To All the Dogs I've Loved Before (Part 2): Molly

 She was not at all what I expected.

I had turned 32, purchased a house with a back yard, researched breeds and breeders and thought I had it all figured out. After all, I had been planning for my first dog like many people plan for human children. Initially, that first dog was to be a West Highland White Terrier. They were adorable, full stop. 

Then I started researching the breed. Turns out, terriers are challenging, to put it mildly. Thankfully, I’ve always had a certain self-awareness that, while limiting at times, also is a decent guiding force. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I simply did not have the chops for a terrier. 

I then moved to my next favorite breed; the golden retriever. I loved the idea of a placid friend to come home to, after a tough day being a lawyer. I even had the fake fireplace, in front of which, my dream dog would lay contentedly while I unwound with a glass of wine and a book. I began the breeder investigation all over again. Luckily, a friend/colleague, along with her husband, had done all the research for me. I visited them and their dog, who was a delight. I got on the breeder’s list, and at the end of March, 1998, right after finishing up a year-long assignment as a public defender, I brought my puppy home. I named her Molly. I have no idea why, at the time, it just seemed to fit her.

I should mention that, during that year I spent as a public defender, I made some new fun friends. These fun, childless friends went off on a really fun trip to Vegas the same week I was picking up puppy. In essence, I became the first “parent” who had to sacrifice a fun time for the responsibility of another life. 

Did I mention that these friends were fun? They threw me a puppy shower, where others brought their dogs and it was a super fun time. Then they all started having human babies, and the fun times were scaled back into more sporadic affairs, each of which revolved around the availability of babysitters.

But I digress…

Before Molly, my only prior dog experience was with the sweet, mild-mannered Muffin. She was the salve to my angst-ridden adolescent soul. As Molly grew physically, her enthusiastic, rambunctious personality exploded. I panicked. I had no idea how to manage all of this energy. I learned about choke chains and alpha rolls and all sorts of questionable methods for managing a dog that I would later learn came out of field lines. 

Living in the city, I had to quickly decide how I was going to manage my wild child when taking her for walks. After quickly discarding the choke chain, I settled on a Halti Headcollar, which was supposed to control her lunging by turning her head, rather than pulling on her neck. I will never forget one of the first times we tried it out, as she hurled herself onto the ground in the middle of the intersection while we attempted to cross the street. A car had stopped for us, and I was convinced the driver would be contacting the humane society, animal control, or maybe even the police. 

I enrolled her in obedience class, but merely walking her in heel position was a debacle. She lunged and jumped, trying to get the treat out of my hand as I worked to lure her into proper position. 

When Molly was three, I attempted to train her in agility. We managed to get through several sessions before the instructor recommended I take her back to obedience class. Along with humiliation, desperation set in. I loathed obedience. It seemed as though there was going to be very little I could do successfully with my overly enthusiastic first grown-up dog.

When she turned four, after a couple of episodes where she acted out on her separation anxiety (or maybe it was just boredom?) I got Molly a puppy…a silly cockapoo I named Josie. (More on her in Part 3). Molly loved her little sister and tolerated a lot of puppy nonsense. 

Then, when she was five, we discovered flyball.

I remember walking into the facility for the first time and almost being overwhelmed by the energy. It was Molly’s energy! The dogs were crazy…barking, lunging, tugging, and having the time of their lives going down a lane of four jumps and getting a tennis ball out of a spring-loaded contraption of some sort.

Molly picked it up in no time and was actually pretty good! For the next few years we had a wonderful go of it. 

Then she tore her ACL.

While she acted like it was no big thing, I could not help but be concerned at the fact that she would put no weight on her left rear leg. After a consult, she underwent surgery and a long, slow, rehab. Keeping her calm was not easy. Doing figure eights and diagonal hill work challenged us, but we stuck it out, and Molly went back to flyball for about six months before completely tearing her other ACL. I had been advised to expect it, but nonetheless could not contain my disappointment.

