Absurd and Askew

It was two weeks ago today that I lost Chance, and these past two weeks have been off-kilter. I know there are people out there who don't connect with their pets the way we do, so for those of you who don't, you probably won't get why losing Chance has been difficult for me.

Chance was my first dog. Not truly my first. We had a dog for a couple of years when I was growing up, but I won't go into Joe and his fate. Chance was my first dog. Until her, I'd always owned cats. Until her, I'd never known that I was truly a dog person instead of a cat person. I loved my cats, don't get me wrong, but cats are so independent that forming a bond with them is different than the bond you form with a dog. Dogs are so interactive and loyal to you, and more dependent on you than are cats. They are truly children in fur clothing.

Chance followed me everywhere. She would lay outside the bathroom door, or the garage door, or the basement door, whenever I disappeared behind them, and she would wait for me to come back. She would lay in front of the refrigerator or the sink while I was cooking. She would lay beside me (she had her "special spot") on the couch whenever I sat or laid on it. She was so present in my life that every day these past two weeks without her, I've expected to find her in her usual places. I've found myself having flashes of momentary panic when I didn't see her where she was supposed to be. My initial thought of "Oh, my God, did I leave her outside?" would be immediately replaced with the knowledge that she's not here anymore.

I suppose it's the grieving process that I'm going through. I know she's not here. Her ashes are home with us now, perched on the entertainment center alongside her picture and just a few shelves away from the others we've lost over the last four years. Mardigan, my cat of 15 years who died in 2005, and Chance's first animal companion, is on the shelf below her. On the opposite side are Gidget, the little stray my husband found that was with us a brief 9 months before she died quickly of IHA in 2006, and Taylor, our German Shephard who we lost in 2007. When you have so many pets, you have to get used to losing them. But you never truly get used to it.

Still there are Sara and Willie, Eric's cats that he had when we met. I had Mardigan and Chance; he had Sara and Willie. Sara will be 19 this year and Willie just turned 18. It's only a matter of time before we're grieving again.

The dogs are relatively young yet. Vai just turned 8 years old in March and is now our oldest pup. He spent 7 and a half of his 8 years as Chance's best fur buddy. He's been grieving, too... mellow and a little out of sorts. He knows she's gone. He's quietly accepted it. Nuno turned 6 in January, and our latest addition, Satch, turned 1 at the beginning of this month.

When you have them, it's inevitable that they will go before you. I couldn't, however, imagine my life without them, even though I know that one day the painful decisions and difficult losses will come. The short time they are with us on this earth is so completely filled with love and devotion and, if we're lucky, an incredible connection that surpasses anything that could be found within human relationships. There's no jealousy, no judgment, no anger or distrust. There's just unconditional devotion and love. If we as human beings don't tap into that special relationship that can be found between man and dog, we're missing a beautiful part of life that turns us into better people in the long run. Though I know someday that each one of them will leave me before I'm ready to let them go, I'd rather have the short time with them there than not have them at all just to avoid the pain of losing them. When we grieve for them, we're showing respect for everything they gave to us while they were here.

In these past two difficult weeks, I've found myself remembering things about Chance that I'd forgotten. The way Mardigan (a 25-pound cat in his prime -- he was a Maine Coone) had finally gotten annoyed with her when she was a pup. Right after I got her, she continually bounced around him, roughly a third of his size, and tried to get him to play with her. About a week of this and he'd finally had enough (and for Mardigan, that took a lot... he was the most laid back cat in the world). He grabbed her by the back of the neck like a mama cat would do to its kittens and held her to the floor. She cried so loudly, like he was killing her, but when he let her up, she never bothered him again.

I also remember the beautiful evening when she was still our only dog and the two of us were on our back patio. I was lounging in a chair and she was sitting by me when both of us, at the same time, saw a "cat" quietly approach one end of the patio. Chance immediately charged, and she was almost to it when I saw the white stripe down the back of the "cat." I yelled "NO!" and jumped up to throw open the patio door and get her inside out of harm's way. She spun around immediately and went directly into the house, but it was too late. She'd been sprayed. She took that skunk smell right in with her. I had to open every window in the house and do the best I could to get the smell out of her. Bath after bath, didn't matter. That smell stuck to her for weeks. Luckily the house aired out overnight. The skunk never returned.

There was the day when Eric let her outside and didn't realize that the meter readers had been into the yard and left the gate open. I came home from work an hour or so after he'd let her out and there she was on the front porch, by the front door, waiting to go inside. She'd chewed through the screen on the screen door trying as hard as she could to get back to her humans, but she never wandered off. Our street was a busy one, and we were only three houses from the 4-lane, 45-mph road that intersected our street. She could have easily been hit, but she didn't want to go anywhere. She just wanted back into her home to be with her family.

It's funny how you remember the silly little things after they're gone. She had a good life. She was spoiled rotten and very loved.