THIS PAST WEEKEND, I spent a glorious few days at an oceanfront Airbnb with my sister and a friend to celebrate the end of my chemotherapy. So I guess you could say now that I feel healthy enough to do things with my friends, I immediately decided to consume enough food and alcohol to make myself feel horrible again! But it was all worth it because I needed the break before I face radiation head on next week. I love those girls and appreciate the good time we had and the memories made.
Celebrations are important. Many are to denote
a specific date in time – an anniversary of sorts. It could be a first date, a
first kiss, and engagement or a wedding. Or perhaps the day your child
graduated or you retired from your career after many years. These are all
things we want to celebrate.
But there are also the anniversaries of days
that we wish never happened – and these are often the ones we remember even more. For the older generation or war history
enthusiasts, June 6, 1944 is rooted in their brains as D-Day. Then there are
assassination dates of great leaders – November 22, 1963 (JFK) and April 4,
1968 (Martin Luther King Jr.). If I utter the term 9/11, everyone knows what I’m
referring to.
Then there are the dates that are also personal
to an individual. For me, May 11, 2009 will be the day I lost my dad.
Unfortunately, it is also the wedding anniversary for my sister and her
husband. So it is a bittersweet day for our family.
August 29, 2019. This has now become the
anniversary of when our little family of five said goodbye to our black Labrador
retriever, Maggie. So while I laughed and sipped wine with my girlfriends this past
Saturday, I quietly thought about the dog that had meant so much to us for
nearly fifteen years.
Brad and I got married on December 29, 1990. It wasn’t the date we originally planned on but he had been transferred to Ottawa for a job the previous October and my heart wanted to follow him instead of waiting to marry the following summer. It was the right move and we made Ottawa our home for fourteen years. We welcomed three daughters into our lives and numerous cats, fish and hamsters.
Emily and BJ - 1996 Emily and Spidey - 2003
When the opportunity arose for us to move back
to Nova Scotia in 2004, we packed up everything and made the trek in our Chevy
Venture van – hamster in tow. The excitement that Brad and I were feeling
quickly was absorbed by the kids as well ... we were going to live in the
magical province of Nova Scotia where there were saltbox houses with big back
yards and oceanfront beaches to explore.
The girls adjusted to the new location easily
and quickly made friends in the neighbourhood. Emily and Rachel began school
and Brad started his new job while I stayed home with Colleen and set my mind
on decorating our new home. Life felt quite perfect except for one small thing.
Emily was quick to remind us that we had once
said she could have a dog someday if we moved back to Nova Scotia. Every friend
she had made in the new neighbourhood had a dog and she eagerly walked with
them everyday dreaming of her own pet. “A
promise is a promise” she would say. And looking at those big blue eyes, how
could we possibly say no?
Maggie was not the Golden Retriever she was
hoping for, but this little black Labrador quickly won her over. Maggie was
barely eight weeks when we brought her home from the pet store. It was a few
days before Christmas and the three girls were instructed to wait in the living
room for daddy because he needed to speak with them about something very
important. I can still see their wide eyes when he walked in holding this
little puppy with a red bow around its neck. And I can still hear Emily utter
the words to us with tears in her eyes, “Is that real?” She couldn’t quite
believe that we had kept our promise. And she only looked at the puppy for a
short time when she said “I’m going to call her Maggie.”
December
23, 2004
Christmas came and there was a new level of
excitement in our home. Family members visited and everyone got to meet Maggie.
We had bought a large kennel for Maggie, anticipating how big she would grow
and were firm in our request that she learned to sleep there. We were also firm
about no dogs on the furniture. If the rules were not followed, then the dog
would be going to another home.
Emily and Maggie - 2004
Of course, that didn’t last long. Although
Maggie did not usually jump on the furniture, she quickly settled in to
sleeping with Emily in her double bed - the way it was meant to be for a girl
and her dog.
If you have had a dog, you know that training isn’t
always easy. Staying home after the Christmas holidays were over with an almost
three year old and a new puppy was a challenge I wasn’t prepared for. If Colleen wasn’t chasing the dog, the dog was
chasing her. If I wasn’t potty training Colleen , I was trying to house break
Maggie. I wasn't making much progress with either and was close to having a breakdown. I would
count the minutes for Emily and Rachel to return home for lunch so Emily could
take the little four-legged menace for a walk and hopefully a number one and
two.
We quickly learned that nothing could be left on the floor because the
dog would eat it or destroy it. There was the time Maggie chewed Brad’s shoes. These
were good leather shoes and he was not pleased. He banished Maggie to the crate
and when she wouldn’t stop barking, he attempted to pick up the crate with the
dog in it. This was a grave mistake as he lost grip and dropped crate and dog on
his toes. While he rolled around on the floor, his face a sickly shade of white
and his white socks a worrisome shade of red, Emily yelled, “Are you okay?!”
and ran to the kennel. She quickly took out her precious dog and I can still
hear her little voice say, “Oh my dear Maggie...you’re okay. It’s okay.”