Fortunately, this surgery and rehab went quicker than the first and she continued to enjoy life with her typical vigor. By this time, I had added Casey Mae to the pack, who quickly developed into quite a little field retriever. I began to realize how fabulous Molly would have been at that game, had I only known about it when she was young. 

One day in late August, I drove all three dogs to a large cattle farm to meet a friend and work on CM’s retrieving. My vehicle, a 1999 Saturn coupe, was completely unsuitable for transporting a three-dog pack through the bumps and ruts of the property's primitive trails. It had, however, been the perfect vehicle back in 2000, when Molly and I took our epic road trip together out to the Badlands, Black Hills, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. She slept contentedly in the back seat, her head resting on the picnic basket, while I navigated the sometimes-treacherous mountain highways. 

But it was now 2008, and Molly was mostly retired, while I focused the bulk of my training energy on CM. After finding the perfect spot to practice some retrieves, I left the car windows down, as the weather was pretty warm. I lined CM up for her retrieve, my friend blew her duck call and threw the bird. Before I knew what was happening, Molly ran by us at full speed, on her way to pick up the bird. 

She had, quite literally, jumped out of the car window.

Two months later, she hit a big milestone in flyball. We celebrated. In between races, I took her out to cool off. Molly loved to make snow angels and there was just enough snow for that.

I noticed that she seemed slower than normal, so decided to have her evaluated by a chiropractor, thinking she might have injured herself during the car escape incident. One thing led to another, and within the span of a few short weeks, she was headed for surgery to have her left eye removed. I approached this with as much stoicism as I could muster. I knew a one-eyed dog who ran flyball just fine. I reminded myself that dogs do not understand, nor do they bring emotional baggage to their physical condition that we humans do. They do feel physical pain, though. It was imperative that I alleviate the pain Molly felt in her eye.

When surgery day arrived, her system crashed and the optic surgeon called me to come get her. We drove directly to the U of M emergency department, where a veterinary student laid the devastating news at my feet: Molly was full of tumors – hemangiosarcoma. It was unlikely she would make it to her eleventh birthday, which was less than a month away.

The ER personnel drained fluid from her heart, temporarily transforming Molly into a new dog. She was ready to play again. But for me, it was as though the heaviness from her heart was transferred directly onto mine. I tried valiantly to be grateful for the gift of those last few weeks. I memorized every little thing about her. I took her for solo walks in the cold, dark January evenings.

I was scheduled to start a first-degree domestic homicide trial at the end of January. When I emailed the judge to give him a heads up that I might have to miss a half day due to the impending death of my dog, he chastised me for the informality of my communication, and made clear that he was not inclined to grant me any dispensation. “We can’t inconvenience jurors…” was his bottom line.

Mercifully, Molly left me on a day I didn’t have to be in court – Martin Luther King Day, 2009. The tumor on her heart burst, rendering her mostly unconscious. I sat on the floor with her, attempting to read jury questionnaires while giving her permission to die. And so, she did, just as my dear friend and neighbor was warming up his truck for us to take her to the vet. 

I remember letting Josie and CM come in to say their goodbyes. I shouldn’t have gone to the effort. It was fascinating – almost like there was a force field around Molly’s body that neither dog was willing to breach. I know people whose dogs will look for the one that is gone, or go off their food, or somehow express the loss of a member of the pack. That did not happen at my house.

In the end, it may have been for the best. My two remaining pack members pushed me through my grief, demanding that I focus back on them after ignoring them during the last weeks of Molly's life. It wasn’t easy, but with time, all the wonderful Molly memories began, slowly but surely, to dull the pain in my heart.

As my first grownup dog, Molly taught me so much about patience, perseverance and resilience. She taught me how to be responsible for something other than myself. She taught me that dogs will never live as long as we want for them to live.

Knowing that, I cherish each day with the ones who are here right now, with their tight grips on my heart.

