Anyone who has read my blog knows that I left Michigan with my two senior dogs, Nestle and Daisy, to begin Kristie 2.0. Let’s start with some background on my little family.
I adopted Nestle from the Humane Society on my birthday. As I walked down the aisle of dog prisoners peering helplessly out through the cages, I passed little dog, little dog, little dog, and then I saw balloons. Balloons? Was it the dog’s birthday as well as mine? My eyes moved to the huge “Discount” sign on the kennel. Being my mother’s daughter, I was never one to pass up a “Discount” sign, so I stopped. My eyes moved down to land on a black, medium-sized, dog with the flirty eyes of Cindy Lou Who, ears shaped like bat wings, and a white crest on his chest.
I’d just begun to talk to him when an employee approached, put her hand over her heart, and said, “Oh, we would be SO happy if someone adopted Sky. This is his second shelter.” She leaned forward and whispered to me as if telling me a secret, “His number was up at the last shelter, but he was such a good dog that they couldn’t put him down; so they sent him here to give him a second chance.”
I looked back at the dog with flirty eyes and read the info on his kennel. “Black lab/smooth collie mix. Four years old.”
“Four years old?” I asked him. He just looked at me with perked-up ears. “I guess you have a few good years left,” I concluded.
After a visit in a private play room, Sky became Nestle Sky, and he had a new home.
A month and a half later, I was looking at the Humane Society web site to see if it said “Adopted” under Nestle’s name. Instead, it said, “Daisy.” Confused, I called the Humane Society to let them know they mixed up the photos and dog names. I was informed that, no, that wasn’t Nestle. She looked just like Nestle but was smaller. Her name was Daisy. Daisy was seven months old, and she had been there since she was two months old. Her entire litter had been dropped off and adopted except for Daisy.
Guilt overtook me as I realized I hadn’t even walked far enough down the aisle of kennels to see Daisy, and she’d spent much of her puppyhood on concrete. So I did what any logical person would do, I volunteered to foster her.
When I brought Daisy home, the two dogs raced around the yard together. “I think they get along okay, don’t you?” I asked my then-boyfriend.
He looked at me in disbelief and said, “I think Nestle’s getting his a$$ kicked!”
True, poor Nestle was running around with his tail between his legs as Daisy decided she was the boss. Daisy also stole Nestle’s food as he’d just step back and let her, looking up to me for help.
Realizing I had anarchy on my hands, I enrolled both dogs in Obedience I. Then Obedience II. Then a tricks class (because every dog should know how to close a fridge and turn off a light.), then agility, then scent work class, and then therapy dog classes. I signed them up for dog dance classes, but we got kicked out on the first day when I got all tangled up in their leashes and they took me down. Dog dance classes are only for classy dogs. Somewhere along the way, I flunked fostering, and Daisy became permanent.
Daisy was food motivated, so she was easy to train. Although Daisy went on to become a nationally-certified therapy dog and volunteered with me in hospice and a nursing home for ten years, Nestle was a bit of a leg-rider, so I didn’t test him. I thought people at the nursing home we visited would fail to see the humor in Nestle being turned on.
Nestle and Daisy had many adventures including traveling to Florida, the Canadian border, and California. While Daisy turned out to be my “easy” dog, Nestle was always up to mischief. He’d squeeze under the gate in the backyard if I was on the other side, or he’d carry on barking like a maniac at the gate in the backyard when people walked by. When it was Daisy’s turn at school and Nestle sat in the car for ten minutes, he’d rake his nails across the dashboard of my Audi. When he opened the garage door and let himself in, getting trapped, he decided I must be in the new red Audi and raked his nails over the door handle…a lot.
Nestle tore up my parents’ basement doors when we left the dogs in the basement while we went to church or dinner. When out with my parents, the conversation would be something like, “I wonder what Nestle’s doing,” and a little tremor of fear would run through us.
On my first Thanksgiving home with the dogs, my parents had me put the dogs in the garage when the rest of the family came over. Soon, the dogs started to ring the doorbell. My dad said, “If they hit the button above the doorbell, they’ll open the garage door!” Worried they would get out, he went down and nailed a huge board over the entire door and its buttons.” My dad didn’t realize he’d also sealed himself into the garage with the dogs. My grandpa chuckled and said, “You know, Thom, the first step to training a dog is you have to be smarter than the dog.”
