Tell me about your "Life Dog"

[leftfield6]

I have used the phrase “life dog” to explain something to friends, family, and acquaintances. What I’m explaining is a tattoo on my forearm that shows a EKG of a heartbeat. It’s a little bit of an odd heartbeat, in that it is not human, and it obviously has a few skipped beats. It is the heartbeat of a former dog of mine, Mattie, who I lost about four years ago.

I always refer to Mattie as my “life dog”. I define that as a dog that somehow gets in your heart more than other dogs that you have had, or will likely have. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have loved all of my dogs. I’m a straight up pushover when it comes to dogs, but somehow Mattie was different.

So here’s the story of my life dog.

The ex-wife and I had a dog that was a mixed breed, but mostly schipperke. He passed away at age 16, and left a huge hole in our little family. So, we began looking through rescue organizations for another schipperke, and somehow found out about a pair, a brother and sister, available for adoption in Louisiana. They were listed on the rescue website as special-needs dogs. Turns out they were both heartworm positive, and the previous owner could not afford the medical treatment. So, the adventure began. We were going to drive the nine hours to Louisiana and then (so we said and planned) be very deliberate in deciding whether to adopt these two little dogs. Well of course that flew out the window the moment we saw them. The meet up was scheduled at the vets office that was taking care of them for the rescue group. It was on a Saturday after the vets office had officially closed so we are the only people there. The vet met us and let us in, and then went to the back to get the two dogs that eventually became Maddie and Simon. As he was trying to get leashes on them to bring them up they both bolted away from him and ran to the front of the office where we were. From the very first moment, a behavior was set in place that would last her entire life. She ran right past my wife to get to me. Somehow there was a special bond. She was instantly and forever a daddy’s girl. Simon was a fantastic dog as well, and luckily took a little more to my then wife.

But this is about Mattie. Mattie was 18 pounds of mischievous affection, wrapped up in unlimited curiosity, surrounded by a feisty attitude, that just made her a great dog. Once she and Simon had survived the heartworm treatment regimen, and believe me that is not an easy journey for a dog, she was ready for a full exciting happy life. Our vet estimated that she and Simon were about two years old. Now that we had a clean bill of health for both of them, we should have been ready for another 13 to 15 years of dog happiness. But as often happens in these circumstances, something else showed up. In the final phases of the heartworm process, our vet detected an irregular heartbeat for Mattie that did not go away after the heart worms were long gone. Whether it was damage from the heart worms or just something genetic that she wound up with, Mattie had an irregular heartbeat. About every 2nd to 3rd cycle, one of her valves did not open and close as it should. Numerous trips to specialists basically had the long term diagnosis of either it will have no impact on her life, or it may shorten her life by a few years, or it may kill her next year. No real solid answer.

She lived to be 16. Over those 14 years we had together were thousands of walks, thousands of her jumping into my lap in the chair or on the sofa. Note, my lap, not my wife’s. Thousands of nights of her sleeping at the foot of the bed. Thousands of trips in the car. On and on.

She went with me everywhere. We never had kids, but my family still has pictures of Mattie and Simon on the wall of their homes, along with their other pictures of cousins and grandkids. If I showed up to a family event without Mattie and Simon, everyone would question what was going on, and tell me to not dare show up again without the kids.

If Mattie was not in the chair or on the couch with me, she made sure to always position herself where she could see me. It used to drive my wife nuts that Mattie would stare at me with obvious affection and curiosity, and yet would hardly even go to her (the now ex-wife) when called.

This went on, as I said, for 14 years. Her heartbeat never seem to slow her down, her affection never waned. Luckily she stayed healthy right up until the end. She was definitely slowing down by age 16, but no major health issues other than the kinds of things that came along with being a 16-year-old dog.

Then one day in November almost 4 years ago, she stopped eating. As in would not touch her food. Very unusual for her. The day she turned her nose up at both breakfast and dinner, I made an appointment at the vet the next morning. X-rays showed that she had eaten something that she could not digest. We never figured out what it was but on the x-ray it looked like a small piece of cloth, or carpet. No matter what it was, it was sitting in her stomach and would not move. She would not/could not vomit it back up, and the way it was positioned, my vet did not think she could remove it without surgery. After a long discussion with my vet, it really came down to no good options. Mattie was too old to survive an extremely invasive surgery like what would have been required to go into her stomach and remove the foreign item. I’ll pause here to say I have a fantastic vet. I have been going to the same vet for over 20 years, and she has gone above and beyond for me a number of times. She knows how I feel about my dogs, and that I will do anything for them. She also knows that when it is time, she that needs to tell me that, and I will make the right decision.
She did, and I did. We made an appointment for her to come to my house later that day, and Mattie laid on my lap on the couch, as she had done thousands of times before.

