On Loss
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009Haley was a Good Dog. I think if there was a limit to what I could say about her, those are the words I would pick. Sure, she was a pretty dog, sometimes a little slow, mostly game, and usually obedient. Always a Good Dog, though.
Haley’s the second dog we’ve had that I remember, there were a few before her but I was too young. She was the first Ohio dog, and the first dog after a tragic accident with our Dalmatian, Bruiser, that ended with my brother in the hospital, and Bruiser ‘on a farm’. I remember being sad when Bruiser left, but not for a long time. I was four or five, I don’t think I really understood it all.
Because of Bruiser, my mom wanted to really research the next dog. My dad didn’t want us to get a dog at all, and he kept resenting her for the rest of her life. I remember hours in the library with my mom as she researched training, and different breeds. When she narrowed down to English Springer Spaniels, the research didn’t end. My mom then researched bloodlines, for their disposition and their likelihood of inherited diseases. Meanwhile, my brother and I were doing a different kind of research. Names.
I don’t remember the other names we considered, but I know that when he read “Haley: Star” out loud, we both loved it. Mom liked it, too, and Dad didn’t care. He thought we should name the dog Jodi, for Joe DiMaggio, but that was as far as he got involved. Jodi was alright, so we made it her ‘middle’ name (of which she would end up with two). Meanwhile, Mom was still researching, and she’d tracked the perfect bloodlines from Florida, right up to our backyard practically. The breeder had a batch of puppies about to be born, so it seemed as if the stars were aligning. We met the mother, father, and several of her aunts and uncles before the puppies were due, and one of the aunts seemed particularly calm and patient, another Good Dog. So, Haley got her second ‘middle’ name, Leah, from her aunt, hoping she would also be calm, patient, and a Good Dog, by virtue of her name alone.
Haley Jodi Leah Jenkinson was born on April 22nd, 1993. She was tiny, but not the runt. Her brothers and sisters would always pile on top of her on our visits, and she just let them, without a peep. Mom had wanted a liver and white, but black and white Haley was too perfect temperament-wise to pass up. She passed all the puppy tests she was put through, and finally after waiting what seemed like forever to an 8-year-old, she was at home with us.
At first, I was disappointed. Puppies sleep a lot, and Haley just napped all the time. This never really changed much, and when people try telling me that Springers are high-energy breeds, I have to cite her as the exception. But even as a puppy, she was a Good Dog. Beyond accidents that were admittedly owner-error, there was only one time she ever did anything ‘bad’, chewing delicately on a wall while she was teething, and even that only lasted one day. Mom didn’t even have time to buy something to discourage her before she’d decided that was enough.
There were many visits in her first year to visit the breeder, who would give her shots as part of the purchase, and allowed Haley to mingle with her brothers and sisters. Though she wasn’t the runt when she first left them, she was now. She topped out at 40 pounds, when her breed typically hits 45-50. I remember being horribly offended at age eight that the breeder called Haley “that little bitch”, instantly wanting to proclaim that she was a Good Dog, not a bitch at all. Of course, I didn’t know the breeder just meant female at the time.
Eventually, Haley grew up, and out of her naps (for the most part). My brother and I loved stacking pillows up high in her path to watch her brain work out how to get around it, and eventually she’d always jump, until she couldn’t anymore. She was always willing to get to us (of course we were on the other side of the pillows), and would jump heights that I thought were staggering for a dog of her size. But she never jumped the baby gate we set up to keep her out of unwanted areas. She knew she wasn’t allowed. She was a Good Dog.
We put her behind that gate whenever we had guests. Haley had a problem, you see. She loved people, loved meeting new people. In fact, she got so excited, she’d pee. Everywhere. So we’d put her behind the gate and come to her. This seemed to work, and I brought many friends over to meet her this way. As soon as we sat, she’d be in our faces, licking every inch of skin she could find. Haley loved people, and loved to love people.
When we were alone, she had a specific spot by the couch that she loved to lay, and I would lay there with her, just being next to her. Sometimes my head would be next to hers, and sometimes I’d try to do like those old tv shows, and use her as a pillow. That never worked, by the way. She had more patience with laying around than I did, so I’d usually get bored before her and sit up, rubbing her body all over, giving her a doggy massage. I wish I’d done it more as she got older, and probably needed the touch, but her skin became riddled with external tumors that oozed and sometimes hurt her, so I was wary of hitting one accidentally.
She also developed old-dog smell, something that started with her mouth. Haley was the Queen of Dog Breath. If there is a remedy for dog breath out there, we have tried it. I even baked her cookies from scratch that promised to stop it. They didn’t. And she was always panting. Always. It seemed like dog breath was unavoidable, until it stopped coming from her mouth and started coming from everywhere. Then it really was unavoidable. My dad resented this, too, calling her a smelly dog and banishing her to her crate. She’d go along, not sure why she was being sent there, but happy to do what was asked of her. Like a Good Dog.