Once, I left the dogs at a boarding facility while I went to my parents’ anniversary dinner for two hours. I told the owners not to leave the dogs alone in the kennel. When I went to pick them up two hours later, no humans were around. I opened the door to the boarding facility to be greeted by Nestle and Daisy at the door, a trail of blood behind them. Nestle had taken the door off the kennel, made his way to the steel-lined facility door, and was in the process of peeling the steel off their door when I arrived. That last act also shredded his front paws. Needless to say, the two-hour boarding fee was waived, and Nestle went home with bandaged front feet.
Perhaps the maddest Nestle ever made me was when my friend and I came home from a movie. As we entered the front door, we were greeted by a dry and happy Daisy and a soaking wet Nestle. What the bleep? It was pouring rain out, but the dogs were inside. And why was only Nestle wet?
After an inspection through the entire house, I deducted that Nestle had opened a screen door and let himself out onto the flat garage roof. He then tried to dig his way off the roof. When that didn’t work, he scratched up the door around the doorknob, trying to get back in. The big mystery is how he got back in because the screen door had to be pulled open from the outside. All I can conclude is Daisy jumped up, hit the latch that Nestle hit to escape, and let him back in. I guess that’s what I get for overeducating my dogs.
Seeing the roof damage and the leak Nestle caused, wowie, was I mad at him! He heard words he’d never heard before. There was a lot of finger shaking. Every time he tried to make-up with me, I shook my finger at him again. I spent $2,500 on unsuccessful roof repairs before I had to spend $4,000 to have a new roof built over the section he dug up. Ugh!
On the other hand, when Nestle wasn’t getting into trouble, he was my lovebug. Daisy has a strict no hugging policy with me (don’t worry, I steal hugs from her), but Nestle loved affection. He would always lay at the other end of the couch from me when we watched our Hallmark movies. After a while, he would stand up and try to squeeze between me and the back of the couch, resting his head on the pillow next to me. When I was trying to save money on my heat bill and it was bitter cold at night, he would let me fall asleep with my arm around him to stay warm. While Daisy had alligator lips that nearly took off fingertips when given treats, Nestle would always take food ever so gently from my hand. When I did crunches, both dogs would stand over me and try to lick my face. When I did push-ups, Nestle would try to crawl under me. I dressed the dogs in matching outfits all the time, they had pictures taken with Santa and the Easter Bunny, and we did family photoshoots every couple of years.
As you can surmise, my dogs became the family that I always wanted and never had. They went to daycare. When I traveled, an in-home sitter was hired. No expense was spared, and I like to think my dogs and I had/have a very deep connection.
After the move to California, I hired a dog-walker to let them out and feed them during lunch when I couldn’t get home from work. Leaving the only home they’d ever known was difficult on them, and I feel a little guilty for not letting them live out their lives in Michigan before I made the change.
One night, in March of 2019, I went to a comedy show in LA with a friend. As soon as the headliner came on, I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to get home to my dogs. It was everything I could do to make it through the show, and I left for home immediately afterwards. When I got home, both of my senior dogs wobbled up to greet me at the door, and I fell onto my knees, so happy that my intuition had been wrong and that they were okay. But my intuition hadn’t been wrong.
The next morning, I got up, gave each dog a pat on the head, and headed downstairs to start the coffee before walking them. Daisy followed me down, but I could hear Nestle walking around upstairs. Recognizing this was not his usual routine, I went up the stairs to see poor Nestle standing at the top, obviously off balance and looking at me with a crooked look on his face. I thought he’d just pinched a nerve in his spine, so I picked up the 68-pound dog, carried him downstairs, took him outside, and held him up to do business.
Nestle wouldn’t eat breakfast that morning. I told him to stay in his bed and rest. He did exactly as I told him. When the dog-walker came, she said he wouldn’t get out of his bed or eat anything more than a treat. He looked okay in the picture she sent me, so I thought everything would be fine.
