ninanevermore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ninanevermore) wrote2010-03-12 12:48 pm
ninanevermore) wrote2010-03-12 12:48 pm
Friday – Eulogy for a Small Red Spaniel
.
.
.
In the Spring of 1994 I was still living at my father’s house, having graduated college the year before but having not found permanent reliable employment to afford myself a place of my own. I had graduated with a BA in Journalism around the same time I figured out that I was not cut out to be a journalist, but had yet to figure out what I was cut out to be (something that has not changed in the last 16 years). Responsibility and commitment were not high priorities for me, so one morning God sent me a puppy to help me along and show me the way.
I am part of that dying breed that reads the newspaper at breakfast. Not the news online, but an actual paper. I started the habit when I was 10, eating my breakfast before school in the same chair my father had used to eat his breakfast before work an hour or so earlier, and picking up the paper that was already on the table in front of me. That spring my father and his wife were still living out of both of the houses they brought into the marriage, and during the week when they worked they stayed at “her” house, which was a shorter commute, I had the house I grew up in to myself. First thing every morning, my dad’s dog, Lady, and I walked to the end of the driveway and picked up the morning paper. One morning we had a visitor: a small red spaniel pup who looked to be about 6 weeks old walked up to Lady and wagged her tail. Lady, a German Shepherd-Collie mix with strong opinions about everything, took a sniff of the newcomer, detected the sweet puppy scent that tells other dogs I’m just a baby so I’m harmless, and wagged her tail back. Lady had no use for adult dogs who invaded her turf, but she was always kind to children, be they of her species or mine.
“Who are you?” I asked the newcomer, bending down to scratch her ears. “Go home, puppy.” Of course she followed me back to the house after that. I wasn’t sure what to do with her. She wore a collar, but no tags dangled from it. She was too little to leave out on the street so I put her in the back yard. My relationship with my father was strained at that point, and my relationship with his wife was downright hostile. Not yelling-and-screaming hostile: we had more class than that. Ours was more of a suspicious glares and snide-asides-passing-as-jokes kind of hostile. The first 20 years of a blended family are always the hardest, I think; and the first 10 of those are the hardest by far. My point is, considering that not a week went by that they didn’t ask me when I planned on moving out, I was not sure they would be happy to know I had taken in a stray dog. I was right, but they aren’t heartless and agreed she could stay until her rightful owners could be found.
That evening when I got home from work (I was a professional temp at the time), I made signs and hung them on all the stop signs in the neighborhood advertizing a found puppy and asking her owners to please call. I left them up for 4 weeks, but no one ever did. After that, I took her to the vet and got all her shots, since a puppy needs these things to be taken care of. It cost me $70, which was a lot of money to me at the time. On the way home I stopped by all the stop signs and took down my posters because I figured since I’d just spent that amount of money on her she was as good as mine.
For that first month she still answered to “Puppy.” Coming up with names is not my strong point. My son spent the first 4 days of his life wearing a wrist band that identified him as Baby Boy Erickson, and that was what he was called until we came up with something 20 minutes before we were processed to go home. When the 4-year-old granddaughter of my dad’s neighbor asked what my puppy’s name was, I admitted that she didn’t have one.
“How about Miss Yvette?” asked the child. That sounded as good as anything to me, though I changed the spelling to Evette so my kid brother wouldn’t think I’d named my dog after his ex-girlfriend that lived the next street over. I called her Evie for short, and only used her full name when she was in trouble.
When I first got Evie her breed was a mystery to me. She didn’t look like a mutt at all; she looked like some sort of pure-breed spaniel. However I’d never seen a spaniel quite like her. She grew to 18 pounds and then stopped. The smallest spaniels I knew about at the time were Cockers, but Evie was about half that size. A couple of years later I was browsing in one of my favorite used bookstores when I came across an English (rather than American) book of dog breeds and inside of it saw a picture that looked like my dog: she was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. The breed was not even recognized by the American Kennel Association until the year after I found my dog. When I found Evie, she was worth the cost of a shelter adoption fee. A couple of years later, pups who looked just like her were selling for about $1,000 each.