When it was over, we buried her on my father’s property In Virginia. I know it probably sounds stupid, but at least 20 people showed up. She wasn’t just a part of my family, she was part of their’s too.

Two years later I decided I needed something to commemorate my “life dog”. So I called the vets office, they dug through their files, found the original EKG, and I now have that tattooed on my forearm. Because of the skipped beats, it’s like her signature. No other dogs heartbeat looks just like this.

Sorry for the sappiness. But I do want to hear your life dog stories. Have you had one dog that just found away in your heart like no other? That one dog that every other dog is measured by? Yes, I know this thread has the possibility of being a tearjerker. But, so what? That’s part of dog ownership, And certainly part of life.

[Baker]

Don’t apologize! That was lovely.

I’ve had only two dogs. The first was a rescued stray, she’d been dumped I think. I only had her a little over two months before she was run over and killed. I freaked.

But I got another dog very soon, because having the first one opened me up to how much I loved having a dog.

Don’t get ME wrong, I’ve loved my cats dearly, But I didn’t know how different the relationship was between having a cat or a dog.

I’ve had Nathan now for almost six years, and I can’t bear thinking about how someday I will lose him too. I think he’s what you would call my “life dog.”

[Totenfeier]

My buddy Finn. He’s - ostensibly - a Chihuahua-Shitzu. He looks like a Chihuahua with a greyhound body and legs, if you can imagine such a thing. Considerably bigger than your average Chi.

My wife and I had undergone an horrific summer in which she dealt with a ten-hour spinal surgery (the second of three over three years - long story), a month-long in-hospital convalescence, and then, only a month later, a lumpectomy for breast cancer - which she had found out about four days before the spinal surgery (not to mention a bout of pseudomeningitis as a complication of the lumpectomy, which occupied our attention during the fall and winter of that year) (P.S.: she had lost her mother in February of that year). She found this little pup for sale online in the fall, and fell in love (hell, she loves me, so you can see how quick and uncritical she is) - so we wound up driving two-three hundred miles to get him. I coughed up $200, and we drove two-three hundred miles back, all in the same day. That dog was her inseparable companion for the next year; she credits him with saving her sanity.

When Finn is a year old, my daughter falls in love with a puppy at an adoption fair sponsored by a local pet store. Long story short: the pup has parvo, and dies within three days (don’t have time for the medical and legal issues here). Little Finn contracts the disease. Parvo is a bitch. He’s pooping blood; can’t move. He goes to the vet. They give him medicine, special diet, fluid injections - we all know it’s no use. One Saturday morning, I’m getting ready to take him to the vet, and I know that I will not bring him home. He is that bad. He looks and behaves nine-tenths dead. My wife says good-bye to her buddy; she is destroyed.

He gets his fluid shot. He doesn’t die. within a week he is up and about, slowly, agonizingly. We keep him in diapers for a couple weeks. He gets more fluid shots. He begins to bounce back. He finally wants to eat.

He’s now four. He’s perfectly O.K. And what’s funny is that he and I seemed to bond during his ordeal. Maybe it was that I was the only one who was capable of taking him to the vet during that critical time. My wife got over it, and got a Pomeranian that is crazy about her.

But Finn’s my buddy, every day.

And when he finally does lie down for good, it will rip my heart apart, I know. But that’s O.K. I can love him now.

[Sunny_Daze]

My life dog was my Akita, Kubla.

We got him when he was about 10 weeks old. Driving back from the breeder’s, he sat in my husband’s lap and shook. He was already large, with huge paws. He looked like a stuffed animal. Fuzz and big eyes. That night he wouldn’t sleep in his crate (and he never did). He slept on a blanket on the floor next to me. We showed him where to do his business in the yard. Before we took him out, my husband took his paw, raised it up and thumped it on the glass door. For the rest of his life, when Kubla wanted to go out he thumped on the door.

By the next day, Kubla was ready for big adventures. We have some adorable pictures of him chasing butterflies in a meadow with green grass and golden poppies.