When I got home from work, I opened the door to see Nestle laying next to his bed in a very contorted position. He’d been sick and had an accident. I thought he’d had a stroke. I dropped my purse, opened the back door to let Daisy out, and dropped to my knees, holding Nestle. I sat there on the floor for a long, long time holding him and remembering all of our adventures. I just knew that this was it.
The neighbors held the doors open for me as I got Nestle into the car and took him to the after-hours emergency vet. I learned he had Old Dog Syndrome. “Oh, good,” I said, relieved. “So you can give him an anti-dizzy and anti-nausea medicine, and it will go away in a few weeks.”
“No,” said the vet. “Look at his eyes. When they twitch side to side, you’re correct, it goes away. When they twitch up and down, it’s neurological.” I saw Nestle’s eyes twitched up and down.
“So what does that mean?” I asked.
The vet told me it meant he had an aneurysm or a slow bleed in his brain. A vision of my dog’s head exploding from an erupted aneurysm popped into my head, and my heart clenched in distress. The vet said I could leave him there for three days in hopes that it might subside, but I told them how he had extreme separation anxiety, and he would get out of any cage they put him into.
I had to make a choice. I knew I could not have Nestle die without me there with him. That part was easy. What if I left him at the vet’s, and he died without me there and thought I’d abandoned him? What if I took him home, and he died while I was at work? I had to be with him. I had to make a choice.
In retrospect, I wish I’d waited a day. I wish I’d taken a day off work and stayed with him. I wish we’d made some last memories together. I wish I’d hugged him that last morning when I woke up. I wish I hadn’t yelled at him for digging that hole in the garage roof. So, knowing I had to be with him at that time, I made the choice. Nestle was four months shy of seventeen years old if the Humane Society’s age estimate of him was correct. Walking away from Nestle that last night, after he’d slipped away to Heaven, was one of the worst nights of my life, and I had to endure it alone. However, soon things happened that made me wonder when and if he had, in fact, slipped away to Heaven or was still with me.
As I left the vet’s office and got into my car, the windows immediately steamed up as if a dog was panting. I turned on the air and drove home. As I washed up for bed, something made me look towards the staircase. I saw Nestle walking down the stairs as if he’d wanted to be sure I’d arrived home safely and was now leaving.
I’d made arrangements to have Nestle cremated. I was in a trial a couple weeks later when suddenly, around 2:00 in the afternoon, I had the same overwhelming feeling that I’d had at the comedy club. Something was wrong with my dogs. I needed to get home. When I arrived home from work, I had a note on the door saying they’d attempted to deliver Nestle, but I needed to sign for it. They were holding him at the Post Office. The attempted delivery time was around 2:00.
The next day, my neighbor picked Nestle up at the Post Office for me. I stopped at her house after work and got him. I pulled into the garage, let the door close, picked up Nestle’s box, clenched it to my chest, and I cried. I cried alligator tears from the bottom of my heart as I sat there in utter despair. This had gone on a couple of minutes when my turned-off phone started to crackle beside me. I ignored it and let out another gasping sob as the phone came to life and music began to play. It was a song I’d never heard before by Ed Sheerhan. A couple lines played, something about “I’ve been watching you,” and then the chorus came on, playing, “I was happier with you.” If the tears were flowing before, they cascaded at that moment because I knew Nestle was with me and was sending me a message.
“I was happier with you, too, Baby Boy,” I sobbed back to him, feeling his presence there in the car with me as I squeezed his box to my chest.
Today, Daisy, 14.5 years old, totters on the brink of life and death as she struggles with an enlarged liver, Cushing’s disease, limited lung capacity, and three herniated disks that make it difficult for her to control her bowel and bladder as well as stand. I spend $800-1,000/month on medications, vet care, cooking organic meals and gluten-free treats for her, and a dog walker. She still hobbles around happily looking for her food when I hide it, but I know I don’t have a lot of time left with her. I know, when she goes, it will be the last piece of the little family I’ve held close for the past 15 years. I know it will be the last piece of Michigan that I’d brought out with me and my last sense of home. I know I will have a void to fill, but I know I don’t want any more pets for a long, long time. After all, between human heartbreak and pet heartbreak, how many times can a girl get her heart broken and keep getting up again? One day, she won’t get up.
May you all cherish your moments with your pets and give them the happy life they deserve.
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