Everything I read on Cavalier King Charles Spaniels told me I could expect her to live about 10 years, due to a heart defect that is common to the breed. That didn’t seem like too long a life to me, so I fervently wished more for her. Fourteen, at least. Maybe 18, like some small poodles I’d met. I wished and wished and wished as hard as I could. In recently years, I tried to unwish it, but the damage was already done. For the first 12 years of her life, Evie was playful and sweet. She constantly needed to be in contact with any human in the room. If you were on the couch, she was on your lap. If you were in your bed, you woke up with her next to you (even if you had made a point to make her lie down in her own bed before you fell asleep). At 12, she began to have back problems and could no longer jump up on the furniture. To get her daily quota of human touch, she rested her face on your feet when you sat down. By 14, her hind legs began to atrophy and she began having skin problems. No longer rested her face on your feet (though she liked to lie beneath your chair) She still, however, enjoyed her food and wagged her tail when she saw you. Those two things are my husband’s criteria for a dog still having a life worth living. These last few months, she began to look more and more wraithlike. Her ribs and her backbone showed through her wasting flesh. She moved a little slower each day. I had all but stopped petting her long ago, because she startled so when I touched her. She still followed me around, but not as much as she used to. Mostly she slept.
On Monday, I put food in her bowl like I’ve done every morning for the past 16 years.
On Tuesday morning, it was still there. I dumped it out, and replaced it with dry kibbles that wouldn’t go rancid if she didn’t eat. Occasionally she would stop eating for a few days, but usually would start again when she felt better. Her water bowl was only half empty, which was unusual; even when she didn't eat, she usually drank a bowl of water each day. For the first time I can recall, she did not want to follow me outside to get the morning paper.
On Wednesday, the food and water levels in her bowls had not changed.
Yesterday, I got home and Jeff told me to expect a hard night. Evie had not moved from her bed all day, and every few hours she would cry out and then have a black, tarry bowl movement. He’d cleaned her bedding and put a dog training pad on top of her for her to lie on. She had collapsed onto the floor shortly before I got home, and he’d had to carry her to her bed. The veterinarian’s office was already closed, and Jeff needed to work that night.
After witnessing one of her episodes and cleaning up after her, I noted that what she passing was not fecal matter, but clotted blood.
“If she’s still alive by morning, can you take her in?” I asked him. We both knew I wasn’t asking him to take her in for treatment, but to end her misery. He agreed. He said he wished he hadn’t agreed to come in that night, but he – we – needed the overtime.
I tried to make her as comfortable as I could. I took one of my insulin syringes, removed the needle, and filled it with water to put in her mouth. I remembered from childhood visits to the Emergency Room with diabetic ketoacidosis how miserable it feels to be dehydrated, and she had not drank in days. I wanted to ease her suffering. Her nose, instead of feeling like wet leather, was hard and dry. I found the tube of medical grade lanolin I still have on hand from when my son was nursing, and put some on her nose to try to make the skin soft again. I stroked her head and said, “It’s okay, pup, you can go now.” When I lifted her to put a clean pad beneath her, she felt like a dog made of paper: she seemed to weigh almost nothing at all.
At some point in the early hours this morning, I heard her cry out, and then cry out again. A better person would have gone to her, but I didn’t want to see what was happening. “Go, baby, just go,” I mumbled, and fell back asleep.
I woke up this morning, and found she’d done as I asked. I covered her up with an old towel and called Jeff to let him know he didn’t need to go to the vet, after all.
He called me when I got to work to ask if I thought he should put her favorite toy, a plush human-shaped fleece object that I’d sewn up countless times over the years to keep his stuffing from coming out, with her or if I wanted to keep it as a souvenir. She had not played with her toys for years, but as a pup and through her middle age this toy had been her pride and joy.
“Give it to her,” I said.
“I decided not to put her under the oak. I’m putting her next to the sweet gum that [Sweet Pea] and I just planted, because I think she’d like to be a sweet…” his voice broke off. “I’ve got to go.”
Evie was a sweet dog; one of the sweetest animals I’ve ever met. We used to call her the love sponge, because she absorbed love from whoever she could, whenever she could. From what I’ve read, this is typical of her breed. They are dogs that exist to love and be loved. She what is known as a Ruby Cavalier, meaning that her coat was the color or autumn leaves. I'll think of this when her tree turns red and gold in the fall.
Jeff made the right choice. I can’t think of a more appropriate living memorial for her than a tree with the word "sweet" in it's name.
The Cookie Thieves, Christmas 2005
Napping on the couch
Evette "Evie" Erickson
02.??.1994 - 03.12.2010
Responding to a dying old woman's inquiry
James Herriot, the late British author/veterinarian noted:
"If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty
and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of
humans. You've nothing to worry about there."
He goes to note regarding animals joining their masters in the afterlife:
"I do believe it. With all my heart I believe it."
