Today, I lost the best dog I ever had to cancer. Her name was Pepper, and she was 10 years old. I know it doesn't matter now, but I could not think of a better way to remember her than right here, right now.
My mother and I picked her out from our local humane shelter when she was only four months old. She was one of only two puppies from a litter to survive. Initially, we could not decide between her and her sister, but there was something special about her. Both puppies were brown, but Pepper's left front paw was completely white. She melted my heart, and we took her home. The shelter had named her Cupcake, but we decided she needed a different name. Don't ask me how, I still don't know, but we decided on the name Pepper.
For the next few months, we kept her on the patio under our deck. Ants were constantly trying to get into her food bowl, so we drew a chalk circle around it, because for some reason, that was supposed to work. At night, we would spread out a large blanket and let her inside to play. We would wrap her up and watch as she curiously poked her head back out. She loved to climb stairs, which was funny, simply because she never figured out how to get back down, so we would carry her down, only for her to scurry right back up.
When she got bigger, we let her roam free in our backyard, where she soon became queen of the mountain. She had a doghouse full of hay for the cold months and a pool (plastic trashcan lid) full of water for the summer. She would always sleep on her back, leaned up against the fence. For the longest time, she would not drink out of her water bowl. Instead, she would drink out of her pool, often with two or all four paws in it as well. She tried lying down in it once, but decided very quickly she did not like that. She did fall asleep on top of it once when it froze one December, which made me laugh for hours.
She loved to do three things: play, hunt, and sleep. If she got a baseball in her mouth, you might never see that ball again. We left her with my uncle while we went on vacation once and gave her a bag of baseballs to play with. When we returned a week later, those balls looked like they had been run through a woodchipper. We also got her a deflated basketball. She would take it in her mouth, throw it down the hill, go get it, bring it back to the top, and do it again. She would sleep the rest of the day, usually under the peach tree in the foxhole that she had dug. Whenever I would come home from school or my mother from the store, she would pop up and pretend to chase some invisible prey, trying to convince us she wasn't napping.
She became quite the hunter as well. In her life, she killed a bird, two squirrels, and at least 13 possums. She would shake them so hard they would die from shock, but the poor little thing didn't understand it. Instead, she would bury them and try to dig them to tussle with later. We never knew exactly what kind of dog she was. The best the vet could come up with was that she had terrier in her. To me, she was the best kind of dog: a mutt.
We nearly lost her a few years ago to a heat stroke. The vet told us after we got her in that if we had waited a few more minutes, she would have been a goner. After a night in the hospital with a little doggie IV in her leg, we got her home. We had to get her a haircut to keep it from happening again, and when she got back from the groomer, her thick brownish-red coat was gone. She was naked except for a star-spangled bandana tied around her neck. I'd never seen anything so pathetic and precious in my life.
Since around my junior year of high school, I have struggled with depression. At times when I was constantly sad or distant, when I didn't want to talk to my friends or my family, I only had one friend, and she had four legs and a tail. It didn't matter, though. She was always there for me, with her happy face and her soulful brown eyes. I don't think I would have made it through some of those tough days if it weren't for her.
Some of the best times in my young life have revolved around that dog. We played in the snow together, sat in swings together, played baseball, went on walks to the lake, and sat together for hours. She developed somewhat of an addiction to dog bones in her later years. Give her one, and she would devour it, then spend the next several minutes sniffing for more. For a short time, she would not take them from my mother, after she accidentally tossed one and hit the poor thing in the head. She loved them so much, we had to put her on a diet for a while,which did not sit particularly well with her. Even when she got old, and she could barely move due to her arthritis, she would perk up for a bone. Even at the very end, this last week, when she wouldn't eat anything else, she would occasionally eat a bone.
I feel no shame in telling you that I am crying as I write this. I'm going to miss my puppy. She has been with me for nearly half my life and during the most pivotal years. I'm going to miss her brown eyes, white paw, wagging tail, and happy face. I'm miss checking on her first thing every morning before school, and I'm going to miss seeing her bound up when I come home to visit. I'm going to miss hearing her bark at the neighbor's dog and scattering dog bones all over the yard for her to find. But most of all, I'm going to miss that constant love, the kind that never fades, fails, or questions, that is rare in people but always ready in the heart of an animal. If I have learned anything, it's that as painful as it may be to lose someone you love, it's well worth the joy they bring into your lives to let them in, whether they have two legs or four.
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