NOTE: If you choose not to read this series I understand. I will resume normal posts on December 8th.

This is part 5 of the toughest post I’ve ever put up on this blog. As you read it you will see why: it details the final week in the life of my beloved dog, Maisie. This is set to go up on the web during the week after we have her put down. I know I won’t be up to writing anything new for a few days.

I started writing this on Friday of the week before her death. When I woke up Saturday I knew there was much more to say and decided to make it a journal of my thoughts and feelings during that last week of our lives together. Her life is so intertwined with mine that where her gray butt begins and my gray beard ended was often indistinguishable. One big lump on the couch, one snoring mass on the bed, one contented ball of fur and drool on the carpet, and one love so deep that my head explodes when I think about it now.

Please hold us in your prayers. There are three grieving souls at this minute and one who’s gone on to wait ahead for us. Because if Jesus can count the feathers on a bird, I know He certainly has a fresh bowl of kibble and some water for a Sheltie. He’ll take good care of her until we can join her down the road.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27th, 2012

Today was a day for enjoying the past and thinking about the future. As head of the household I have responsibilities and one of them is the integrity of my family unit. We will not make it as a three wheeled vehicle for very long. And so my wife and I discussed taking in a rescue Sheltie before I went to bed on Monday. It was a tough topic, we were both in the bedroom with Maisie falling asleep on the the top of the covers two feet away. Both of us were upset, I was the worst off, and the topic wasn’t really a pleasant one. But it felt good to know that a new dog in our lives would be getting a new home in theirs. I think Maisie would approve. She might not be there to sponge up that love anymore, but I suspect she’d be glad that a dog without a home would be loved by a family again.

Maisie is my spoiled princess/pumpkin/cupcake and always has been. From the moment she tried to climb on the bed to be comforted 10 summers ago she had my heart and never relinquished it for a moment. If she thought my wife and I were getting too close on the couch she’d march over and insert herself between us. She never took “no” for an answer if she wanted attention. I’d be sitting at the computer trying to write and feel her scratching my leg with her left paw. I’d rub her head and go back to work. Moments later the paw was scratching again. I can confirm that non-scientific research bears out the theory that it takes fewer than 10 strokes of a Sheltie’s paw to draw blood.

Once I’d caved in to her need for attention she would fall over and roll up on her back. I’ve never had a dog that wanted their belly rubbed so much. She never got it that I couldn’t reach her from the chair when she did that. Either I’d have to get out of the chair to rub her belly, or she’d go away mad. I usually caved in first.

My wife and I have joked that if she was a human child she would have had two children out of wedlock, stolen our identities, crashed the car and been addicted to heroin by the time she was a teenager. She was in charge of everything she surveyed and if you didn’t move quickly enough she’d bark at you to move you along smartly. No amount of admonishing her about her barking could ever stop it. She was known as “Barky Barkerson” around the house. Poor Edzell lost his hearing years ago from her incessant barking in his ears. If she got to the top of the stairs ahead of him, even if she’d been carried up by a person, she’d turn around and glare at him. Within moments she was barking for him to hurry up. After all, there were “cookies” to be had and if he stood at the bottom of the stairs she wasn’t getting her share!

It got so bad that I actually bought an electronic shock collar to train her not to bark. Trying to catch her in the act and disciplining her had no effect. She just waited until she heard you at the door and quit barking. Once you walked away she resumed her insanity. There was no stopping her through any conventional means. I must admit that I laughed very hard when she ran out the back door and started barking before her tail had cleared the plane of the door frame. She hit the bottom of the stairs as the first shock tickled her, and when she continued to bark it darned near knocked her over. The priceless look on her face, coupled with the “Yip” of pain brought forth a gale of laughter. It wasn’t enjoyment of her pain, but that we FINALLY had a solution to her non-stop barking.

Yeah. Right. She’s so darned smart that within a day she had figured out that while 10 barks was no problem, 11 got you the zap. She altered her pattern to suit the collar. “Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark” and then a five minute break while the collar reset.

She refined that within a week. She figured out that she could still tell off the whole world, but not in bursts. She realized that she could bark for an indefinite period if she merely barked slowly enough. So much for the theory that dogs bark to enforce their territory, because they’re scared, to chase off squirrels, or any other nonsense. Nope, she just liked to hear her own voice. Consequently she would let out one sharp bark about every 30 seconds. She’d sit on the sidewalk in the middle of the yard and swivel her head to the four corners of the world. I watched her from a window one time and she would let out her bark, turn 90 degrees and do it again, rotate another 90 and then back to the first position. She kept an eye on the back door to make sure we weren’t coming out with a squirt gun to enforce the law. Perfect! She would literaly keep that up for hours if we let her. Smart dogs are a pain in the butt when they don’t want to play by the human rules.

Edzell got his revenge on occasion. I actually saw him saunter over to where she was standing and put his nose 6 inches from her throat. He barked until she got zapped and then walked away. I only saw him do it once, but the smile on his face told me that he knew full well what he was doing.

But that’s just the comical stuff that comes around when you think about her. She had a side that was so gentle and so beautiful that it could be called haunting. One of her most endearing traits was her “singing.” Some dogs howl. Some yip. She sang.

I can’t really say how old she was when it began, but at some point years ago she began to gently and quietly sing to us in the morning. She would sit right next to you while you did her medications or as we sat on the steps greeting the morning. It was a combination of a greeting, an expression of joy, and a need to convey some deep thing inside of her from the days of Wolf genes riding at the top of that DNA strand. It was quiet, barely audible: a private song she sang just for us. It was beautiful. My wife and I both cherish that memory. I hope she does it one more time before she goes.

She did other beautiful things over her years. One of my favorites was that the dogs and I spent a lot of time on our back steps. Sometimes we’d sit on the top step, sometimes on the bottom step. The steps were specially designed (by me) to allow Nigel to lay there and enjoy the sun right next to the door. The top “step” is more like a mini-deck, it’s at least 6×5 and gives you plenty of room to step over a sleeping dog when going in and out the back door.

With my strange schedule we (Ed, Maisie, and Joe) have gone out to the steps to eat lunch, look at the dawn, enjoy the sunset, and just be quiet at 3 in the morning. Ed usually hangs out for a few minutes to get a hug or a smooch and then wanders out into the yard to work his nose and flop in the grass or snow. But Maisie spent her time on the step with me. She sat right there, tucked under my left arm, and just leaned against me enjoying the fact we were together. I would sometimes turn to look at her and was always rewarded with a lick from that soft little tongue. We were one in the vast universe on those occasions. No words need be spoken, no gestures required. The love just flowed back and forth between a man and his dog.

I talk to my dogs. I always have. Both of them have large working vocabularies. But I think they wonder sometimes who this Jesus is that I talk about to them. They probably wonder why I am asking Him to watch over them in His Kingdom. And they probably question how He could heal an arthritic old dog when He’s not on the step with us. That’s cool. Jesus gets it. And I know that He’ll get them.

One thing I have said to the dogs for years and years is that I look forward to all of us being together again. I know in my heart that is true. I can only hope that when I meet up with my buddies in Heaven that they have the capacity to tell me how their lives were and that I did a good job. If the amount of love I have is any indicator of my success as a friend to them, I have made it to the top.

And now the time for my singing Sheltie is drawing to an end. There are just three more sunrises before her sunset. And while I will miss her greatly, I’ll be hearing that gentle warbling howl that earned her the nickname “woo-woo” in my dreams until the day I die. That’s a nice thought for a sad man to cling to at this time.

And I need it right now, because the dog food bag ran empty this morning.