Ok, so now that Maddie is gone, I'll change the title of this blog to "The kids and us." The address will stay the same, but there's no point in keeping the title the same. Sort of like the fact that we got rid of many of Maddie's toys over the last few weeks - very sad, but what are you going to do?
I'll stop posting stuff about the dog, but before doing so, I'm going to write about how the kids are currently handling her absence (along with a few other thoughts and memories in one last post later - mainly for posterity rather than for the edification/entertainment of any readers out there).
Teddy has little sense that Maddie is gone. On occasion, he will mention her name, but he doesn't seem to dwell on her absence in any meaningful way. About the most that he's done is to raise his hand and complain about "Maddie hair" - something that he has always done after discovering some foreign hair object on his pacifier or food. Because we no longer have dog hair permeating the house, his complaints are less frequent, but they still pop up.
Margaret has a better sense that Maddie isn't here, but I don't think that she completely understands why or exactly what it means. Still, she seems to recognize that Maddie is gone and won't be coming back. For example...
When we walk home from work, we can walk through various parks. One is a nice playground just south of K St. that doesn't see many kids, but abuts a fenced-in dog park. The last two times that we have headed home in this direction, Margaret has asked about Maddie, probably because the dog park reminds her of Maddie. During the most recent trip along that route, Margaret, who was sitting (in a blatant safety violation) on top of the stroller in front of me said, "I miss Maddie." "Yeah, so do I," I said. "Why did Maddie have to leave?" "Well, she got sick and had to go to the doctor." "But she misses us." "Yeah, I'm sure that she does." "And we miss her." "Yes, we do." "But will she come back?" "No, I don't think so." "Why not?" "Well, she was pretty sick." (A pause.) "So she won't come back?" "No, she was pretty sick and I don't think that she'll be able to come back." (A pause.) "But she was a good dog." "Yes, she was." (A pause.) "I miss her a lot." "Yeah, I miss her a lot too."
Margaret was getting a little teary-eyed around this point, but I told her that we'd talk about it later and managed to get her distracted by something else. So while Margaret seems to have some understanding that Maddie isn't here, and seems pretty unhappy that she isn't, her understanding isn't terribly deep or persistent at this point.
It's still difficult to come home from work and not see Maddie. Or to walk around the neighborhood without the dog. At this point in her life, Maddie wasn't doing the amazing things that she did in her prime, so it's more the overall routine that I miss. She was just there. Loitering around the kitchen. Helping with the yardwork. Jumping into the back of the car to accompany us to Target in the 'burbs or wherever we happened to be going. I'm so accustomed to thinking, "I'm going to 7-11 (or Oscar's store or Ricardo's store Griffin Market - two of the little bodegas in our neighborhood) and I'll take Maddie along and she'll wait outside for me" that it's really jarring, and not a little disorienting and depressing, to go by myself.
One thing that I really miss is her ability to "clean up" after the kids. Neither of the kids is a terribly neat eater at this point. Teddy, in particular, is quite a slob. So we end up with lots of rice or peas or whatever on the floor after dinner. And cereal all over the little breakfast table in the morning. In the past, I never gave much thought to these spills, as Maddie would invariably clean them up at some point. But now, they just sit there. So we have rice under the dinner table from a couple of days ago, waiting for Abby or me to vacuum it up. Even when I'm cooking dinner, I find that I'm amazingly careless about scattering little scraps on the floor during my food prep because, in the past, I could always count on her to take care of them.
Margaret knows that Maddie isn't here. (Not surprisingly, Teddy is basically clueless, although he has called her name or mentioned her a few times. But there's no depth to his mentions of her.) Yesterday, when we came home, Margaret yelled "Maddie!!" as we always do, then casually asked "Where's Maddie?" when the dog didn't appear. But she headed right for the bathroom without waiting for a response and didn't belabor the point. Nor did I. (By the way, it's exactly this sort of casual event - calling "Maddie" when we open the door after getting home - that is so freakin' difficult for me.)
Today, she was a bit more persistent, although not at the obvious time when we got home. "Where's Maddie?" she asked as we walked home, partly because she was whining about things in general and decided that this was a reasonable thing to whine about. "Well, Maddie got sick and had to go to the doctor," I told her. "But she'll miss us," Margaret replied. I told her that we'd talk about it later. Then when she asked the same question as we drove to Target to get stuff for her birthday party - again the type of situation where I really miss the dog because she would always be there in my rear view mirror as we drove somewhere after jumping into the back with a casual "Maddie up!" - and got the same response, she said, "But she'll miss us. And we'll miss her."
