thedonkeymademedoit

I wore the blue dress today. You know the one: A-line, with a collar, buttons down the front and the pockets; those glorious pockets, like little purses for your hands (literal handbags). Every dress should have pockets – every, single, one. It was the first time in two and a half years that it actually fit. Growing babies takes a greater toll on one’s body than social media, famous people and movies with famous people in them, let on. Obesity scare 2017 was prolonged by Winston’s death. I ate my emotions. Well, not really, you can’t eat emotions, but you can eat cookies, and I did – so, many, cookies. They were over the counter and I could get them any time (between the hours of six in the morning and ten at night). The pounds began to slowly accumulate. Not once did my barista say to me, “Kate, I think you’ve had enough” – she must have noticed that I was smuggling an extra 20 pounds around under my baggy, large tunics and giant scarves, she is too observant not to have noticed. My coat didn’t even zip up. But that wasn’t her responsibility – Ashley did however take an overly active and vocal interest in how tired I looked every morning. She often upsized my grande extra hot soy latte to a venti, free of charge, because according to her, I needed it.

I was sitting at my desk when I looked down and noticed your slobber on my right side just below the pocket in the spot you used to nudge me with your nose so I would stop doing whatever I was doing and give you a pat on the head. I must have forgotten to have it dry cleaned and hadn’t noticed when I put it on this morning. I sat there for a moment and just looked at it. All of the memories flooded back. It has been four months since we said goodbye to you and not a day has gone by where I don’t think of you and your brother. I held off writing this, I’m not sure why, but today I was reminded that I owe you a few words.

To be clear, I never had any business owning a dog. I was 25 and could barely take care of myself, let alone another living thing. In truth, I was probably better suited to a cactus – my past was littered with plant carcases and good intentions. I was a recent graduate with student debt and a job in politics that paid peanuts. While I didn’t have a lot of money, I didn’t drink coffee back then, so I wasn’t yet paying my monthly tithe to Starbucks, I had some money to spare. It probably wasn’t a good idea, but at that point in my life I wasn’t accustomed to having much, so I answered the ad on the internet and in doing so our journey together began.

I didn’t even have a car back then. My friend Victoria’s boyfriend, now husband, Josh drove me to pick you up. We pulled up to a small house in a residential area in Gatineau, Quebec (I totally forgot you were French by the way, largely on account of you so very rarely wearing your raspberry beret – you know, the kind you find in a second-hand store?). A French woman answered the door. Her name was Carole, with an ‘e’. She was smoking a cigarette and eating a baguette. Not a piece of baguette, an entire baguette. I wondered to myself, who answers the door like that? I didn’t think indoor smoking was a thing anymore either. A thin layer of smoke hovered above her head, like a warm, carcinogen-laced rain cloud; reminiscent of my mother’s uterus in the early 80s – I lived there for about 10 months. My mom smoked a package of cigarettes a day. God, I could have been brilliant, I might have even made something of myself, had she just been able to resist hitting up flavour country every thirty minutes. Instead I was born of average intelligence and have had to work hard for everything I’ve ever achieved.

Dr. Phil was on Carole’s television in her living room, on mute. That’s how I watch it too. A band of six, one pound Yorkie pups were bouncing around in a fenced in pen, the floor covered in pee pads with bright and faint yellow splatters all over the white plush surfaces, revealing varying degrees of hydration among the dogs. The barking and incessant urination reminded me of why I’m a large breed dog person. It was her boyfriend, a man who operated a sawmill in rural Quebec, and didn’t speak any English, that owned your parents. He looked exactly as you’d imagine him to look – like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, or Gerard Depardieu in the 80s, a far cry from the over-weight, quadruple heart bypass patient who has admitted to drinking 14 bottles of wine per day before he gave it up in 2015 to work on his health. I suspect the damage is pretty much done, drink up G, you only live once.

