Special Edition: Loving Lady

 Lady came to live with me four years ago.  Two years after Larry’s passing.  I’ve talked a lot about her in my BLOGs.  You’ve seen photographs of Katie and Paisley and Katie.  She left me, yesterday, November 3.  I felt that I had to let her go. .

 My Lady was so sick that I took her, for the third time, back to the VRCC emergency hospital, today.  (And, here, I must say that all of the staff at VRCC are caring and knowledgeable.)  After talking with the vet about what might have to happen in the 3-4 days she would be in the hospital, I decided it is not fair to her to simply keep her alive for me.  I’ve known people who have kept their pets alive for themselves and never considering what had to be done to their pet to do so.

So, I decided to let her go.  They will send her body to some place to be cremated.  Then, I’ll take her ashes to the place where they will make paperweights with a few of the ashes (Larry and Libby have their own paperweights).  The rest will go to the top of Lookout Mountain to soar with Larry and his dog Libby over Denver.

This is probably the most difficult thing I’ve had to do in some time.  I am quite broken hearted that I had to let her go, but I think it was for the best.  I miss her and will miss her for a long time.  What I find is that it is not the big things that are the hardest to deal with, it is the small things.

 Lady made it a habit to run, barking and barking, to the front door when the doorbell rang.  If I didn’t walk fast enough following her, she would run back to me and whirl around, as if asking me why I wasn’t moving faster – couldn’t I hear the doorbell?.  Friends and other people came to understand that she was a four-legged door bell, making sure that I knew there was someone at the door.  Sometimes, she would hear something out front (she had excellent hearing) and bark and go to the front door.  I would need to open the screen door to show her that no one was there.  She would look up and down the street until she was satisfied that no one was encroaching on her property.  The doorbell rang, today.  There was no Lady to answer the door.

My clothes washer and dryer are in the basement.  There was a time when she would go down the stairs and be with me while I worked with the laundry.  Recently, however, she did not.  Lately, after I worked there, going to the stairs to climb, Lady would be lying like a Sphinx on the landing at the top of the stairs.  Or, she would be in hallway peaking around the wall and down the stairs to see if I was on my way up.  Today, she was not there.

I hear a sound somewhere in the house and look up, thinking I wonder what she maybe in to now.  Then, I realize, it is just a noise.

Every dog before Lady would come into our house as my dog and after Larry touched the dog, it was no longer mine.  Our dogs loved Larry.  But, Lady was definitely my dog.  She lived the first four years of her life as a breeding dog in a pack south of Pueblo.  After Libby passed, I looked on Gail’s miniature schnauzer website, and there was a gorgeous, white, miniature schnauzer.  I’d never had a white schnauzer.

Bryan went with me to pick her up, and she lay draped across his knee all of the way home.  Breeder dogs (she had had two litters) are not socialized. They know  nothing about riding in a car.  Nothing about sleeping on a bed with people.  Nothing about grass.  Nothing about why they are expected to go into the dog run for business.  They only know concrete.  And, their crate.  Bryan could not understand why she was being given up because “she was one pound heavier than the owner wanted her breeding clan to be.”  Neither could I.  Personally, I always thought it was because she wasn’t a good mom.

Larry and I had a schnauzer years before who, if she was in a distant part of the house and heard a litter of pups crying on the TV, would run to see what was happening to the babies.  She was a good mom.  But, Lady … she didn’t hear babies on the TV.  She only wanted to be with me.

However, one day I picked up all of the dog toys from the floor I was vacuuming and pitched them into her bed.  Later, I saw that she had snuggled them against her with her legs wrapped around them.  Maybe, I was wrong.

Lady’s safe place was a dog bed on the coach in my TV/Office room.  She was in it a lot of the time. If I left the room, I always told her where I was going and that I would be back; did she understand me?  I don’t know.  But, if I was out of the room longer than she apparently thought I should be, I would hear her tearing down the hall, in the front room, in the kitchen, in a panic.  Until she found me; then, I’m guessing, she was satisfied that I had not left for good.

I do know that her vocabulary was growing, as is Katie’s.  Her understanding included:  “Do you want to go outside?”  She would climb down from her safe place and go with me to the dog run.  “Katie is coming.”  Again, off the couch and, then, to the front door to wait for Katie.  “I want you to go into the bedroom.”  When she headed for the TV/Office room, I would say, “No, go into the bedroom.”  She would immediately change direction and head for the bedroom.  There are the other, more simple words, as well.  I’ve never talked to my animals in one word sentences.  So, it was “Please sit;” then, “Thank you.”  “Come with me.”  Then, “Good girl.”

Did I spoil her?  Probably, but she deserved it.

Part of the house still smells like Lady as a sick doc.  It is difficult to walk into a room and smell her smell of the last days.  In addition, to get her to eat, I found it necessary to force feed her.  Food into a spoon.  Into her mouth.  Keep her mouth shut until she had swallowed, at least, a part of the food.  I never really knew how much I should try to have her eat.  Neither did I know how much water was needed to hydrate her.  For that, I used a turkey baster and had to be careful not to make her drink from a fire hose!  She resisted this procedure.  After calling her own vet to get this information and getting no return call during the day, she became more and more ill; we went to the VRCC, as it turned out for a final visit.

Lady was loved by all who knew her.  She would sit with Greta to be petted.  Of course, she always wanted to come back to me.  She seemed attached to me at the hip.

She will be missed by all who knew her.

Be Safe and Be Wetll
The Cranky Crone
Thoughtful comments are appreciated.