Oh Yeah, You Blend

One week ago we lost Tish. Fourteen years and nine months to the day since I held her as she entered this world. Last Sunday, we held her as she left it.

Tish was born in our very first litter. I knew I wanted to keep a girl with a tail, and she was one of only two who fit that description. The other girl was prettiter, significantly. But Tish…Tish had something about her. I just really liked her. I couldn’t imagine her leaving. So she stayed.

Tish loved everyone and everything from the very start. For all that she was an excitable, over-aroused, barky little weirdo, she was also the sweetest, kindest, most generous, and friendliest little dog. She loved everyone and everything. She loved men, women, ESPECIALLY children (she would turn inside out with joy around children, I always half wanted to see if she could be a therapy dog, but she was SO excitable). She loved big dogs, little dogs, male dogs, female dogs, puppies, old dogs. She just loved, that was her calling.

Tish loved Bert when he visited that summer:

Tish loved to lie in the sun, we called her Suntish.

She loved to be outside on the deck.

She had shark teeth.

She didn’t love agility trials, but she tried her best for me anyway. Eventually I respected the fact that she was saying “no thank you” to trials, and retired her.

She especially loved when we had visitors, and she’d sit and wait for whoever it was to get up in the morning.

She loved her family.

We installed a storm door with a dog door in the spring, and she loved it. She could indulge her inner Gladys Kravitz

Tish loved Jim.

A couple of months ago, Tish developed a corneal ulcer in her right eye. It was bad, as deep as it can be. Her eye was at risk for rupture. We stayed up all night giving eye drops. We went to the eye doctor so. Many. Times. And Tish withstood the eye drops. So many eye drops. And the cone. And the brief encounter with the OptiVizor. And Jim and I did it, We saved her eye. She got cleared to lose the cone and that was wondrous. And she was an absolute trooper through the whole thing, she handled it with grace. Jim had been saying for a long time that Tish was having the best time of her life as an old lady. She was a high quality old lady.

Looking back I really do think that while she’d probably rather NOT have had the ulcer, it did mean she was the center of attention for the whole summer. And I am selfishly glad for that now. I spent more time with her, more of my time was about her.

Monday September 9th Dr Mineo the ophthalmologist said she was doing great, come back in a few months for a recheck. We were thrilled. But I also had a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. Tish had been stumbling over the last week or two. It had come on gradually but it was definitely getting worse.

Her appetite, which had been great for an old dog with failing kidneys, had gradually disappeared.

I ran bloodwork that Monday. Her kidney values were overall a titch worse but really pretty stable. But her proBNP, which indicates stretch on the myocardium, which can indicate possible heart failure, was through the roof. And of course doc was going away the end of that week.

So I took her back to work on Wednesday. The heart murmur she’d had was gone. Sometimes that happens because it happens, and sometimes that happens because the chordae tendinae, the cords that anchor the heart valves, have detatched, which can be catastrophic. But she had no cardiac symptoms whatsoever except the wobbliness. She wasn’t pale or shocky, her x-rays were normal. We didn’t know what was wrong, but something was wrong.

We decided to give her an appetite stimulant. Saturday morning before I left for agility I gave her a dose. She ate a whole jar of baby food for me. Jim offered her food throughout the day, and while she did eat some that morning, her appetite waned again and by the time I got home she was looking terrible. She did manage to get up to greet me (before Trulli knocked her over by mistake), but as the evening wore on, she started fading away.

Jim stayed up with her that night. He said she got up and marched around a couple of times, then he found her beside the little donut bed she loved, so he put her back into it, and by the time I got up Sunday morning it was clear that she was on her way out. Peacefully (natural death isn’t always peaceful, but sometimes it really is just drifting away). Jim and Tish had always had a special bond, and I know she knew he was with her.

I picked her up, bed and all, grabbed a blanket for her, and took her outside. I put her, cozy in her bed, on the deck, facing the sunrise. We sat there with her for a long time, the other dogs in and out, sniffing, snoozing, more or less a normal Sunday morning.

I hope she could smell her beloved outside (Tish would have lived outside if we’d let her). I hope she could see and feel the sunshine one last time. Her beloved Jim was with her, I was with her. Her dog family was with her, and each came to say goodbye in turn, as they often will.

Then she really was gone.

I will miss cuddling with her while napping on the couch. No dog will ever be as good at that as Tish was. I will miss how happy and welcoming she was to every person and every dog who ever came here. She would be so excited about vistors she would SHOUT about it (Tish loved the shouting).

She stayed with Zap and Sherry when Jim came with me to the first Agility Invitational Nina was invited to. She attended their wedding. When she came home her voice was gone, and I asked them just how much barking had gone on, and they said “oh not much”. Like liars. Heh heh.

Tish barked. A lot. Tish was anxious. Very. Tish was irritating sometimes. Tish was frustrating sometimes. But Tish was also the sweetest. The kindest. The happiest. All of the time. She could find a way to get along with everyone and everything. She was an agent of peace. A very loud agent of peace.

There is a Tish-shaped hole here now. We miss you our little fish.

If there’s something after, I hope you have found Rakki and Nina, and are barking your fool head off.

Good friends and good people helped us through more than I can say.

Tish (Alkemi Alpina LS OA OAJ NF CL2 CL3-S), January 15, 2010 – September 15, 2024