I don't think that Margaret can possibly understand the situation, even if she notices Maddie's absence. I think that I'll probably deflect her questions forever. I won't really lie to her (which some friends in Chicago suggested - "Maddie's gone to a farm" or something like that), but I'm not sure that it's even possible to have a meaningful or informative discussion about death with a four-year old.
A final thought is that I've been amazed by how sympathetic people are when they hear that you've lost a pet. I may be a bit inexperienced with grief, having lost few important people in my life. After all, I still have two 90-year old grandparents around (both of whom are going strong) and, until last year, had three. When people have told me that they've lost a pet in the past, I think that I've had a somewhat subdued response, partly because I don't want to intrude on their personal grief and partly because I don't have much experience with it. But when I mention that Maddie died, both to friends in Chicago and to people at work, it's been amazing how sympathetic people have been. And, I have to say, it really helps.
For the last couple of weeks, Maddie has been a bit "off." Really, she started to slow down noticeably around a year ago. We haven't played frisbee in almost a year and even our ball-playing fell off quite a bit in the last few months. To a large extent, we attributed this to old age and arthritis. At her last check-up a few months back, the vet seemed to agree - she's an older dog who's getting pretty stiff after years of "hard work." So he put her on some anti-inflammation meds to help with the arthritis which really seemed to help a lot. I think that the joint pain exacerbated her aversion towards the kids - we felt that she linked the psychic trauma associated with the kids to the physical trauma of her arthritis - so when that pain was gone, she was much more willing to hang out around them, even if she still didn't want to interact with them too much. Way too much drama for her.
But she slowed down even more in the last two weeks. Stopped eating her food with her normal vigor, lagged behind on walks, and showed little interest in ball or most of her other favorite pastimes. I could still get her to prance around with a stick or pull me into the local bodega for a dog treat, but in hindsight, she definitely wasn't her normal self. She also had a blood test that came back bad a few months ago. The vet never quite explained what the blood test results could mean as we decided to redo it and it came back fine, but he did mention ultrasounds and other potential tests to see if we could figure out what, if anything, was wrong with her. Even if we had done more tests, I'm not sure that we could have, or would have, done anything about Maddie's condition. She was an old dog and, it turns out, a sick dog, and at some point, one just has to come to grips with the fact that a dog's longevity is much shorter than ours.
This past weekend, Abby, the kids, and I flew to Chicago. The kids were going to visit the Chicago grandparents, Abby was going to see some of our friends, and I was going to the Cubs home opener at Wrigley with the guys that I had season tickets back in the late 90s. At the airport in DC before we left, we got a call from Rodah, our friend who was taking care of Maddie, who said that Maddie was having trouble walking. Ok, we said, let's see if she gets better over the course of the day, and we'll figure out what to do. But she didn't get better. Rodah said that she was alert, as always, but just didn't seem able to move about on her own. After a few calls with Rodah on Saturday afternoon, between which we tried to figure out what to do and how we could get Maddie to the vet, we finally decided to fly Abby back to DC on a Saturday evening flight from Midway to Dulles. Our thinking was that it wasn't fair to have Rodah, or anyone else, deal with trying to get Maddie to the vet on a Saturday night. And she wasn't improving in a way that made us think that she'd "get over it" by the time we got back on Tuesday. A diabetic episode? (Even if Maddie hadn't shown any evidence of being diabetic before.) Her arthritis getting worse? (Which wouldn't explain why she wasn't eating.) Or something else?
Abby got back around 10:00 PM on Saturday night only to find, adding insult to injury, a car partially blocking our garage. She managed to get out of the garage, picked up Maddie, and took her to a 24 hour vet hospital in Friendship Heights around midnight. I don't know exactly what happened, but my understanding is that the vet people carried her back (because Maddie couldn't walk) to do some tests. A distraught Abby then called me with the test results: they had done an ultrasound on Maddie's abdomen and found significant cancer-like tumors in her stomach, spleen, and other organs. The prognosis was so negative that we decided to have Maddie put to sleep late on Saturday night. Abby sat with her for a while before they finally put her down.
Not that it would have mattered to Maddie, who wouldn't have understood anyway, but I'm very sad that I didn't get to properly say goodbye to her. But at the same time, I probably wouldn't have handled it well at all, so it may be for the best that I wasn't there. And Maddie was getting old - she was arthritic, didn't like the kids very much, and was a shadow of her former self. Given that the next few years would have seen an inevitable decline, I think that we're ok - or at least I'm ok - with the outcome.
Still, I miss her terribly. I especially miss seeing her in the back of the car when we got picked up at the airport today - Maddie would always be in the back, with her head out the window, looking intently for some sign of me when I got picked up at the airport. Or taking her to the grocery store in the car with the kids. Or just going out for a walk with her and the kids to get a bottle of wine or a gallon of milk. Or seeing her in the morning next to the bed or outside the bathroom door when I took a shower. Or hearing the click-click-click of her toenails on the wood floors as she moved around. Or seeing her head poke around the corner of the stairs when we came home after work. Or having her loiter around while I cooked dinner, or the kids ate dinner, waiting for scraps to fall to the floor for her to hoover up. All of the things that she was just "there" for.