To All the Dogs I've Loved Before (Part 1): Muffin

It was the summer of 1974. I was eight, going on nine. My parents decided it was time for our family to add a dog. They also decided, for reasons unbeknownst to me, that the puppy was to be a cockapoo. It’s possible they figured a cockapoo would be close enough to Benji, an adorable mutt who starred in the blockbuster movie from the same year. Benji was ridiculously cute, as well as being a most excellent problem solver.

I remember visiting the breeder and seeing a scrum of honey-colored puppies cavorting in a fenced area. Off to the side, one stretched out in a patch of sunlight, serenely observing her rambunctious siblings.

She would be the one that rode home with us, nestled in a blanket between my brother and me. My mom had created a list of about twenty-five puppy names. Taffy, Honey, and Bubbles were among the finalists. I think she was Taffy for about a week before finally and permanently becoming Muffin.

When we got her home, we took her down to the basement where my dad had constructed an area bounded by green wire fencing. I brought one of my little chairs into that area and sat with Taffy/Muffin in my lap until both she and my right arm fell fast asleep. Right there, a fourteen-year friendship between a girl and her dog was born.

This friendship was likely my best and most stable over the course of those fourteen years. After all, Muffin offered what all dogs provide: unconditional love. Then, in 1988, shortly after Christmas, she quietly succumbed to old age, shattering my heart into a million pieces.

At twenty-two, I had yet to experience a significant loss of any kind, so, in an effort to process all the grief that had nowhere to go, I wrote about it:

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The poor Christmas tree was showing signs of the toll that the season had taken on it. The scent was fading, and the tired green needles were falling one by one. Faced with the responsibility of dismantling the "kids" tree, as it had come to be called, I carefully removed each ornament and packed it away. As the gleam of brass caught my eye, I reached for the dog-shaped ornament engraved with the name "Muffin." The word blurred as tears flooded my eyes.

This had been the last Christmas that Muffin would share with us. When I came home from school for the last time, she was there to greet me, less agile than in previous years, but with the same happy wag of her tail. As always, I regarded her carefully. Did she really know me after all those months? Would she remember? I got my answer at the end of the evening when, without hesitation, she ambled down the hall to my bedroom where she slept whenever I was home.

She was my best friend; my little furry sister. She had been in my life for more years than not. As a pony-tailed third grader, I made her dresses with the scraps from dresses my grandmother had made me. I took her for rides in the basket of my sturdy purple two-wheeler, and she pretended to like it. She came to my birthday parties and I threw parties for her birthday – complete with candles in her dog dish. I taught her all the tricks that Benji and Boomer could do and tried to send her to Hollywood by faithfully sending two contest entries every week for an entire summer.

As I got older and more preoccupied with high school life, she remained a constant friend. When Dad picked me up from club meetings or sports practice, she was there, riding quietly in the back seat as always. As I stayed out later, she waited up with a quiet patience that I could never teach my parents. Finally, when I left for college, she never forgot me.

For some reason this year, I felt the urge to take many “Muffin” pictures. Muffin in the snow, Muffin under the tree, Muffin opening presents. “Because,” I told my parents, “You just don’t know how many more Christmases she’ll be with us.” It was said with an understanding that seemed to escape me as I sat staring at the tarnished ornament.

If I had gone back for an extra semester, I would have been far away from the sadness that filled the house in the last weeks. It was a situation I had always hoped for with all the hope of a coward. She gave me the best years of my life. She shared in my victories, and in defeat, when I cried, she was there – pushing a cold nose into a tear-stained face. Why, then, is it that now I must cry alone? Why did she have to leave me with a fading childhood and an uncertain future? Why can’t dogs live people years – decades of them?

Pushing my tears aside, I saw the once beautiful Christmas tree and remembered the magic and joy of this past Christmas. And I slowly realized that, as real as the holiday snapshots of Muffin are, so is her spirit which will never leave us, as long as we remember. And the famous phrase “time heals all wounds” is with me as I think of Muffin…and know that soon I will not cry, but smile.

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I left home for good in 1988. Even though it would be over a decade before the next puppy wriggled into my life, somehow I always knew that I was that girl whose heart connected best with dogs.

Some of us are just wired that way.