For years, Haley was taken out to the drainage ditch in the back of our yard to do her business, behind the shed, where I would lean until she was done, then race her back to the house. She ran like a rabbit, and almost always beat me there. Eventually, we all got lazy, and her new potty spot became the side yard, a quick run out the garage, and then back to the house. Then we got lazier still, and she was merely let outside, the extendable leash giving her a 50 ft radius to do her business in. I hated this, but life was too busy to wait for her to find The Spot to squat, and eventually it was just routine. In the last few weeks, she’d developed some kind of painful growth on the bottom of her left front paw, and I had to carry her down the stairs to let her do her business. She seemed to walk better in the grass, so I was patient with her and let her roam, just to give her the freedom to walk with relatively less pain. This past Saturday, we took the old route. I walked her back to the shed, just like all those years before, let her roam while I leaned against the building and waited. She didn’t run back to the house like before, but her tail wagged, and she didn’t limp as we went back, so I walked up the side yard, to the front of the house. By the time we reached the mailbox, she was tired, too tired to go on, so our brief walk ended then, and I carried her inside, though she would have walked if I asked her. Hopefully, if dogs are able to do such things, she remembered the good times, and I hope she appreciated some of it. If her tail was any indication, she did.
Haley was sort of something I took for granted, a fixture in my life that becomes so constant that you almost forget life without her. The summer of 1999, our family went on a vacation, and Haley was boarded for that time, and a little more than a day after so we could get our things in order before bringing her home. The whole day and a half, I kept calling for her, forgetting she was gone. But when she came home again, she grooved right back into her routine like nothing had ever changed. When I got home today, I’d been feeling the pain of her loss all day, so I didn’t expect to see her when I came home. But I’m not looking forward to the day when I do, and she’s not there. I’m sure if she could have chosen, she would be there if I do call for her.
Haley lived a long time. Let me rephrase that. Haley lived a Long Time. My brother went away to college in 1999, and even then we were preparing. “Say goodbye to her now,” we’d say, “she might not be here when you get back.” Chris came home in 2001, and Haley was still here. When I went to college in 2003, it was the same thing. “Say goodbye to her now, she might not be here when you get back.” But I came home and Haley was there. Chris got a job in Atlanta, and we were sure this was it. “Say goodbye to her now, she might not be here when you get back.” I got a job at that same Georgia company. “Say goodbye to her now, she might not be here when you get back.” But each time, Haley was here, still plodding along at her own pace. Content. A Good Dog.
The winter I was in Manhattan, 2007, I got a call from my mother. “Haley’s been having seizures. I think we have to put her down tomorrow.” I sobbed myself to sleep, and though I’d said goodbye, not sure if she would be there when I got back, I still felt robbed. Luckily our vet has always been a kind soul, not subjecting dogs to treatments unnecessarily, or advocating euthanasia just for the money. He said she was fine, and sent her home. Crisis averted. When I got home, life went on as usual.
The second time I came home from New York, I did something I wasn’t sure Haley would approve of, though now I don’t know why I thought she’d care. I brought Gracie into our lives, and Haley kept going like nothing had changed, except now she had more food to eat, stealing the little dog’s supper whenever she wasn’t paying attention. Gracie retaliated, stealing Haley’s treats when the big dog was too slow, and worrying incessantly that Haley was trying to get her rawhide. She wasn’t. Haley could have cared less. She was a Good Dog.
When the growth on her paw was getting far too painful, my mom made up her mind: Haley had to go to the vet. I knew she was taking her, but what I don’t know is why I didn’t spend more time with her last night. I guess I had hope that once again, he would say it was nothing, and she’d be back and snapped out of it in no time. But that didn’t happen this time. I didn’t say goodbye, and she wasn’t home when I came back from work today. She won’t be here when I get back ever again. I can’t really wrap my mind around that. Having a dog for almost seventeen years, and then not having her is not something you can adjust to easily. She was a fixture, a constant. She was a Good Dog. I will miss her, so much.
Because we’d been preparing for so long for her departure, it’s surreal now that it’s happened. She’s gone. We’d joked that she was going to live forever, but I’d actually hoped, at 24 years old, that she would. More recently I’d joked that she was a Highlander, and would outlive all of us because who would suspect a dog? She’d be the only one still alive. But when you look at it, this timing also seems to have been perfect, just like finding her almost 17 years ago. I’m supposed to move away in one week. My brother in one month. My mother has three jobs, and my dad would be home alone with the dog that he never warmed to. If ever there was a good time for her to go, it would be now, while her family was all still at home. I guess she was just a Good Dog that way.
April 22nd, 1993-September 16th, 2009
