breezeway between our house and the fence. Every time I came out to load the recycle bin, Marl would wait at the end. So I'd kneel down and call her, and she'd come running with kisses. It hurts so much now just to take out the trash!

Somebody might say, what are you on about? She's just a dog.

Well, she wasn't. She was my baby, my comfort in the empty nest after our babygirl went off to college. She had a cute way of cocking her face, like she really was listening to you. And she knew when it was dinnertime; she'd come to me with a little throaty whine.

But others might say, after what you and your hero went through already this year, losing a dog to cancer was just another blow you didn't deserve.

And I kinda think those people are right. For the last couple of years, Marl had to drink purified water due to an unrelated condition. These days, I can barely walk through the grocery store without crying. All those months of buying nausea food and constipation food and Popsicles for my hero...and now the bottled water aisle too...

I do have my sweet boy dog. He's the one with ultra health issues. We actually thought we'd lose him first. But he's the independent one; we adopted him when he was about five. Marl was the cuddle-muffin who always had another dog in her life. She wouldn't have lasted long without him.

So I guess this was a backward sort of blessing.

A couple weeks ago, the grandbaby saw a dog on a Natgeo show and called out, "Morley. Morley." Oh the pup looked so much like her, black with a white muzzle. Marl always had that whiteness around her mouth; she looked like a gramma dog since she was about two.

Last weekend in the local paper, the "Pet of the Week" was a black Lab mix, Nico, with Marl's same goofy ears. As soon as I looked up, my hero said, no. Seau is enough for now.

I asked him if he misses her, and he said of course, but he knows not quite the way I do.

After all, she was my baby.

I worked on my roses one of Marl's last days on earth; she and Seau laid under the tree, on the soft grass of a perfect sunny summer day.