I walked through Carole’s kitchen, which displayed more ashtrays than I thought any one person needed. I wondered what she kept in the cupboards, probably more ashtrays – maybe the less formal ones or the ashtrays with chips out of them, she didn’t strike me as being a woman who would throw away a perfectly good ashtray. On the linoleum floor there were stray pieces of teeny tiny kibble, and a couple of small puddles of urine, not in a dirty way necessarily, her house smelled of Mr. Clean; it was clear that she was trying, but the sheer number of puppies was overwhelming, if not for her, for the house, a cookie cutter bungalow, with a tiny backyard, not exactly built for breeding dogs.

I saw you, staring back at me through the sliding glass door. You were sitting under a patio chair on her deck, shivering, your eyes were almost human – I crouched down to your level, you met my gaze and walked toward me. With your nose you nudged me where the front pocket of my jeans was and then you licked my hand. I picked you up and you were mine.

Over time you grew into your role, Thatcher, you were the protector, the serious one – you would always survey the crowd like a secret service agent charged with guarding the president; for clarification, I meant Obama or Clinton, ok maybe even G.W., but not the current one. Winston happily played the decoy, diverting attention from you so you could do your job. You were selective with who you let into your space – mostly family, primarily women and Asian men. Yes, I am generalizing on the latter category in a way that only a gal from a small town with more pickup trucks, donut shops and senior citizens per capita than any other city in the world, can. At least I didn’t refer to the men as being of oriental descent – that isn’t a thing, it is a western construct, I know that much, I’m somewhat educated. I can’t recall from which countries they hailed, hence the generalization. All I know is that you were afraid of most men, but not Asian men. They were afraid of you though, so I think you took some pleasure in the irony.

Like your brother, you swallowed your fair share of foreign objects – bobby pins, safety pins, Lululemon head bands, a medium grey men’s tank top you found on the Supreme Court lawn and a tennis ball. Anytime we undertook one of our pilgrimages to the vet, the vets would all want to take your case on account of the randomness and variety of your needs. I thought your days were numbered when the vet told me there was nothing more she could do for you that time you swallowed a tennis ball, whole. She suggested I take you for a run to see if you could pass it on your own, in the absence of that, I was to bring you back to be, well, you know, offed. So, I took you for a run – we hate running, and it was awful, terrible really. When we got back to our apartment building you began to circle, bum in the air as you braced yourself for the birth of a round fluorescent orb named Wilson. I would not have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes. But you did it. You were a medical marvel.

We moved from city to city as I advanced my career and my one constant was you and your brother. Every night when I came home from work, it was you who greeted me, pushing Winston out of the way, to be first, you’d nudge my pocket and I’d pat your head. You were my shadow. Remember the time I forgot you in the hall of our apartment building after our morning walk? You had to have been out there for 20 minutes, just sitting there waiting for me. You were so obedient when you wanted to be. But when you wanted to send a message you would revert to being a poorly behaved, jealous boy. I can still remember when I brought Winston home, you looked at me like, “who the hell is this and when is he going back to where he came from?” Sarah and I were crouched on the floor trying to put Winston’s collar on when I looked at her and said, “did you leave the water on?” She replied, “no”. That’s when I met your gaze, you were standing on top of the couch, which by the way had been delivered a few days prior, and you were peeing — you peed like Tom Hank’s character in A League of their Own, you peed for a solid minute, at least, flooding the couch cushion. Your message was received, but I was not pleased with you at that moment. I forced you to take Winston under your wing and eventually you did. In the end the two of you were best buddies. Following Winston’s death in October your health deteriorated, significantly. It was like you lost the will to live.

Heath was at swimming lessons with Olivia when I made the call to the vet to see if I could bring you in that morning, instead of our previously scheduled date, four days later. It was time, you and I both knew that. Heath felt bad because we weren’t able to give you a burger party send off like we did for Winston. So, in the spirit of fairness he picked you up a couple of sausage biscuits from Tim Hortons and some Timbits – I’m not sure you chewed any of it, in typical Thatcher fashion, you swallowed it whole. Heath helped you into the Jeep and kissed your forehead for the last time.

