Bye Lil

Yesterday we said good bye to our old family dog. We are all very sad. She was an incredibly neurotic mutt with enough Border Collie in her to spend most of her time as a puppy herding the little kids by biting their heels. She would run switchbacks, bark maniacally, growl and chomp, and we loved her. Well, some of us didn't love her so much. My niece, for example, who was one of the smallest, daintiest little babies ever born, once found her head inside Lily's mouth. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen, which may sound a little harsh, but I was pretty sure that Lily would not close her jaw and chop off Claire's head. My mother hated Lily too. Lily always knew which one in the crowd she could most effectively annoy. She would immediately find my mom, stick her nose in mom's crotch and mom would struggle to maneuver around the furry, matted obstacle.

Lily was so annoying. She barked incessantly. She smelled. Her fur was the thickest covering of any animal that I have ever felt and was usually matted, sticky with pine sap, and knotted with burrs, twigs and leaves. She shed great balls of oily, sticky fur. She had many nervous habits some of which in her early years required that she wear the cone, which meant she scraped everyone's legs, knocked stuff over and looked sillier than ever.

In recent years, Lil moved more slowly, had trouble sitting down and standing up, but once she was up, she was her old self, barking away, stuffing her nose in your crotch, and begging for a butt massage.

The great thing about Lilabether, as I sometimes called her, was her dignity and doggy arrogance. I will never forget a day, when our other dog, Pepper, was a puppy. We were teaching Pepper how to fetch. We would throw the ball, Pepper would retrieve it, and if she brought it back to us we would go nuts with praise. Lily was watching us with an air of great superiority and boredom. Finally, after many throws to Pepper, Lily got up, retrieved the ball, brought it back, dropped it at our feet, and sat down again. She had never retrieved a toy before that day and never did so again. She merely wanted to demonstrate what a stupid, amateur trick it was that the silly new puppy was performing.

I bought Lily shortly after my husband and I had separated. The weekends that the kids spent with him were so terribly lonely for me that I decided a dog might help to fill the time and add some noise to the quiet house. She was such a small. white fluff of a thing. I would carry her around, tucked under my arm, while she nibbled at my hand until it was raw. At puppy kindergarten, she was so out of control, with biting and barking and squirming, that I remember crying with embarrassment during one class. My vet would often advise me to put her on Prozac, but I never did.

In her final months she was deaf and barked even more frequently, often in the middle of the night for no reason we could ever figure out. My husband or I would drag ourselves downstairs, reminded of the days when our children were infants, and groggily try to figure out how to shut her up. We would drag ourselves back upstairs, muttering murderous epithets with every step. We would fantasize about getting a gun to kill the squirrels, or the bunnies, or the sparrows....or Lily.  (For the record, we never fantasized about murdering our babies.)

My kids learned to love Lily with a kind of fierce loyalty. She was such a pain in the ass, and not the kind of dog that people would find lovable, but the kids were always loyal and protective and affectionate with her. They objected when we talked about murdering her.

Then came the day when we murdered her. She seemed to be having trouble breathing. Each breath labored and painful sounding, she was foaming at the mouth. She was sad and weak and miserable. We had been to the vet a couple of days before and the vet warned us that we should be prepared to say good bye. We thought we were prepared. We brought her in and said good bye. My husband stayed with her for the injection. I returned to the car. We are so very, very sad. She was such a dignified, intelligent, irritating presence in our home. She leaves an enormous hole.

Pepper, the now grown puppy, hasn't reacted too much. I let her out this morning after breakfast. Lily used to eat her breakfast more slowly than Pepper. So Pepper would go outside and sit on the porch waiting for Lily to join her. Pepper liked to follow Lily around the yard to eat her poop. Pepper didn't wait for Lil this morning. She just walked off the porch and sniffed around slowly and thoughtfully. I do not know what she is thinking.

Good bye, Lil. We miss you, we love you, and we thank you for much happiness and laughter.