But she was old. And we couldn't have done much for her given how sick she was. It's sad, but she had a good run, a life that was really special, and so while we'll all miss her, I think that it was an ok time for her to go.
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We got Maddie at a farm outside of Chicago back in 1998. She was born in August which I know because Maddie was almost exactly the same age as my niece Alex, and they've always been linked together in my mind as 4, then 6, then 8, then 11 year olds. It was taking me longer than I expected to finish my thesis, so Abby and I decided to get a dog. I did some research on the rudimentary internet that existed back in 1998, and we decided to get a Border Collie, the smartest darn dog around. We found an ad for a litter in a newspaper and drove out to the cornfields by De Kalb. The breeder, who was so old that he's probably not around anymore either, had two pups left, one of which was really timid while the other wiggled and squirmed between our legs. Although I don't think that we were set on getting a dog when we headed out there, we fell in love with the second dog and ended up taking her home on Abby's lap, wrapped in a blanket.
Maddie and I spent the next few years as constant companions. I would work throughout the day, but would take breaks to hang out with Maddie. We would walk to Wiggly Field (a dog park in Lakeview in Chicago on Sheffield by the El tracks) or Lincoln Park to play with the other dogs or, even better, to play ball or frisbee in the middle of the morning. Rain or shine - I recall walking from Lincoln Park in full rain gear, covered with mud, with an ecstatic Maddie after playing ball for an hour or so. Then we would take a break in the afternoon to sit on our stoop outside our place on N. Clifton, where Maddie would stand on the ledge next to the stairs and stare, with a cocked head, at everyone who walked by.
When we moved to Pittsburgh, Maddie and I had a similar routine. I would take her into the office with me at CMU where she would lie under my desk while I had office hours or did work. Other days, we would head to the huge parks in Pittsburgh where we would play ball, frisbee, or just wander through the woods. (Maddie was an awesome hiking dog and got to see some great parts of the country in Wyoming, the mountains of Virginia, and other such places.) Or I would work on the swing on our front porch while Maddie stood on the wall around the porch, watching the world go by. The mailman would hand cookies up to her when he delivered the mail. (That's one thing about Maddie - delivery people were always fearful of her. Rightfully so, I suspect, given their typical experiences with other dogs. But they always immediately warmed up to Maddie once it became clear how good-natured she was.)
Once we moved to DC, things got more complicated for Maddie. I was less able to spend free time with her at the drop of a hat. And then the kids came along. Although Maddie handled Margaret's arrival ok, I don't think that she ever coped with the kids very well. Especially once Teddy arrived, and once they started causing all of the drama that surrounds toddlers. Lord knows, I had problems with them, but Maddie just seemed to want them to go away. Or to be able to go away herself. But when she and I went out for walks, sans kids, it was just like old times. Maddie would prance around, grabbing a stick, ball, or whatever else caught her fancy, while I would admonish her for sniffing at something too long or would try to grab the stick from her or would bop her on the head which would send her into a paroxysm of pleasure.
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Maddie was an awesome dog. While I'm sure that everyone says that about their dog, Maddie really was an awesome dog. All of our friends and family seemed to feel that way. And random people in the park or on the street would often stop to comment on what a great dog she was.
She was an incredible frisbee dog. Border collies are renowned for their frisbee skills, so Maddie may not have been that exceptional in this regard, but it was literally breathtaking to watch her play frisbee in her prime. We would go to the big parks in Pittsburgh where I would rear back and fling a floppy frisbee down the field for a hundred yards. Maddie would track the thing, making an arc in her run as necessary, before leaping to catch it with her body fully extended in the air. It was amazing to see, and people on walks would stop to watch as she flew out to catch the frisbee before returning it to my feet. When we went to the big field in Frick Park on misty, foggy mornings, we would leave trails in the wet grass reflecting the routes that Maddie would take to catch the frisbee and return it to me.
