Thanks For Everything, You Were Wonderful

Four years ago on a dreary Saturday morning, I knew that I would be saying good-bye forever to my best friend.  Two weeks before she had stopped eating.  For some strange reason, it never registered with me that this was the beginning of the very end.  I know for a fact that when humans stop eating they have about two weeks to live so why wouldn't the same be true for dogs?  I called the vet and she said let her eat what she wants and if she eats it that's great.  She ate some, but mostly she had completely lost interest in eating.  She had given up on walks over the year too.  My Mom and I joked that she really just wanted to go on a 'mosey'.

Maggy

There were days over that last year when she went on regular, multi mile, walks.  Days when she went chasing after squirrels and bunnies.  Mostly though she'd act like she was enthusiastic about the walk and then about five minutes down the road she'd come to a complete stop and turn back towards home.  I would just turn around with her.  No sense making her walk if she didn't want to go.  

I adopted Maggy from the Baltimore Humane Society in 1998.  I was 33 and she was maybe 7 or 8 months old.  A lab/possibly beagle mix, she was housetrained and she knew sit, and that was pretty much it.  Over the next 13 and a half years the two of us were nearly inseparable.  Wherever I went, Maggy went with me.  When I drove to my sister's, I brought her along.  When I slept at my parents' house, Maggy slept there too.  She slept with me even when there wasn't enough room in the bed.  One year at Thanksgiving at my sister's house I scored an army cot as a guest bed.  There was barely room for me on the skinny frame, but Maggy would wait until I was settled and still, and then hop up on top of me and settle in.  If I shifted during the night, she'd hop off, wait for me to get settled again, and then hop back up on top of me.  Needless to say I didn't have the best night's sleep that night.

Maggy was a swimmer.  I am pretty certain she could smell the water before she saw it.  She was the kind of dog who would leap off the bank into the water.  She loved the water so much that it was sometimes hard to get her out even when she was exhausted.  Once a passing kayak picked her up and gave her a paddle over to the embankment.  The kayak turned back into the river and Maggy leapt off the embankment again.  I finally had to drag her out, dry her off and head back to the car. She slept the rest of the day.

Maggy could throw a ball.  That's right, she would throw a ball to you.  After swimming, chasing a tennis ball was probably her favorite thing.  She'd chase it wherever you threw it - and I was quite talented at tossing it into the odd bush as we walked along and into places where I was fairly certain we'd never get it back.  Once she'd retrieved the ball, or looked pleadingly at me to get it when she couldn't, she'd toss it back to you high enough that you could catch it in all of it's spitty glory and throw it again.

Like most dogs though, if you're lucky, she got very old.  The last night I knew what was happening. Maggy was restless and she was breathing hard, and she seemed disoriented.  I lay awake in bed listening to her breathing thinking if she'd just let go it would be fine.   I'd fall asleep and when I woke I wouldn't hear her and I'd turn on the light, but she wasn't in the room anymore.  I got up and found her in the corner of the kitchen staring at the wall.  It was cold and rainy outside, but she kept crying to go outside.  I look at a picture I took of her about a month before this night, and she's entirely white faced, and she's super skinny and I wonder to myself how I didn't know she was getting ready to say good-bye.

Maggy was suffering on that last night.  When I first got her I had made a promise, mostly to myself, but to Maggy as well that I would never let her suffer if it was in my power to stop it.  She did not die during the night and when I got up I looked up the hours for our vet.  They opened at 8 am and Maggy and I would be there.  I called and told them I thought I needed to put my dog down.  As I said it I was already starting to sob.  They said come on in.  I turned to Maggy, "It's okay Mags, it will all be over soon."  

I never for one minute doubted my decision.  If  you've ever had a dog for a best friend this won't seem odd, because I'm pretty sure Maggy had been telling me for two weeks, "Hey, I'm going to be leaving soon.  I love you, but I have to go."  The whole event was peaceful.  Our regular vet was out of town, but our favorite vet tech was there.  So, it wasn't all strangers.  Maggy lay in my lap and just peacefully left while I held her and cried and told her how much I loved her.  "Thanks for everything Maggy.  You were wonderful." I sobbed into her ear.  

Taking her to the vet hadn't been hard, but leaving without her was downright awful.  I had a giant, aching pit in my chest, and I couldn't stop crying.  I knew I'd be sad when Maggy died, but I didn't expect it to hurt nearly as much as it did.  Dogs integrate themselves into everything.  I talked to her like she was a person, and she responded by climbing into my heart and my life.  Maybe a year after she died I stumbled across the poem "Dogs Never Die".  If you've had an old dog who has died and you read it, you will cry.  Writing this, I've been crying a lot even though it's been four years now. That's just Maggy wagging her tail.

I did learn how to get on with life after Maggy, but that's a different post as you say in blogger lingo. That's a story about Alby.