We had to have her put to sleep the night that she was hit. I hate the expression "put to sleep"- it's supposed to make us feel better than saying "put to death", but it doesn't. I've had to make that decision about 4 times now in my adult life, and I hate it. But sometimes, although it's always sad, it's easier, or more obvious that it's the right choice. We saw her X-rays- her whole right side was sort of caved in. I kind of wish I hadn't seen that, because knowing what was going on inside of her made it much harder to listen to her struggling to breathe when I held her on my lap for the last time. She was really and truly suffering- there was no question about that.
Anytime I have had to say good bye to a dog, I have buried my face in their head, close to their ear, and whispered to them what a good dog they are. Because that's all they want to know, their whole lives- that you know that they are good and you are happy with them. You love them back.
Phoebe was full of love, from her cute little black plastic-looking nose, to the tip of her scrawny little constantly-wagging tail. She raced up the stairs every morning when she was let out of the mudroom by my husband where she slept, to find me and give me a morning kiss on the cheek. Then, satisfied, she raced back downstairs to go outside and hopefully find something to bark at. She greeted me with full-out joy and happiness each time I came in the door, even if I had only been gone for 15 minutes. She loved car rides, but instead of being interested in what was going on outside the windows like most dogs, she would just sit on the front passenger seat and gaze at me, adoringly, as if she couldn't believe her good fortune to be sitting so close to me instead of left behind in the house. And if I reached over and gave her an occasional absent-minded scratch on the head, I would hear her sigh a deep sigh of pure satisfaction. "She loves me," I imagined her thinking. "She really loves me."
She loved chasing balls- sometimes she would give them back. She loved chasing the cats, especially Grisette, the younger, crazier one, who would chase her right back. She was smelly and had an ugly growth on her leg- I was planning on breaking down and spending the big bucks to have her teeth cleaned and have that hideous mole removed. She still peed on rugs in the house, occasionally. She always imagined sounds were someone knocking at the door, even me putting my tea cup on the table. I yelled at her a lot, and told her how annoying she was.
She hated the UPS man more than anyone on earth. I used to laugh and tell him that, as she tried to nip at his shoes when he started to get a little too close to me. He was definitely scared of her. I tried to keep her away from him, but she always knew his scent on a package and would attack it as if she was a lion on the plains, taking down a gazelle. She was a fearless hunter. She could catch and kill a chipmunk on the run in 10 seconds flat. She would stare at a wall in the house by the hour if she heard a mouse scratching around behind it, just waiting for her chance to attack it if it happened to venture out. We once saw her take off after a deer in the yard. I thought she would get kicked in the head and killed when she tried to leap through the air and bite it's haunches. I never saw deer in our yard after that.
She was a lap dog. I never had a little dog before and said I never would. But when I took her from my brother, who was not equipped to have a dog (for lots of reasons) I quickly got used to her utter devotion. My lap feels cold now at night when I'm on the couch, and empty. Nina still cries at random times because she misses her. So do I. She was a good girl.
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