A year for the dogs

This is Clara, our Yorkshire Terrier. She was our pet, and our baby, for about seven years.

Today is a grim anniversary of sorts: One year ago today we decided to give her away.

It's hard to believe that an entire year has passed since we last said goodbye to Clara. It's been quite a year too, lemme tell ya. This hasn't exactly been the best year for us. Sometimes I wonder if things started to go downhill after Clara left. Hmmm ... maybe. But it doesn't seem right to put a year's worth of misfortunes squarely on the shoulders of a dog that barely weighed seven pounds. And it wouldn't be right to have a blog and not say something about her on this sad day, one year removed.

I could write a tome about Clara. She came into my life shortly after Jena did, in 1999. Actually, when I first met Jena in Georgia she didn't have Clara yet; she picked her up from an animal recsuer shortly afterwards (Clara's first owner tried, but could not take care of her). That autumn, Clara ran away (her first of several escape attempts) and was missing for a few weeks. Then Clara had somehow escaped from whomever had found her, and Jena and Clara were tearfully reunited.

Jena and Clara moved to Michigan in March of 2000, and the three of us became a family. We took her everywhere we could. My employer at the time was very liberal, and allowed workers to bring their dogs to work. Clara was by far the smallest dog there, but she was a big hit with my co-workers. (The CEO of the company actually dognapped her once while I was at lunch, and I found him carrying her around the building like a baby). She loved being pampered, and became quite the little diva. She was an excellent travelling companion. Clara has probably been to at least 10-15 states and Canada. We smuggled her into countless hotels that didn't allow pets and, before 9-11, onto airplanes for long-distance adventures.

Clara has growled at a coyote (from the safety of the car window) in Joshua Tree National Park. She has chased chickens at a farm in Iowa. She has walked the dunes of Silver Lake State Park in Michigan, and the Dog Beach in Huntington Beach, California. She has been in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Royal Oak. We have hundreds, nay thousands, of pictures from our travels and Clara is in most of them.

And Clara was a LAP DOG. At work, she would sit in my lap all day. She would grunt disapprovingly when I had to leave my cubicle, but would be right back in my lap when I returned. It was annoying sometimes, but looking back now it is something that I really miss. She was a lap dog in the car too, and she would usually rest her head on my left arm at the elbow. When I would have to make a turn, she would raise her head and let me make the maneuver, but would put her head right back when I was done.

She loved carrots, of all things, and went absolutely bonkers if you were in the kitchen cutting up something crunchy.

Clara was not the healthiest dog in the world. She was born with several shunts, blood vessels that bypassed her liver. I mentioned earlier that Clara had a previous owner but was not able to care for her. This person took Clara to the veterinarian and had her operated on; one of the larger shunts was clamped shut. But there were too many shunts to have them all clamped off, and so Clara would need to stick to a very strict, low protein diet for life. She was not expected to live very long, a few years tops. Clara's medical bills were very expensive (as I would also discover), so her first owner gave her up. While Clara was in our care she did have a few surgeries, the most serious of which was when she had to have her bladder cut open and two large crystals removed.

Despite her medical problems, we loved Clara and made a commitment to do whatever we could for her. We knew that her time with us could be short, so we treated every year together as a gift.

But the writing was on the wall after we had Charlie in 2004 and Clara officially lost her title as "the baby." There was a nervous kind of détente around the house when we first brought Charlie home. Clara didn't act out too much at first, but tensions grew with Charlie. He was very curious about the dog, but she would always steer clear, retreating to her sanctuary at the top of the couch. But Charlie became an expert climber and would soon reach her. He wasn't always gentle with her, and Clara defended herself the only way she knew how.

So when Clara nipped Charlie in the face sometime in September 2006, we decided she would be happier somewhere else, preferrably in a household without small children. It was a heart-wrenching decision to make. All this time, I thought I would be saying goodbye to Clara at the vet's office while she was being euthanized (and I would occasionally joke with Jena that she would make me go through the unpleasantries without her). But giving her away was a lot harder; admitting that we couldn't take care of her any more and giving her away seemed like such a failure on our part.

Today, looking back on it, it was probably the right decision to make. We didn't know it at the time, but Jamie was only twelve days away. Charlie can be gentle and loves animals, but he can also be aggressive. I'm not sure if Clara would have enjoyed going through the "Terrible 2's and 3's" with Charlie any longer than she did. Going through that again with Jamie may have been too much for her. She is probably happier where she is, but we all love her and miss her.

And I especially miss my lap dog.

Bona notti,
Charlie =)