Bye Bye Birdie

Lounging by the pool in Cape Coral, FL

It’s a hard thing, losing a pet.  It’s been three days without the Bird, and I still find myself looking for her.  I was under the assumption that since she had never lived here with us in Flagstaff, I wouldn’t miss her as much.  Don’t misunderstand...of course I was going to miss her terribly, but since the end of September, Lady hadn’t been a part of my everyday routine.  When Simon and I made the decision to leave her in Minnesota with my parents for this leg of our adventure, it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make in regard to my pets.  Lady had gone everywhere with us for the last few years...it just felt wrong to leave her behind.  Of course she was in the best of hands...few pets are more spoiled than the pets at Sharon and Richard’s house.  I knew she would miss us and we her, but at the time it was the best decision to make for all of us.  As Lady had gotten older, she had started to have less control of her bladder, as all older living things do.  Having accidents was so stressful for her.  She would obsessively clean herself afterwards, and would even try to clean up any bedding or carpet that she had soiled.  She was always watching me out of the corner of her eye, expecting the discipline that she would have received in her younger years for peeing in the house.  I assumed (hopefully correctly, she never did tell me otherwise) that it would be less stressful for her to stay in Minnesota with my parents, who work shorter hours than I, and  who would be more available to let her out more often.  I thought that maybe the stress of not being with Simon and I would be lessened by a decrease in accidents.  And I can’t say for sure.  At the time it seemed like the right decision to make, for all of us.  So Simon and I and the pugs went to Arizona without her.  I cried for about the first half hour, feeling like I had abandoned my most loyal friend.  I had a sense of peace in leaving her behind, knowing that she was going to receive the best care in the world, but I knew that I was going to miss my buddy, my constant companion for over 11 years.        

Lady at the Outer Banks in North Carolina

In early January, my parents brought her down to Arizona with them (and their two dogs) on their regular road trip to the Southwest.  I could tell that there was something different about Lady when she arrived in Arizona.  She was entering her 16th year of life, and life in general had taken its toll on her.  She had led quite the full life for your average dog, and I have no regrets about all the things we did with her and all the places we went together.  In fact, I wish we would have had time to do more.  But everyone wishes that when they lose a family member, a friend, or a pet.  Lady was all three of those things to me and to my family.  I know it’s probably a bit of a “crazy dog lady” thing to do, but I’m going to tell her story...give her a bit of an obit, if you will.  Of course there will be nothing “bit” about it, as I’m not known for my short prose.  It’s the least I can do for her, and I think it’ll help me with the grieving process as well.  So sit back and get comfy, and enjoy reading about the full life of my best good friend.  Rest in peace Ladybird, Birdie Boo, the Bird, Old Girl, Ladybug, Binners, Laderbins, Bird Butt, Big Girl, and whatever other name she might have been known by to anyone she met.

Passive snuggling with Cooper

I met Lady when I was 21 and going through an early quarter-life crisis.  I had just finished my junior year of nursing school, and I just didn’t have a great feeling for the nursing profession.  In my younger years, I had always wanted to be a veterinarian.  Always always always.  Animals had always been my passion, especially dogs.  When it came time to meet with my high school guidance counselor to decide on a career path, he had dissuaded me from the veterinary field, stating that the education process was long, that there weren’t a whole lot of schools in the area that offered a veterinary degree, and that veterinary jobs are hard to come by.  I took him at his word and did no research of my own, and we settled on nursing instead.  Nursing was in the medical field, and it was still caring for living things.  I thought that it probably wasn’t too much of a stretch taking care of people versus animals (and there are days when I have to assume that it isn’t different at all).  And...I was allergic to animals.  Pretty much all animals, especially the ones with hair.  I figured it probably wasn’t the best idea to take on a career in which I was allergic to all of my patients.  So nursing it was.  I did all right.  Nursing school is tough, and having been out in the profession for a while, I feel that there are schools that prepare their students for what nursing is really like, versus what it should be like in theory.  My school fell into the latter category, and by the end of my junior year I still didn’t feel like I knew what nurses really did.  I was having doubts, and I was seriously considering dropping out of the program all together and pursuing my original career choice, which was veterinary science.  

