She's Gone

My family dog, Olivia, passed away yesterday. If you are not a dog person you may as well stop reading now. This post will mean nothing to you and you will think I'm some crazy dog lady that is pent up in some apartment with 7 dogs and no life. However, if you are a dog person, stick with me.

While I am in NYC, my parents still live in Atlanta where I grew up. My parents got Olivia as a surprise for me and my brother when I was a freshman in high school. It was Thanksgiving weekend and we went to the airport to pick up my uncle. He had a crate with him. I looked at him confused. He handed me the crate and said, "Here, this belongs to you." I opened up the crate and climbed in, crying hysterically, in awe of my new puppy. She was beautiful. Jet black, with gray paws. I stayed in the crate for a good 10 minutes, laying down next to my unnamed dog, stroking her face and calming her down after her bumpy flight. It was love at first site.

Olivia was a standard poodle. She knew what she wanted and communicated easily her wants and needs. She was almost human. She demanded to drink from a cup that my family used at our dinner table. A water bowl was not dignified enough for her. She was a lap dog when she wanted to be, putting her front paws in your lap and gently resting her head near your hands, ever so slightly hinting to you that she would like her head scratched. She only did tricks when she felt like it. She didn't perform for us. We performed for her. If you held a treat in front of her and said "shake" she would look at you and with her big brown eyes say, "unless that is a piece of Filet Mignon or Risotto, you can do tricks for me, but I'm not doing anything for you."

She was the protector of her family. When someone was sick, she didn't leave their side. I had Mono when I was 17 and was bed-ridden for three weeks. During that time I cannot remember a moment when Olivia was not with me. If I crawled out of bed to go to the bathroom, she followed me. If I closed the door to the room I was in, she stood outside barking loudly, demanding to be let in so she could keep and eye on me. She would stay by me until I was well. She slept at the foot of my bed, and every couple of hours she would get up, sniff my face, walk back to the foot of my bed and go back to sleep.

I tended to torture Olivia. I thought it was funny to put her big floppy ears in a high pony-tail over her head. I liked to watch her slip across the hardwood floor my parents had installed in our living room. Olivia was used to carpet. When the hardwood floor came in she slipped everywhere and I would always try to make her run full speed on the floor to watch her try to stop herself. I did it because it was cute. And I think Olivia knew how much it made me laugh. She enjoyed seeing her family happy. She slipped for me until she slipped her way right into the wall. Then she looked at me and with her head tilted said, "Alright lady, enough's enough. I'm done."

Olivia was almost 11 years old. She died in her birth month. She wasn't sick. She woke up in the middle of the night vomiting and just couldn't get comfortable. This was alarming to my parents and brother as they remembered the symptoms my aunt's dog presented when he had Bloat. Bloat is a condition in dogs where the stomach rotates and ultimately, if not caught soon enough can cause death. Fortunately for my parents they saw the signs and rushed Olivia to the emergency care center immediately. She had surgery which went well. Unfortunately Olivia never woke up from surgery. There is no rhyme or reason.

We will miss Olivia every day. But somehow we are lucky. Though her life was cut short, she did not suffer. She was walking our neighborhood lake on Monday afternoon, and passed away on Tuesday. She went quickly. Olivia had a wonderful life. We will be the ones who experience the pain of a loss. She is happily in some place where her arthritis does not bother her, and there is no older sister to torture her and make her wear pony-tails.

Olivia: A poodle she was, a lady she always will be.