We arrived at the vet clinic where you had spent many a time being x-rayed, poked and prodded. We were lead into one of the examination rooms where the vet tech blessed you, making the sign of the cross in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit, on your forehead. In hindsight, there are probably some folks who wouldn’t have appreciated that, but I did, it was comforting. It was more ceremonial than a means to an end though, as we know, all dogs go to heaven anyway. She kissed your nose and left the room as the vet tended to you. I told her of your last meal, she thought it was a completely appropriate choice. I commented, “is there ever an inappropriate choice for a last meal?” I thought a last meal is a choose your own adventure kind of deal, but she told me that the owner of one of her other patients brought in a jumbo package of hotdogs for her Pomeranian as his last meal. She fed that dog all 20 of the raw hotdogs – twenty! To which I conceded, “ok, well that is completely inappropriate” — inappropriate AND disgusting. So there we sat, making small talk about the hot dog lady, as the vet inserted the port into your vein preparing for the injections. Twenty raw hotdogs, can you believe it? The dog was about 14 lbs! If I was good at math I’d tell you what percentage of that little guy’s body weight was fed to him in hotdogs, but as you know, I’m not.

As you lay on the floor you locked eyes with mine in the same way you did when I picked you up for the first time at 8 weeks old and again when you peed on the couch. I was your person. You never broke your gaze, nor did I, as the life left your body. To say my heart was heavy would be an understatement. I couldn’t breathe. The vet gave me a hug and left me with you to say goodbye. I sat there for a minute, staring at your soft, fluffy body that Olivia and I had bathed for the last time the night before. You smelled good too, not like your brother Winston, he hated being clean and part of me can’t help but wonder if he tapped out a week early to avoid his appointment at the groomer that was scheduled for a week after his death. I curled up next to you and I gave you a big hug. We had a good run, T. You taught me how to selflessly care for another being. To put the needs of another before my own, so many times over the last ten years. I got up, kissed your nose and with your collar and leash in hand I opened the door. I had also gathered up all of the tissues I used to sop up my tears during your procedure; I was so used to you eating anything that was on the floor, that I guess I did that out of habit in an effort to prevent you from eating them. On a side note, we actually have to clean up food that falls on our floor at home now — it is such a foreign concept and it is labour intensive. When I opened the door I heard a man say to his friend, “there is another dog coming, pick up Bentley.” It was in that moment it hit me, there wasn’t another dog coming, I had to leave you there. I didn’t think I had any tears left, but I did, and they started up again. I took a deep breath, dried my eyes and walked out of the room. When the man saw me, leash and collar in one hand and tissues in the other, I saw his heart sink in his chest as he connected the dots. He looked at me, my eyes near swollen shut from the tears, and he said, “Shit, I’m really sorry”, to which I replied, “yeah, me too.” I handed the vet tech the Kleenex, she gave me a hug and as I passed by Bentley the man’s French bulldog, I gave him a pat on the head and said, “I like your sweater, buddy.” I sat in the Jeep for a couple minutes before putting the key in the ignition. I had arrived at the clinic that morning with one of my best buddies and was leaving with nothing but an old collar and a leash that I would never use again.

I grabbed a coffee on the way home, but I didn’t get any cookies (in case you were wondering). It seems that Starbucks has discontinued the PB cookie – which is probably for the best. I had decided I’d mourn you in a more productive manner than I had your brother. On that note, I’m down twenty five pounds.

I miss you, my friend, every single goddamn day. Sometimes when I see other people in the neighborhood walking their dogs, I get jealous and I can’t help but wonder if they know how lucky they are. Ah well, they’ll figure it out someday, like I did. Until we meet again, take care of your brother and leave the Asian men alone!