At the top of Hanging Rock with Matt, Suzie, Simon, and I

At the behest of my incredibly intelligent mom, I decided that summer to get a job in a place that takes care of animals.  Either a vet office, a pet shelter, or something of the like.  I ended up landing a position at Paws and Claws, the local humane society in the Rochester area.  Of course, taking this job came with a few stipulations from my parents.  Well, just one...I was not allowed to bring any animals home.  Ha.  We should have all known from the start how successful that stipulation was going to be.  So I got the job at the shelter, while simultaneously doing a nursing internship at St. Mary’s Hospital.  I figured one way or another, I was going to figure out what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life in regards to a career.  And I did.  My nursing internship showed me what nurses really do, what a difference they can make, and how important they are to the patients they care for.  I found my stride, and decided that nursing was the right choice for me.  Scooping poop at the dog shelter...not so much.  I came home multiple times that summer covered in “muddy” foot prints from my canine patrons.  “oh cute, muddy paw prints!” people would say.  “That’s not mud.” was the only response necessary to have them recoiling in disgust.  Yep, all part of taking care of animals (although I do get poop on me at the hospital too...just less of it...hahaha!).  I continued my job at the dog shelter throughout the summer.  It was sometime in July that I first met Lady.  I came to work in the morning and there was this sweet little dog just sitting in her kennel, while all the other dogs were going batshit crazy like they always did in the morning.  Water bowls were flying, poop and pee was spraying literally everywhere, a barking chorus of 20+ dogs greeted me and did...not...stop for the entire 8 hours of my shift.  That was my typical day.  Apparently Lady had been found on a farm outside of Plainview, MN, where she had given birth to a litter of puppies.  The people who lived on the farm were able to give all the puppies away, but no one wanted Lady, so they brought her to the shelter.    

She always curled up in the littlest of dog beds

Lady was different than the other dogs.  She didn’t bark, she didn’t mess in her kennel, and she never went nuts in the morning or any other time for that matter.  I would go into her kennel with her, and she would gently jump up and put her paws on me, longing to be petted.  And to be taken out...she would go about 14 hours without going to the bathroom because she refused to mess in her kennel.  And these were big kennels...she could have gone and easily gotten away from it, but she didn’t.  She waited.  I bonded with her almost instantly, and I looked forward to the days that I worked so I could spend time with her.  After she had been at the shelter for a few weeks, I found out that she was going to be adopted by a couple of ladies who were venturing into dog ownership.  They were cat people, and thought that if they could just find a nice, calm dog, the transition from cat-people to dog-people might not be too difficult.  I was so sad to see her go, but happy at the same time in the hopes that she had found a new home.  A couple weeks later I worked the afternoon shift, and was out walking one of the other inmates (as I called them) when I looked up at the outside runs, and there was Lady, watching me.  Seriously, I ran back to the shelter and instantly went to her cage, where she jumped up on me was so happy to see me.  It was then I decided that I had to have her.  I emailed my college roommates and asked them if it was okay if I brought a dog with me to our senior year of school.  I wouldn’t say it was a unanimous “yes,” but everyone agreed on some level that it would be all right to have a dog living with us (by the way, we were some of the coolest people at college because of that dog...I’ll get to that later).  Convincing my parents was another matter.  Mom was pretty easy to convince, and she deferred the decision to my dad.  So I waited until he was taking a nap to ask him, as the odds of getting an agreeable answer out of him are better when he’s sleeping.  All he asked was, “How big is she?”  I told him about 15-20 pounds, since that’s what they told me at the shelter and I hadn’t actually weighed her myself.  “All right then” was all he said before rolling over and going back to sleep.  I had won!  The very next day I went to the shelter and got her.  Upon arriving home, the first thing my dad said was, “There’s no way that dog is 15 pounds.”  Yeah...she was closer to 35 (okay, 45), but there she was.  After a brief snaffoo with some potty-training (for some reason she thought my brother Mike’s room was her personal bathroom),  she had become part of the family.

