#22: Some things you should know about Emma the Dog
This was going to be a newsletter that was half hug, half fire and brimstone rant about the work we're going to need to do to protect our marginalized communities and etc. But I don't have the heart for anything except a remembrance of our sweet Emma.
As some of you know, about a year and a half ago, we got a diagnosis that Emma had a giant tumor in her liver and that it was malignant. We'd taken her in because we thought she might have hip dysplasia or something like that, so it came as a shock. As did the way they told us -- they asked us if they should go ahead and put her down on the operating table, because she probably didn't have much more time. We said no way, we haven't said goodbye to her, please bring her out of it and we'll take whatever time there is left.
(the morning she went in for surgery, 2015)
We were lucky. We knew this past year and a half that every moment we got with her was a gift. When she made messes in the back, I would say, "Emma, I can't even get mad at you, because you will just look at me with those 'I have cancer' eyes," and clean it up. But, honestly, she was herself right up until the last week or so. She was energetic. Slower, yes. But she went on her walks. She had a fearsome appetite. She tried to steal Puck's food (the last kibble she ate was some I put in Puck's bowl last week to fool her). She would bark bark and she would flop into her bed and groan and she was a precious, ornery soul. One of the things I'm most grateful for this year is that, despite all the travel I've done, being at home full-time meant I got to be here with her much more than I would have normally.
When I left for YALLfest on Thursday, it was hard. I thought, given how recent her downturn was, that we would have a little more time. That I would get back home and then we would wait for the moment when the decision was right. Christopher stayed here with her and tried to tempt her with all of her favorites. I was talking to Carrie Ryan, dear friend who I know recently went through this with a pet, on Friday and told her despite all this I was really worried she might die while I was away. Carrie said that they know, and that if she did, it was because we'd said our goodbye and she didn't want to put me through it. Every dog has a favorite person, and Christopher was Emma's favorite person.
She laid down in front of his desk on Saturday night and didn't get back up. I was in Charleston, just finishing up my day, when I found out. We sat on the phone together for two hours, crying. I'm still a mess. I will always regret not being home with Christopher, even if she wanted it that way. (I know this sounds flaky and mystical, but you know what, so be it. I'd still have given anything to be there with her, and with Christopher.) But her favorite person was there with her, I take comfort in that. She didn't have to suffer a long, slow decline. We have no reason to think she was hurting much at all before the past couple of weeks. We should all we so lucky. For that, I'm also grateful.
And that at YALLFest at least I was surrounded by friends. Two of our oldest friends, Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier (C and I met each other at roughly the same time they did), shepherded me to the airport. And the lovely Susan Dennard kept me company before our flight back. I only cried on three random strangers. I quietly seethed at the person reading Bill O'Reilly beside me on the plane.
This morning we take Emma into our vet so we can get her ashes back and put them with George the Dog's. I'm hugging Puck the Dog and patting Hemingway the Cat a lot. In the meantime, here's 10 things about Emma the Dog.
1. We adopted Emma in early 2006. She was a special needs dog, who had urinary stones and so would always have to be on special food. She had been through three placements (and three foster homes) already, which hadn't worked out for various reasons. She was being fostered by a lovely Indian couple that were here on a visa for the husband engineer to work for Toyota; she knew her training commands in both Hindi and English. They had four young St. Bernards, and Emma being half basset, half golden retriever, was dwarfed by them in stature if not spirit, not that it seemed like she knew. Both the first times we met Emma, she gave no sign of wanting us to adopt her. Who could blame her for not trusting the latest in a long line of new people? She practically ignored us when we met her at the park. Our other test was to take her to the mandatory training class that all Scott County Humane Society rescues had to take at the time; we drove her in the car with her foster parents and their youngest dog behind us. She cried and barked in the entire time. It was distressing. We took her home with us afterward anyway.
(2011)
2. Basically the moment we got her here, she declared herself queen of the house. She and Hemingway the Cat would race through it, rolling around, playing together. She warmed up to us. By the time we took her back to the next week's training class, she wouldn't look at her St. Bernard friend or her beloved foster family, as if she was worried we'd send her back with them. They were distressed by this; we were relieved. (I still heard from them every so often, even as recently as a couple years ago. I need to write them a note about her.)
3. She had a habit of running away, or at least of sneaking away and following her nose. Two scariest times were when we first got her: She jumped out of the car in the Mammoth Cave National Park and Christopher had to thrash through the woods to dive on top of her. We took her to a playground and let her off lead, not realizing that someone had left the back door cracked when it was usually locked. She was running toward downtown. We couldn't catch her -- despite her short little legs, she was fast. She kept checking to make sure we were back there and then racing on up Martin Luther King Boulevard, however. So...we took a risk. We hid behind a little dumpster wall and waited for 10 seconds. And she came back.
4. Emma had a nose like a god. Her basset half. We would warn people that if there was ANY food in their bags, she would know. As in the time our dear friend Chris Barzak said he had no food in his duffel and in the morning we found Emma with an empty Milano cookie bag; it was way down at the bottom, he said! Emma, we said. If we had people over and they left a sandwich on a table: gone. Once our friends the Melissas were over and we remembered too late we had left a container of chocolate chip cookies inside with Emma. She ate them all. As recently as last Christmas, she broke into a wrapped present of Woodford Reserve bourbon balls and we came home to an abattoir of wrapping paper and I sat up all night with her while she reaped the rewards of her infamy.
(a few weeks ago)
5. Emma would also chew her way into pill bottles. This was because the first time we left her alone in the house, we had also left a plastic bottle of tropical fish flavored cat treats. We came home to discover she'd eaten them all, and her poop was day-glo for the next two days. The next thing she chewed into was a bottle of Melatonin, giving me a near heart attack, until I realized she abandoned them as soon as she found out they weren't treats. She ate through Christopher's dad's heart medication bottles, when he left them on the table.
6. Emma, like Jon Snow, liked to walk the wall. In this case, a little concrete wall along our walking route near Transy. When we first got her, she would often just randomly jump up on things. Always wanting to be a little taller, our Emma.
(she loved a good snowstorm)
7. Emma did not like being alone. We got Puck partly because she had so much anxiety when we left her alone in the house. We used to take her with us on trips, only to discover the moment she was alone in a hotel room she broke out the basset howl. For the first few years we had her, she still had constant urinary tract infections. Once we got our little Puck monster those eased off. His presence was a comfort to her, and he gave her someone to occasionally gently bully. And to play with.
8. Emma liked to employ the Paw of Doom. The Paw of Doom was her long-clawed paw on your arm, in a clear command of "Pet Me, You Fool."
9. Emma did not like storms. She would wedge herself under the bed, very loudly. We bought risers to make it easier for her as she got older.
10. She was a good girl, except when she wasn't. She was cute enough to get away with it. We miss her already. We always will.