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.