Hiking at Hixon Forest in LaCrosse.  The sun was in my eyes

I learned a few things about her in those first few weeks I had her.  She was terrified of men.  I learned from the higher ups at the shelter that when the vet did her intake exam, he noticed that she had a cracked tooth, in a pattern that is more consistent with being struck in the face than by chewing.  So it was assumed that she had been abused by someone at some point, most likely a tallish man.  So she was not having anything to do with my brothers or my dad.  In fact, she nipped at Mike the first time she met him, which is odd since he was the smallest and youngest of the guys living in the house.  She connected with my dad the quickest, and came to love my brothers too.  I think taking her to college with me was the best thing for her to get over that as well...I lived with 5 other girls, 3 of whom had boyfriends who were always coming and going.  She had no choice but to be around men almost at a constant.  And she did get better.  I think she was mostly over her fear of men by the time I finished my senior year.  Another weird thing about her is that she didn’t know how to play with toys.  We’re thinking that she was around 4 years old when I got her, and I honestly don’t know that anyone ever played with her in those first years of her life.  Instead of playing with toys, she would sit down and rip them to shreds until there was nothing left but bits of fuzz, some plastic pieces, and sometimes a squeaker.  She did know how to catch balls, but she would neither chase them nor bring them back.  You basically had to bounce the ball right at her head, and then she would catch it.  And then drop it.  And that was the end of it.  She was absolutely terrified of thunder.  I can’t even count the number of times that she tried to wedge herself under the bed, behind the entertainment center, under the end tables, or in the corner during a storm.  She panted, she puffed, she paced.  There was no consoling her.  I tried wrapping her up in a blanket or snuggling with her, but she wouldn’t have any of it.  She just trembled until the storm passed, and then life resumed.  As she got older and started losing her hearing, the storms didn’t bother her as much, which was good.

Dirty Birdie after hiking in Colorado

Lady adjusted pretty well to life at Winona State.  She attended her fair share of keg parties, and was always a willing recipient of table food.  She even put on her own Freshman 15.  When we went for walks, we were stopped almost constantly by other college students missing their own dogs.  Had I been a dude, it would have been so easy to meet girls.  I had countless offers from people offering to dog-sit her or take her for walks if I ever had the need.  People thought it was the funniest thing to have a dog wandering through a party.  Fortunately Bird never developed a taste for beer...that could have been bad.  Or maybe she did have a taste for it, and college was just too much for her.  Whatever the case, she was never one to accost me over a beer bottle.  Brie, on the other hand, is a total lush.  

Paddle boarding champ

After college Lady moved with me to Rochester where I began my career as a nurse.  She begrudgingly welcomed both Brie and Cooper to the family.  It’s funny, Lady was present for all the acquirings of both my pugs and my parents’ pugs, and she was always the one the little puppies would want to snuggle with.  I have so many pictures of her curled up with a little pug puppy.  I don’t think she was necessarily mothering them, but tolerating their presence.  She liked other dogs; she would absolutely freak out if we were on a walk and she saw another dog.  Whining and carrying on...I never understood what that was or why she did it.  After letting her give the other dog a sniff or two she was ready to move on.

Once I started doing the travel nursing, she got the opportunity that I think few dogs and even few people get...she saw the country.  She hiked with me to top of mountains in Arkansas, North Carolina, Vermont and Colorado, she swam with me in the mighty Mississippi, she paddle boarded with me in the ocean.  She went for a ride on a four-wheeler in Wisconsin and went boating on Lake Minnetonka.  She’d gone across the country and back, from the east coast to the west coast, Boston to San Francisco, Vermont to Florida, and several places in-between.  Over the last few days I’ve been looking through old photos, and I’m amazed at all the places she went with us.  I even have a video of her jumping across a 6 foot stream in a canyon in Colorado.  She was fearless, she was resilient, she was up for anything.  As long as she was with me, she could do anything.        

Surrounded by her pug siblings

Little bits and bobs about the Bird: I’ve never seen a dog who shed as much as she did.  It was insane.  You could brush her all day long and still get hair off of her.  You pet her and fur went flying.  I have no doubt in my mind that there are still Lady hairs floating around our old house in college, and every place she’s lived since then.  Even after we moved to Flagstaff without her, I was still randomly finding her hairs.  It’s like it was her little parting gift.  When we used to go for walks, I always thought her floppy ears looked like butterfly wings.  My brother Chris thought the same thing.  She loved to go for walks, and in her younger years, she loved to go rollerblading with Simon and I.  She would get so excited when we would get the rollerblades out.  She kept up pretty well, and even pulled me along sometimes.  I appreciated having her on those big hills...hahaha!  She loved to be petted.  I think she would have given up almost everything else in life to sit and be petted for hours on end.  She was a little bit of a turd about it...she’d come up to you when you were sitting somewhere and nudge your hand.  She got so good at it that if you just let your arm go limp, she’d find a way to flip your hand onto her head using only her nose.  For a dog who loved to be petted so much, she didn’t like to snuggle.  She would tolerate it for a short time, but then had to move somewhere else.  She definitely liked her space.  She loved to sleep on the bed...not so much when Simon or I were in it, but when we would leave the house we could usually count on finding her in the bed when we got home...always with her head on my pillow.  Being part cattle dog, she had herding instincts.  If she was in the house or apartment with more than one person, she would constantly pace back and forth to do a visual check on everyone.  She hated closed doors, including the bathroom door.  If I knew I was going to be a while in the bathroom, it was sometimes just easier to have her come in with me.  She used to do this chattering thing with her teeth when she would get excited...it sounded exactly like the Predator.  Taking her to the dog park was a bit futile...she didn’t like to play or run with the other dogs, but was content to just wander to each and every one and give them a good sniff.  When everyone had been thoroughly sniffed, she would come back to me and look at me as if to say, “All right, we’re good.  On to the next thing.”  My nephew Jett absolutely adored her.  The feeling wasn’t mutual, but it was really cute to see how much more gentle he was with her than with the other dogs.  She was his Li Li.  And she hated having her picture taken.  In most of her photos she’s being physically held up by one of us, she’s splayed out with her belly up in a position of submission, or she’s facing away from the camera all together.  I don’t know what that was about, but I have very few “good” pictures of her.  But, I feel like the pictures I do have captured who she was pretty well.  I literally could go on about all the little things I’m going to miss about her.    

She was the most fiercely loyal dog I’ve ever met, and she was very tuned in to human emotions.  Even when I was having a bad day and feeling particularly snappish, she still stayed by my side.  No matter what.  There are days that I wonder if I was even deserving of such loyalty.  I guess I’ll have to assume that I was, or she wouldn’t have given it to me.  Through everything, the good days and the bad, the sickness, the old age, the thunderstorms...literally everything, she was always my dog, and I was always her person.  She might have preferred the company of Simon or my dad, but at the end of the day, it was my side of the bed she slept on, it was me she came to first when I’d come home from work.  I don’t know what I did to deserve that from her, but I feel lucky that she chose me.  

Rollerblading at Cherry Creek State Park in Colorado

The end was hard, but inevitable.  Like I had mentioned earlier, she just looked different to me.  She had basically quit eating, and I honestly think that towards the end, she was just eating to appease me.  She would take a few bites, look at me, take a few more, and when she noticed I wasn’t watching her, she would just slip away, leaving her dish of food behind (much to the delight of the gluttonous pugs).  Simon and I came to the decision together that she was ready to go.  I truly and honestly believe that.  I think that at the end, she wanted nothing more than to be with the two of us for just a little while longer.  So we packed her up and brought her to Flagstaff with us.  She didn’t explore the apartment, she didn’t eat, she didn’t drink, she wouldn’t give either of us any kisses; she just laid on the pet bed I put out for her and went to sleep.  I sat with her for a few hours and petted her, played with her ears, rubbed that little spot between her eyes that she liked so much.  I cried.  A lot.  We took her to the vet in town that I’ve come to love...this woman is fantastic, and is the most caring and compassionate vet I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.  She made sure we were all comfortable, and the end came very quietly and peacefully.  Like my mom said, it was the last good thing I could do for Lady.  It was hard to go home without her.  Even though she didn’t even live here in Flagstaff, just having her in the apartment for a few hours felt right, like we were all together again.  It’s sad that our time here together was so short.  It’s strange how having her here for those few hours has me looking for her now.  When my hand falls off the edge of the bed, she’s not there to lick my fingers.  I don’t hear her contented sleepy sighs, or her little yips when she’s dreaming.  I see the empty pet bed and I just fall apart.  She’s just not here anymore...she won't ever be again, and I miss her so much.    

I’m still dealing with intense guilt over putting her to sleep.  I feel like I let her down in some way, but I keep telling myself that it isn’t my fault that she couldn’t live forever.  Believe me, I would have tried everything.  Well, that’s not true.  I could have done more to keep her going for a month, two months, half a year, but I recognized that that’s not fair.  I didn't want her to get to the point where life was an all day struggle for her.  I did the humane thing, the right thing, in giving my furry buddy a comfortable and quiet exit from this life.  Simon said it best when he said that dogs are so innocent, and there’s just a different kind of tragedy in their deaths.

So there it is.  The story of my Ladybird.