She was an incredible "ball" dog. Although I loved playing frisbee with Maddie because it was so amazing to watch, I think that Maddie always was, at heart, a ball dog. And only tennis balls, nothing else. Something about the smell or texture of them, I suspect. She loved to chase and catch the ball. Not only did she do the Border Collie crouch in front of me when we played ball, but she was so intense about it that she ended up wearing a ball-shaped pattern into her teeth from where she carried and chomped on it. One of our better tricks was to scatter a few balls around. I would dance from one to the next, tossing each ball up in turn, and Maddie would shoot from ball to ball, catching and then immediately dropping each of them. Toss it through my legs, and she would catch it. Over her head, and she would jump up, flip sideways, and catch it. Toss it up right next to me, and she would shoot herself forward to catch it. I would bounce from one to the next, tossing them up, her catching and dropping them, then me jumping to the ones that she dropped to toss them up again. Toss up, catch, drop, toss up, catch, drop - exhausting for both of us, but exhilarating to do. She would get wiped out, especially in the summer heat, but I think that she loved it. I know that I did.
She was a beautiful dog. A color that was very unusual for a Border Collie - people often thought that she was a Brittany or a Springer Spaniel or an Australian Shepard. Not only the color threw people off, but also the curly hair. But watch her play ball and you knew - she was a Border Collie to the core. She had long legs and a big barrel chest and walked with a jaunt in her step that resembled the walk of a coyote or a wolf.
And as befits a Border Collie, she was astonishingly smart. When we lived in Pittsburgh, we would occasionally sit in bed running through all the words that she knew. She would sit there, listening and cocking her head, as we ran through word after word that she understood. I think that she probably understood almost 200 or more words and phrases at various points. She could find specific toys, identified by specific names, even if those toys were on a different floor of the house. "Go get your tug toy." "Go get your squeak toy." "Go get your monkey." Maddie would run from floor to floor until she found the exact toy that had been requested. I taught her all sorts of silly tricks. "Roll over," "sit," "shake," and "switch" were child's play for Maddie. Better tricks were those like "weave" - which involved her weaving in and out of my legs as I walked - or "eight" - which involved her doing a figure eight in my legs when we stopped doing "weave." We would play hide-and-go-seek, which we called "ok come find me." I would tell her to sit, would go off to hide in a closet somewhere, and would call "ok come find me." And she would - she was so proud and excited when she would finally find me. (The kids liked this one too, but we didn't play it nearly enough in the last few years because our current house just isn't set up for a good game of "ok come find me.") But it wasn't just the fact that she knew these words, it was the concentration that she put into them. She would sit there, staring at you, cocking her head as you talked, as if she knew, or was trying to understand, exactly what you were saying. My god, it was amazing.
Early on, I taught her to jump up - "Maddie up!" - on any wall that we were passing. So we would walk down Belmont Avenue in Chicago, with Maddie jumping up on various walls and ledges along the way. In DC, her best "up" trick involved walking on the barriers along the bridges in our neighborhood - she could literally stop traffic by trotting along the barrier of the bridges over Rock Creek. And down by the monuments on the Mall, she would jump from one jersey barrier to the next after the powers that be ostensibly put them up for security purposes (but really for entertainment of Border Collies and their owners).
She loved to "help" with yard work. Whether it involved sweeping leaves or shoveling snow, Maddie wanted to be right there in front of my rake or shovel, jumping up to catch whatever leaves or snow I tossed to the side. Before the kids came along, people passing by would inevitably say, "You've got a real helper there." To which I would reply, "She likes to think she's helping." After the kids joined in, with their own rakes or shovels, the comment would be "You've got a bunch of helpers there." "They like to think they're helping," I would reply. Honestly, I can't imagine sweeping our sidewalk without Maddie right in front of the broom as I do so.
And she was an incredibly good-humored dog. I don't think that I ever saw Maddie act aggressively towards another person or dog. With other people, she would vigorously wag her tail, trying to get as close to them as possible. She especially loved visits to the "vacation home," be it Connecticut, Philadelphia, or Chicago. Other dogs she largely ignored because she really just wanted to play ball. But on occasion, another particularly persistent dog could get her to bounce around, playing "tag" as the other dog tried to bowl her over.
We experienced such an encounter this past winter, when a year old lab tried to chase Maddie through the snow in Montrose Park. She bounded through the snow, getting completely exhausted, while the lab tried futilely to catch her. And I remember one such episode at Frick Park in Pittsburgh. We ran into a couple of Bernese Mountain dogs in a big field at the park. They tried to chase her by cutting her off as she looped around them in big circles. But every time they would get near, Maddie would put on a little burst of speed to get past them. It was amazing to watch - I don't think that I've ever seen her run so fast. She would run these big loops, the other dogs would lunge at her, and she would turn it on just enough, but at an astonishing and utterly glorious pace, to elude their paws. It seemed like she knew that, whatever the other dogs did, she could hit another gear that would get her just out of their reach. She was running so fast, with her legs flying, that it was beautiful to watch. Then, after getting past the other dogs one more time, she would slow down and stand there, with her tongue lolling out and a big "grin" on her face as if to say, "Alright, let's do that again. Or better yet, where's my ball?"