-James Herriot "Dog Stories"
"If there are no dogs in Heaven,
then when I die I want to go where they went."
- Will Rogers, 1897-1935
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
In the Spring of 1994 I was still living at my father’s house, having graduated college the year before but having not found permanent reliable employment to afford myself a place of my own. I had graduated with a BA in Journalism around the same time I figured out that I was not cut out to be a journalist, but had yet to figure out what I was cut out to be (something that has not changed in the last 16 years). Responsibility and commitment were not high priorities for me, so one morning God sent me a puppy to help me along and show me the way.
I am part of that dying breed that reads the newspaper at breakfast. Not the news online, but an actual paper. I started the habit when I was 10, eating my breakfast before school in the same chair my father had used to eat his breakfast before work an hour or so earlier, and picking up the paper that was already on the table in front of me. That spring my father and his wife were still living out of both of the houses they brought into the marriage, and during the week when they worked they stayed at “her” house, which was a shorter commute, I had the house I grew up in to myself. First thing every morning, my dad’s dog, Lady, and I walked to the end of the driveway and picked up the morning paper. One morning we had a visitor: a small red spaniel pup who looked to be about 6 weeks old walked up to Lady and wagged her tail. Lady, a German Shepherd-Collie mix with strong opinions about everything, took a sniff of the newcomer, detected the sweet puppy scent that tells other dogs I’m just a baby so I’m harmless, and wagged her tail back. Lady had no use for adult dogs who invaded her turf, but she was always kind to children, be they of her species or mine.
“Who are you?” I asked the newcomer, bending down to scratch her ears. “Go home, puppy.” Of course she followed me back to the house after that. I wasn’t sure what to do with her. She wore a collar, but no tags dangled from it. She was too little to leave out on the street so I put her in the back yard. My relationship with my father was strained at that point, and my relationship with his wife was downright hostile. Not yelling-and-screaming hostile: we had more class than that. Ours was more of a suspicious glares and snide-asides-passing-as-jokes kind of hostile. The first 20 years of a blended family are always the hardest, I think; and the first 10 of those are the hardest by far. My point is, considering that not a week went by that they didn’t ask me when I planned on moving out, I was not sure they would be happy to know I had taken in a stray dog. I was right, but they aren’t heartless and agreed she could stay until her rightful owners could be found.
That evening when I got home from work (I was a professional temp at the time), I made signs and hung them on all the stop signs in the neighborhood advertizing a found puppy and asking her owners to please call. I left them up for 4 weeks, but no one ever did. After that, I took her to the vet and got all her shots, since a puppy needs these things to be taken care of. It cost me $70, which was a lot of money to me at the time. On the way home I stopped by all the stop signs and took down my posters because I figured since I’d just spent that amount of money on her she was as good as mine.
For that first month she still answered to “Puppy.” Coming up with names is not my strong point. My son spent the first 4 days of his life wearing a wrist band that identified him as Baby Boy Erickson, and that was what he was called until we came up with something 20 minutes before we were processed to go home. When the 4-year-old granddaughter of my dad’s neighbor asked what my puppy’s name was, I admitted that she didn’t have one.
“How about Miss Yvette?” asked the child. That sounded as good as anything to me, though I changed the spelling to Evette so my kid brother wouldn’t think I’d named my dog after his ex-girlfriend that lived the next street over. I called her Evie for short, and only used her full name when she was in trouble.
When I first got Evie her breed was a mystery to me. She didn’t look like a mutt at all; she looked like some sort of pure-breed spaniel. However I’d never seen a spaniel quite like her. She grew to 18 pounds and then stopped. The smallest spaniels I knew about at the time were Cockers, but Evie was about half that size. A couple of years later I was browsing in one of my favorite used bookstores when I came across an English (rather than American) book of dog breeds and inside of it saw a picture that looked like my dog: she was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. The breed was not even recognized by the American Kennel Association until the year after I found my dog. When I found Evie, she was worth the cost of a shelter adoption fee. A couple of years later, pups who looked just like her were selling for about $1,000 each.