He grew into a 100 pound dog of quiet intelligence, devotion, and love. He radiated a zen-like calmness. We had 2 acres in the redwood trees in the Santa Cruz mountains. He roamed with our other two dogs and had a good life. The only thing he really hated was skunks. They’d come through the fence, and he’d kill them. He didn’t care if they’d spray him. I think that just made him more determined to kill them all. I became an expert at deskunking him. Kubla ended up with slightly bleached fur every spring as the young skunks learned to avoid our property the hard way (the hydrogen peroxide in the de-skunk would lighten the black to almost a dark red).

When he was almost 10 he was diagnosed with lymphoma with an internal mass. We treated it, but he was never the same. The wonderful zen personality faded into a grumpy old man. I lost him about a year later when a bone spur impinged on his spinal column and he lost the ability to walk. Surgery was risky. We were offered a dog wheel “chair”, but Kubla was miserable. We made the decision to let him go.

9 years later I still think of him often and miss him very much.

[Misnomer]

I’ve only had one dog: Bailey is 8. I’ve had her since she was three months old; next month will be our “adoptiversary.” I didn’t know I could love another living thing this much (and I had a cat for 18 years).

I got her when I was living with my ex-boyfriend. He had a dog, a Beagle named Tara, and had been wanting a second dog for a while. My cat had been dead for a few years and I’d always liked the idea of having a dog, so we agreed that after I moved in we’d get a puppy. When the time was right we looked for Beagles and Beagle mixes, and soon enough I saw her picture on Petfinder (via Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation). Two days later we met her at a PetSmart adoption event, and we got to take her home.

She was always “my” dog. My ex worked from home and and would watch her/handle the housetraining during the day, but I was the one who got up with her every couple of hours at night, I took her to puppy class, I took her to the dog park, etc. Luckily she bonded with me pretty quickly: within a month or two we noticed that whenever she was ready to go to sleep, she would come find me and crash in whatever room I was in (she still does that; it’s pretty endearing). When the relationship ended 7 months after we got her, there was no question that she would go with me.

I never would have chosen to be single with a dog (let alone a puppy!), but I absolutely don’t regret getting Bailey. She is awesome, and *such *a good girl. She grew to be 40-45 pounds, with Beagle features but a big chest, tiny waist, and long legs. I have no idea what she’s mixed with, but she’s definitely a hound. She’s my best buddy, and has seen me through that breakup, other breakups, my mother’s death, etc. Sometimes when I look at her I’m nearly overwhelmed by the love I feel.

She might be my last dog, though, because I won’t do it again while I’m still single – and I’m over 40, so the odds of remaining an old maid increase each year. But hopefully she lives so long that she breaks records!

[Daffyd]

We adopted a Basset Hound - Tiffany - from a Basset Rescue organization many years ago because of all the dogs they had, she was the one who ran out of the room and hid… I figured she was a dog who needed rescuing more than the others.

She had been the mom in a puppy mill, and had been left outside for a year when the owner died. She only survived because people threw food over the fence for her and one of her puppies.

Tiffany was terrified of the world, except for me… When we got her, they had spayed her, and within a few days, she let me slowly pull out the stitches. She was my dog. She was terrified of my husband for close to 6 years - we figured it was because someone tall like him had abused her before us. She followed me around all day, and at night curled up next to me in bed.

When she was about 4, she started to have problems using her back legs. It just happened all of a sudden, and turned out it was Myasthenia Gravis… I did a ton of research, and figured that we didn’t have anything to lose by testing her for the disease. There was a certain kind of shot they give to dogs with MG, and if they instantly can walk after the shot, that proves they have the disease.

I had to fight with vet after vet to test her, and after finally finding a vet to give her the shot, she started walking… Which floored us and the vet, and she started treatment. She was on pills for a few weeks, she went right back to walking, and continued just fine for the next 8 years.

She spent many years with her tail between her legs when we went for walks - the wind literally scared her… When she got scared at home, she would dive into our bed and hide under the covers - just her nose sticking out… I think she figured if she couldn’t see the world - it couldn’t see her.

After many years, she finally started to like my husband, but she was always my dog first and foremost - I would come home and her tail would go insane. When she finally got really sick and we were taking her to the vet, I would have to pick her up because she was too weak to walk far, but her tail would go crazy the minute I showed up.

The hardest thing I ever had to do was put her to sleep, but we knew it was time… Many years later even after raising three other dogs, she has a special place in my heart…