Luckily, Brad’s bloodied and bruised toes healed over time – after all, there
was lots of room in his shoes since Maggie had chewed the tips away.
Emily was fantastic with Maggie. We enrolled them
in obedience training and Emily and Brad even composed a “How To Train Your Dog”
guide that they sold on Ebay. Emily was deeply invested in her pet and didn’t
want her to cause too much trouble. But dogs certainly have minds of their own.
We had a nice long porch at the back of our
home with a gate. We often put Maggie outside there with her water dish and
some shade to get some fresh air if we were too busy to walk with her or play.
But her love for chewing quickly resulted in the wood slats being eaten to
bits- and as an added bonus, a wood staple in the roof of her mouth. So off to the vet to have it removed...just
one of many visits over the years.
I was grateful that we had Maggie when we moved
to Dartmouth in 2007. Emily would be starting junior high and didn’t know
anyone. I was worried about her but she had Maggie to come home to everyday. I’m
quite certain if you asked Emily she would probably recall feeling the same
way. Being a teenager is hard, especially when you’re the new kid trying to fit
in. Over the years, Maggie provided much needed love and support to each of us and
somehow made her way into everyone’s bed eventually.
Fast forward to 2013 and Emily was starting
Dalhousie University. Unfortunately, the evening before, Maggie escaped from
the back yard. She would do this occasionally but she usually would run down to
the nearby lake, take herself for a swim and then return to either the front
door or back deck within the hour. But this time was different. I looked all
over the neighbourhood and she was nowhere to be found. I finally had to tell
the kids and Brad she was missing. We all continued to look in the dark with
flashlights for her and our hearts were broken when she didn’t turn up. We
called shelters and left messages and posted on the Lost Dog Network. She wasn’t
wearing her collar and without a microchip, no one would know her name or who
she belonged to.
Panic was setting in for all of us until we
received confirmation the next morning that she was picked up by animal services
the evening before and had been in “doggy jail” for the night. I couldn’t get
the kids to school fast enough that morning before heading to Burnside Animal
Shelter to post her bail. Once I paid the bill, a worker brought out a very skittish,
wide-eyed dog that looked as if she had seen the dark side of life. She was as
thrilled to see me as I was to see her and she immediately headed towards the
car to escape the horrors of the night she had just experienced. All in all, I
think it helped her wandering days become less frequent. From that point
forward, she seemed quite content to enjoy long walks at Shubie Park or a
stroll at the beach with Emily instead.
Maggie seemed to have boundless energy for so
long. Despite the white chin hairs and the greying paws and belly, she still
had the heart of a puppy. She was always willing to hop in a car to go for a
ride if it meant she would get a chance to walk and run in a new place with the
girl she loved. And even as Emily had less time to spend with her as her
studies and jobs consumed most of her day, she still loved her dog.
Over the last year of her life, it was obvious
that getting up and down was becoming stressful for Maggie. Sometimes in the
morning, I needed to lift her back legs so she could get up off the floor. The
days of jumping on any of our beds were long gone. Sometimes Brad would lift
her up on his lap and hold her like a child and she would look at him with love
in her eyes. And even though we knew it was painful for her, she needed to
follow us wherever we went – up the stairs and down the stairs – click, click,
click would go her nails.
That last week of August 2019, Rachel was home from
Montreal visiting. The weather was warm and there was a sense of calmness in
the air. I sadly made arrangements for Maggie to say goodbye. That day will
never be forgotten. Emily took Maggie to Fisherman’s Cove and that beautiful
old lab walked for hours. She would walk ahead of Emily but always look back to
make sure she was still there. She seemed to find energy one last time to enjoy
the salt air and chase the seagulls. She no longer could jump into Emily’s
boyfriend’s truck but Emily had no qualms lifting her in and out as many times
as she needed if it meant that Maggie would have a perfect last day. We had
roasted chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy and stuffing for dinner and let
Maggie eat as much as she wanted. And
when it was time, we all headed to the vet together to be with her in the end.
It was quick. It was peaceful. It was necessary.
And it was heartbreaking.
Life does go on though. Winnie entered our
lives in October 2019 and is certainly the complete opposite of Maggie. She has a
lot of attitude for a six-and-a-half pound dog. She’s ferocious and spoiled.
She jumps on the furniture and doesn’t care. She will steal the food off our
plates. She will run after a ball but forget to bring it back to you. She has
completely taken over the house. She has trained us to listen to her instead of
the other way around. And she’s so darn cute that we let her continue to rule
us.
Winnie - 2020
I have a spot in the family room that is Maggie’s corner. I like having her ashes there and her picture. When we brought her urn home, it gave us some sense of peace and acceptance. There is some comfort having her in the room where we spent so much time together as a family. When we sit there in the evening, with a fire going and maybe a glass of wine in hand, I feel her presence and can almost see her laying in front of the fireplace where she belonged.
It’s a sad anniversary –
one year without Maggie. Thank you, sweet old girl. You meant the world to us. We love
and miss you every day.
