This week has been a sad one here in Chez Cummings. I’ve known people who considered dogs, and pets in general, to be just animals that are fed and sheltered to serve a purpose.
Kim and I are not these people.
For us, a pet is a family member, someone that is cherished and held close. The fact that I use the word “someone” should speak volumes in itself. This week Kim and I had to make a decision that was devastating to us.
As newlyweds, we didn’t go out looking for a medium sized dog that summer. In fact, we had spent weeks combing the papers and countryside for a nice little terrier. Aloofly, I wasn’t picky – wirehaired fox terrier, welsh terrier, even a Jack Russel (Fraizer was very popular at the time). A nice little dog to live with my new wife and I in our new apartment. But the search was drying out and we were getting frustrated. We’d been at it for weeks – weeks! – with no luck. We went to the Petsmart adoption day as a distraction.
It was a bust.
Cats and dogs surrounded us, but not what we were looking for. There were some puppies that were cute, but they were destined to be huge dogs, and that wasn’t what we were looking for. And then we saw her, huge brown eyes staring up at us through the cage. She was bigger than we wanted. She was older than we wanted. She was looking at us with pleading eyes and we just couldn’t look away. We offered to take her for a walk and the adoption folks agreed (it was how you were supposed to get to know the dogs that were available). That walk was it all took to know that Zoe – Chinzy according to the shelter and Shenandoah according to her original owners – would not be going back into a cage. She wasn’t hyper, but she wasn’t docile either. And the freaky thing was that she seemed to respond perfectly to us, like she’d been with us forever.
We walked her back inside to discover a family was waiting to meet her. The kids were bored and whiny, the parents looked like they were there by force, and to be honest, possession is nine tenths of the law. I knew, with Zoe at my side, she would never see the inside of that cage again.
Zoe came home with us that afternoon. It was only later that we though to check our lease and discover that there was a cap – we could have a 35 pound dog, but nothing that weighed more. As a true testament to Zoe’s state at the time, she actually weighed 34 pounds at nearly two years. You could also count her ribs and vertebrate. We later learned that she was a social dog – right down to only eating when we were eating, preferably in the same room (but from her bowls; scraps from the table weren’t something she learned about until the kids came along and started dropping them).
Zoe was not without her issues. She had certain behaviors that spoke volumes about her previous owners, but she was loyal and loving and an intricate part of our family. When we finally had our own first born, Zoe was integral to welcoming Katy into the home. Zoe stood guard over the little puppy (Katy) through the night, in her own way instrumental to raising our girls. Over the years, she took on the roll of playmate and guardian with the girls, letting them get away with horrible acts of abuse (like saddling up) and fervently keeping watch in the backyard against any leaf or stray breeze that threatened them.
But the years were not always kind. What began as warts grew into cysts, and cysts became tumors. She never let them slow her down, but in the last year you could see the pain they were causing, and we were helpless to do anything. She also suffered from vestibular syndrome, disorienting her at random bouts. In the last year, most of her time was spent asleep, waking long enough to follow us through the house and to eat occasionally. The last few months had been hard on her, hard enough that Kim and I had to come to the merciful, sad decision to let our little girl go.
On Tuesday morning, with the girls tucked away at school, we gave our best friend the peace she deserved.
Zoe was a great friend, and we miss her.