October 15, 2012

It has taken me a while to write this post.  My beloved companion, my beautiful dog Mojito, scourge of squirrels and postmen, lover of me, died suddenly on September 1st. 

She’d been diagnosed seven months ago with cancer, a large, inoperable tumor in the vena cava and we nearly lost her then.  She stopped eating, dropped calamitously in weight so that even under her furry coat her ribs could be seen.  She could barely make it down the block, occasionally so weak she stopped in her tracks and lay on the sidewalk.  Her vet, with no optimism, sent us to a specialist who, with considerable optimism, put her on a drug called palladia.  Palladia was supposed to shrink the tumor and keep it from blocking the blood from her heart.  The cancer itself was no problem as long as the tumor could be kept small.

MJ’s response was miraculous.  Within a few weeks, she had gained back all her weight and all her energy.  In the period when she wouldn’t eat, we tried to tempt her with cooked chicken.  We’d made her mac and cheese, scrambled eggs, fed her pizza.  This had all been revelatory.  The only remaining consequence of the illness seemed to be her steadfast refusal to return to dog food.

A few weeks before her death, she and I made, for the first time in months, the entirety of our morning cliffside walk.  I thought then that we were returning to our old routines.  I thought I had a year or more left with her.

Most of my life, I’ve had a dog and I’ve loved them all.  Tweed was the dog of my childhood, then Snippet and Snippet Two.  Tamara came to me my first year of college and was still there when I got married and had children, with whom she was always spectacularly gentle no matter what they did to her with those little, pinching hands.  Wicket and Buffy belonged to my children, but stayed behind when they left home.  Wicket and Buffy grew old and sick and each had one day to be put down, that dreadful, wrenching decision.  I only ever had one other dog who simply died.  My dogs have all lived to be fourteen or fifteen.  Mojito was not yet twelve.

MJ was not the best of the lot or the smartest.  I didn’t love her more than I loved them nor less.  But since she arrived when the children were already living elsewhere, when the house was quiet, nothing much happening day to day, she took up more space in my life than my other dogs had.  The hole she leaves behind is such a big one. My morning walk is so different without her, it should be called something else now, something lonelier than the words morning walk suggest. 

She was always a very anxious dog; the world filled with dangers and alarms, and me an insufficient protection against them.  As a puppy, there was a period when she began to lose weight.  The vet could find no cause, but as I watched her eat one day, I saw how she would jump back when her muzzle moved her aluminum dish a few inches across the floor.  I realized, to my astonishment, that she was afraid of her food bowl.  We replaced it with something weighty and ceramic and the problem went away.

She was a very beautiful dog — a pound-rescue of indeterminate heritage — but so gorgeous, people used to stop us on the street to ask her breed.  I remember three separate occasions on which I answered that she was a mutt, only to have the questioner say that there should be a breed like that, then, that you should be able to buy a dog for yourself who looked like her.  She had a fawn-colored back, a white belly, and a black mask.  She had a star on her forehead like a horse.  She was incredibly soft due to an undercoat that blew continually all year around and buried us in hair.

We could never decide if she was smart or not.  A needy dog who craved attention, she was remarkably impervious to disapproval.  You would ask her to do something quite reasonable or to stop doing something dangerous, and she’d ignore you.  Your voice would rise and she would regard you with puzzlement, sorry that you seemed to have a problem, but unable to figure out what it could possibly be.  This allowed her to continue to do whatever you were shouting at her to stop doing, so we could never decide if the puzzlement was real or feigned.

She didn’t care much for other dogs, a fear-biter on occasion so I could never let her off-leash even though she was too cautious to ever run away.  She liked no person she hadn’t met, and everyone she had.  Anyone she’d met more than once, she adored.  She had a high-pitched keen and the excitement of me coming back from the store or the movies or the library was huge.  My return from a trip of more than a day almost did her in.

I think she will be my last dog, a very strange thought to have.  But I don’t want a dog that isn’t her. 

And I want to travel, see my daughter and her family in London, my son and his family in LA, go the many places I’ve never been without the worry about kennels and boarding and whether the dog I’ve left behind is happy or not.  I look forward to those trips. 

It’s the coming home, that’s such a sad and quiet affair.  My husband refuses to run about in circles, leap at me, and sob with excitement at my return even though I miss it so.  There was a real danger to life and limb when Mojito greeted you home.  It was an extreme sport, her loving you, and I miss it terribly.