In memory of potatoes we have known and loved
Hi, guys.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to write anything this week, but I found that I wanted to, actually. I hope you’ll excuse a break from the usual format.
Early on Monday morning, we said goodbye to this little pup. She was 10 years old, and after nearly a year in heart failure, her lungs stopped working. We knew the end was coming, but needless to say, that doesn’t make it suck any less.
She was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and she came from a breeder. There’s a lot of anti-breeder sentiment these days, and to a certain extent I share it, but my mom really wanted another Cavalier. We looked up a well-respected lady about an hour away, and called to see if she had any puppies we could see. She told us she had one, a male, and two days later we drove down. In those two days, the runt of the litter turned the corner from probably-not-going-to-make-it to definitely-gonna-live, so when we got there, there were two puppies. That runt was Summer.
We had this family tradition in naming pets, that whichever child picked a pet’s first name, the other picked its middle name. I picked Summer. My brother, going through a heavy Led Zeppelin phase, picked “Tangerine” as her middle name. When we brought her home, he commented that she was too small to be a tangerine, so we changed it to “Clementine.” Eventually, she got bigger, and we changed it back.
Summer Tangerine.
I’ve been thinking about grief a lot this week, and the way we grieve for pets versus the way we grieve for humans. The last dog we lost, Mariah Carey the Basset Hound (yes), we lost a few months after my grandmother died. Losing Grandma was tough–she was my last living grandparent, and the one family member outside of my immediate group to whom I was the closest. I was in college, and I hated that she’d never see me graduate, or get married, or have kids. That grief was hard. Losing Mariah was like getting hit by a tidal wave, and I remember feeling that I had somehow betrayed my beloved grandmother by not being prostrate with grief like I was for Mariah.
But my grandmother had lived to be 90. She’d lived a long, full life, had traveled the world, had children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Mariah was 11, which seems impossibly short for a creature with as much personality as she had.
The way pets fit into our lives is different. They rely wholly on us, love us unconditionally, and without realizing it, we shape our lives around them. When we came home from the vet Monday, I looked around and noticed the bed shoved in the corner of the family room, perfectly sized to fit the space between the entertainment center and the wall where Summer liked to lurk. The folded towel under the desk, which was her favourite spot. The tiny water bowls stashed in bathrooms, because she’d get thirsty overnight. The next morning, I realized that I was taking a giant step over the threshold into my bathroom, because Summer used to be there when I woke up, cooling on the tile.
There is a physical hole in my life, a Summer-shaped void. I have other dogs, and will have more, but none of them will be Summer.
She loved nothing so much as tearing up tissues, would gleefully rip them into shreds and consume them. She liked cardboard tubes, but only after one of the big dogs had torn them up a little. Then, she’d dart out of wherever she was hiding and steal the discarded pieces. She took great joy in the rare occasions she was larger than another dog in the room, lording it over them and just generally being a real jerk. She hated storm drains intensely, and I never knew why. We called her potato (for having the rough intelligence of), and goblin, and “little face” and “Summer Bummer.” We cooed at her and played with her and loved her. We miss her.
10 years is not very long for a Cavalier to live, and I want to caution you thus: if you ever find yourself with a Cavalier, ask your vet to check for a heart murmur every time you visit. There is no chance your dog won’t have one–it’s just a matter of when you catch it. And resign yourself to visiting a pet cardiologist. It will probably happen, and it will cost a lot of money. Consider getting health insurance for your dog. Let my Summer be your cautionary tale.
I cannot regret a moment I had with my weird little dog. I only wish I’d had more of them.
We’ll be back to our usual oddness next week. Thank you for letting me tell you about Summer.
Kelly