This is another repost from a long-ago Distal Muse. But I’m adding a bit to it. Yesterday was Donna’s birthday.
Anyone who knows me, knows that Donna is the love of my life. There really is no other way to describe it. Ours was a slowly-built relationship, a curious and unlikely collaboration that resulted in…well, we’ve been together for 28 years. I think that should say enough. She has supported my efforts, enjoyed the results, and more often has been the sole source of smiles in an otherwise grim time. She’s my best friend, among other things.
One of the things she wanted was a dog. We’d been living in apartments, of course, and both of us worked full time—me more than full time, with the writing taking up a good deal of “spare” time—and I was reluctant to bring an animal that needed care and attention into that. But when we decided to buy a house, that was on the list of things I promised we’d get.
It was not the easiest thing in the world. Neither of us was really prepared for all that it entailed and we made mistakes and lost sleep and—
See, we both of us take responsibility seriously. We neither of us are the kind of people who would buy a dog, put in the yard, and pay attention to it only when it needed food, like many people seem to do. However it would play out, the fact was that the dog would part of the family.
What follows is the post I wrote four years ago to commemorate the passing of our first dog, Kory. So, without further preamble…
May 4th, 2004. At 5:20 PM we let go of a good friend. It was time. Kory was an eleven year old shepherd-beagle mix, who normally weighed in at 55 lbs.
Donna always joked that she was shepherd, beagle, cat, and kangaroo. When younger, her jumping ability was astonishing. From a standstill she could reach our shoulder height
easily.
This section is about important encounters in my life as a writer. I have to include Kory because of how richly she enhanced our lives. We rescued her from the Humane Society. We think she was the runt of a litter–certain habits she got over only slowly (and some not at all) suggested abuse at an early age. If so, someone had been uncommonly
cruel, because she was less than three months old when we adopted her.
She picked us. Anyone who has ever gone through this process knows what I mean. There was simply no denying that she was going home with us. After a rocky start and a lot of sleep deprivation, Kory settled in to become a fabulous companion. Gentle, attentive, and a comprehension of English that astonished us to the last hour of her
life.
The best time for me personally was 1995 to 97. I had a chance to take those two years off from a regular day-job and try to be a writer. Kory kept me company all day. I write in the morning. She would come down after Donna left for work and lie under my desk until
lunch time. Then we’d go for a walk, eat, take a nap, clean house. She supervised.
She was sad when I had to return to the day-job grind. But she adapted. We trained her to walk off the leash. She waited at every intersection till we gave the word to cross the street. She was friendly to strangers, disinterested in other dogs, and always on the
lookout for squirrels and rabbits to chase. She never caught one, and I’m not sure she was really interested in catching them–she just liked to chase them.
Last year she stopped eating and starting losing weight. After a couple of visits to vets, we learned that she had a thyroid tumor. It had metastisized already, so there was no point in operative. We thought we had a few months at most. But we figured out how to get her to eat again, and she lasted till the date above. A whole extra year. But in the last month, she took a turn for the worse. No energy, greater weight loss. She was not having a good time.
We were with her till she was gone.
Kory liked the idea of me being a full time writer. She encouraged it. She made us laugh. She took care of us. She was family. She’s part of our history, the substance of what makes us who we are. She will be missed. She will always be with us.
Yes, we eventually got a second dog. I’ll put up the post about her later. But I wanted to put this one back up and to say that we now think back on Kory with only a touch of sadness. The stories make us laugh. She was a fine member of the family.
Despite the timing of her death, on Donna’s birthday, we had a good day yesterday and will continue to have good anniversaries. Things end. Even memory fades. But the way things impact you linger. Kory left us better people. And that’s a hell of a nice birthday gift.