Everything I read on Cavalier King Charles Spaniels told me I could expect her to live about 10 years, due to a heart defect that is common to the breed. That didn’t seem like too long a life to me, so I fervently wished more for her. Fourteen, at least. Maybe 18, like some small poodles I’d met. I wished and wished and wished as hard as I could. In recently years, I tried to unwish it, but the damage was already done. For the first 12 years of her life, Evie was playful and sweet. She constantly needed to be in contact with any human in the room. If you were on the couch, she was on your lap. If you were in your bed, you woke up with her next to you (even if you had made a point to make her lie down in her own bed before you fell asleep). At 12, she began to have back problems and could no longer jump up on the furniture. To get her daily quota of human touch, she rested her face on your feet when you sat down. By 14, her hind legs began to atrophy and she began having skin problems. No longer rested her face on your feet (though she liked to lie beneath your chair) She still, however, enjoyed her food and wagged her tail when she saw you. Those two things are my husband’s criteria for a dog still having a life worth living. These last few months, she began to look more and more wraithlike. Her ribs and her backbone showed through her wasting flesh. She moved a little slower each day. I had all but stopped petting her long ago, because she startled so when I touched her. She still followed me around, but not as much as she used to. Mostly she slept.
On Monday, I put food in her bowl like I’ve done every morning for the past 16 years.
On Tuesday morning, it was still there. I dumped it out, and replaced it with dry kibbles that wouldn’t go rancid if she didn’t eat. Occasionally she would stop eating for a few days, but usually would start again when she felt better. Her water bowl was only half empty, which was unusual; even when she didn't eat, she usually drank a bowl of water each day. For the first time I can recall, she did not want to follow me outside to get the morning paper.
On Wednesday, the food and water levels in her bowls had not changed.
Yesterday, I got home and Jeff told me to expect a hard night. Evie had not moved from her bed all day, and every few hours she would cry out and then have a black, tarry bowl movement. He’d cleaned her bedding and put a dog training pad on top of her for her to lie on. She had collapsed onto the floor shortly before I got home, and he’d had to carry her to her bed. The veterinarian’s office was already closed, and Jeff needed to work that night.
After witnessing one of her episodes and cleaning up after her, I noted that what she passing was not fecal matter, but clotted blood.
“If she’s still alive by morning, can you take her in?” I asked him. We both knew I wasn’t asking him to take her in for treatment, but to end her misery. He agreed. He said he wished he hadn’t agreed to come in that night, but he – we – needed the overtime.
I tried to make her as comfortable as I could. I took one of my insulin syringes, removed the needle, and filled it with water to put in her mouth. I remembered from childhood visits to the Emergency Room with diabetic ketoacidosis how miserable it feels to be dehydrated, and she had not drank in days. I wanted to ease her suffering. Her nose, instead of feeling like wet leather, was hard and dry. I found the tube of medical grade lanolin I still have on hand from when my son was nursing, and put some on her nose to try to make the skin soft again. I stroked her head and said, “It’s okay, pup, you can go now.” When I lifted her to put a clean pad beneath her, she felt like a dog made of paper: she seemed to weigh almost nothing at all.
At some point in the early hours this morning, I heard her cry out, and then cry out again. A better person would have gone to her, but I didn’t want to see what was happening. “Go, baby, just go,” I mumbled, and fell back asleep.
I woke up this morning, and found she’d done as I asked. I covered her up with an old towel and called Jeff to let him know he didn’t need to go to the vet, after all.
He called me when I got to work to ask if I thought he should put her favorite toy, a plush human-shaped fleece object that I’d sewn up countless times over the years to keep his stuffing from coming out, with her or if I wanted to keep it as a souvenir. She had not played with her toys for years, but as a pup and through her middle age this toy had been her pride and joy.
“Give it to her,” I said.
“I decided not to put her under the oak. I’m putting her next to the sweet gum that [Sweet Pea] and I just planted, because I think she’d like to be a sweet…” his voice broke off. “I’ve got to go.”
Evie was a sweet dog; one of the sweetest animals I’ve ever met. We used to call her the love sponge, because she absorbed love from whoever she could, whenever she could. From what I’ve read, this is typical of her breed. They are dogs that exist to love and be loved. She what is known as a Ruby Cavalier, meaning that her coat was the color or autumn leaves. I'll think of this when her tree turns red and gold in the fall.
Jeff made the right choice. I can’t think of a more appropriate living memorial for her than a tree with the word "sweet" in it's name.
Napping on the couch
02.??.1994 - 03.12.2010
Responding to a dying old woman's inquiry
James Herriot, the late British author/veterinarian noted:
"If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty
and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of
humans. You've nothing to worry about there."
He goes to note regarding animals joining their masters in the afterlife:
"I do believe it. With all my heart I believe it."
-James Herriot "Dog Stories"
"If there are no dogs in Heaven,
then when I die I want to go where they went."
- Will Rogers, 1897-1935
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *