Part 4 / Part 5
““Go away!” he said, roughly, for his heart was suddenly bitter within him, and he felt himself building a wall against more attachments which must only end in death.”
In his quiet, contemplative, post-apocalyptic novel, Earth Abides, George R. Stewart's lonely protagonist navigates a desolate America in search of other survivors of an aggressive virus. Against his better judgement, the first friend he makes is a dog, eventually named Princess, who refuses to allow him to marinate in despair. Surrounded by death, he can't imagine why he should open himself up to the possibility of more suffering; but in the way that dogs always do, she gains his affections, and draws a smile out of him in the face of unspeakable tragedy.
Even without the specter of world destruction, all families are at risk of heartache every day. Whether we believe in a divine plan or random chance as the initiator of our circumstances, we all hope that we will live to a decent age and only die in succession - one generation after the other - once our bodies have expended all the energy they can muster. When we bring pets into our families however, we already know how short their lifespans are. We know we are guaranteed to suffer, and yet we make that choice again and again. We choose to build up new relationships, to love, and to lose.
Eventually, Princess becomes the mascot of a small community of survivors, and by the time she does die, a new society of sorts has formed, with new children, and new hope for the future. Purged of any sense of responsibility to track time relative to the destroyed world from which they had managed to emerge, they decide to start the years over at One, and carve them in stone, with names based on major events. While deciding on the most significant event of the year could sometimes lead to vigorous debate, "The Year Princess Died" is agreed upon unanimously.
Over time, I have lost the plot of Lola's life. After the first years, I cannot easily remember the order in which things occurred, nor can I easily find narrative significance in every event. It got easy. Lola was happy and we were happy, and the days ran together into a happy soup that we eagerly slurped as if there was always an Olive Garden server at the waiting to ladle more happy into the bowl before it ran dry.
There was the Year of the Big Snowstorm, which dumped nearly a foot on us in February, and which just barely melted enough to clear the way for my mother and sister to visit later that week. My mom got to experience the ineptitude of the area's snow removal as the three-lane thoroughfare she was on, approaching our town, suddenly went down to two just because, you know, plowing is hard. Lola looked most at home in the snow, with her thick, nearly white fur, and leaped through the deep parts in dolphin-like arcs to reach our neighbor, Patty, who was standing in the street. There was no guarantee in DC that the winter would bring snow, but each time it did Lola would tear around the yard in it and happily snap at the shovels-full we threw at her.
The summers were something to survive, with the oppressively thick wet blanket of swampy humidity. The back yard had two or three pits in it in shady areas, which Lola had made to uncover the cool dirt beneath the grass. Whenever she heated up, she would switch to another hole and kick a little more dirt out into a pile behind it. We had Lola's fur shorn short every year, usually in late May, but one year after an 80-degree week in April, Tim jumped the gun and took her to the groomers. When the temperature rapidly dropped into the 60s again one night, I woke up in the dark to feel Lola pressing against me, shivering. I pulled the blanket over her and stroked her head while she warmed up, finally falling asleep again between us.
There was the year Lola Broke Donna's Collarbone. Tim and I left the dog with her while we went to Florida on vacation. He gave Donna strict instructions not to walk Lola, as he knew she would throw herself into chasing small animals without remembering she was leashed. Donna's backyard was fenced now and the dog had plenty of running space. Sure enough, the first evening we were gone, Donna walked Lola to the nearby park, and just twenty paces past the border fence, Lola caught site of a squirrel and hauled ass, yanking Donna off her feet into a full face-plant. The pain from her collar bone was so bad, she barely managed to regain control of Lola for the return home. After we got back, Donna tried to milk her injury for sympathy, but we were unmoved. She had been warned, but as Donna herself liked to sing from Damn Yankees, "Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets."
She had started that in response to our own spoiling of the dog. We were well-trained, she would put it, to give her belly rubs, treats and toys on demand. Really though, she had boundaries. We didn't feed her from the table or let her hog the bed. We just gave her the love and attention she so justly deserved. (And sometimes we would let her eat from the flow of dog food as it poured from the newly bought bag into its container. You know, the little things.)
There was the Year of the Fleas, when the occasional scratching gave way to ever increasing torment no matter what we tried. The thing that is important to know about fleas is that ninety percent of the treatments available for them are utter bullshit. Rule of thumb: If you can buy it at the store, don't. It won't work. That goes for every conceivable chemical solution available, and every tree-hugging eco-friendly solution available. They are all bullshit. By the time we had exhausted every over-the-counter or holistic remedy we could find, the plague had fully descended upon our home and taken up residence in the carpet, tiny bloodsuckers jumping up to bite my ankles as I walked by.
Finally, prescription topicals ended the saga, but I think ultimately led to the Year of the Allergies, when Lola developed hotspots and had to go through a months-long regimen of food-change experiments, Benadryl therapy and occasional steroid doses before she finally stopped ripping her own fur out at the roots. When Bella started to go down the same path, we were again faced with having to choose between tormenting by fleas or tormenting by allergies. It was tempting once again to buy into the possibility that the proper diet and a flea comb would help us stay on top of the problem, but ultimately we were saved by a prescription oral medication, which so far has kept the dog both flea and side-effect free.
There was the year we got another dog. We met the collie/shepherd mix at an adoption event, and arranged to bring Lola to visit him at the shelter. The staff described him as submissive, but he was actually clearly anxious. He was very wary of Lola and seemed to just want to escape the room, but she signalled her desire for friendship so gently that he managed to relax a little. We saw him as another misfit in need, and added him to our home. I thought of calling him Red, since he looked somewhat like a red fox. Some time later, Tim noticed a faint ring of black fur around his eyes, complete with lines running back to his ears that looked vaguely like goggles; so he extended the name to Red Baron.
Once home, it became clear why Red, at one year old, was voluntarily surrendered by his previous owners. He was completely untrained and undisciplined, and his anxiety made him unpredictable. Sometimes he could be a whiney wreck, especially on car rides, and other times he would suddenly lunge and nip at other dogs. We didn't see this latter behavior right away, however, because he took to Lola so quickly.
Most significantly though, Red proved to be as dumb as a stoned spermatozoa. He was sweet enough and loved to cuddle, but he otherwise seemed to have no interest in doing what we wanted, or in even responding to treats as positive reinforcement. He remained pretty much untrainable for as long as we had him, but at least after years of encouragement and consistent expectations from us, his anxiety faded significantly. Just like his ears, with one sticking up and one permanently flopped over, he always seemed a bit broken. Donna ended up taking a shine to his dopey neediness, and after she retired, we let him go live with her so she would have someone to fuss over.
Then there was the Year of the New House, which saw Lola finishing middle age, and beginning to make us start thinking about the end. Although she started her time there with the same level of pep we had come to expect from her, the slowdown began to make itself known in her occasional hesitancy to jump into the back of the car, or her increasing surliness toward Red's attempts to get her to play. Beyond these, she never really exhibited much of a decline. She never had trouble getting up or walking. She never got sick or frail, and she remained youthfully enthusiastic at greeting visitors or exploring while on walks.
This quality stood out while Tim was attempting to identify Lola's "some-kind-of terrier" half. Pictures of soft-coated Wheaten terriers on the internet seemed to have the right hair color and facial features, and repeatedly Tim would find descriptions of dogs who retained "puppy-like qualities their whole life," sometimes even up until the day they die. The final clue which led us to settle on this breed as part of her heritage was the pictures of the puppies. All Wheaten terriers are born dark brown and black, and turn blonde by their first year. That was it! That explained the mystery of her shelter name, "Brownie." Her previous owners may have been jerks, but at least they knew their colors.
Coming up next: "Ashes to Ashes. Poop to Poop."