As I became addicted to writing this blog, I realized that it would end up being a source of therapy for me. And those that know me really well know that I could use a lot of therapy. It was easy for me to draw parallels between my struggles in Crossfit and my struggles in life in general. Once upon a time, I could do this with poker as well. (Be happy you never had to read a poker blog from me!) But while Crossfit has become a big part of my life in recent years, there are many things outside of the gym that affect me. And when it hits me hard, I end up writing about it here. Last year, I wrote a post on what may have been the most excruciating gambling experience of my life, a 15 minute period where I watched $100,000 disappear from my grasp. Today I am writing about something much more difficult: the loss of my dog Indy. This is her eulogy of sorts. There will probably be very little in here that you will find entertaining ("oh, so no different than normal!"). But this is my way of trying to move forward. It is my way of honoring her memory. Someone who made my life better for nearly 14 years deserves at least that.
Indy was the second dog I ever had an attachment to. The first dog was named (coincidentally) Mindy. She was a large sheep dog who was born right around the time I was born. We grew up together and she was very attached to me. I had two sisters, but Mindy didn't perk up until she saw me coming home from school. I don't have as many memories of Mindy as I used to, but I have a couple that stand out in my mind. I remember when she gave birth to a bunch of puppies. Seeing that happen as a kid was very frightening at first, but then it suddenly was something amazing. And sadly, I remember when her health began to decline. She got to a point where she seemed like she was suffering badly. And one day, when I came home from middle school, my parents let me know that they had made the decision to put Mindy to sleep. I was heartbroken, but deep down I knew it was the right thing to do.
There was no substitute for Mindy. Over the course of middle school and high school, my parents got a few other dogs, but they were more like roommates than family members to me. There was nothing about them that struck a chord with me. When I went to college, I didn't have to worry about pets. After graduating college, I didn't think much about getting a pet. It wasn't until Jenn made the decision to live alone for her third year of law school that the topic came up again. She had an awful roommate experience the year before and couldn't deal with another year of that. But she didn't want to be by herself and I was working in New York at the time. The solution: it was time to get a dog. Jenn had grown up having a Pomeranian in her home, so she looked for a Pomeranian puppy. And that was when Indy entered our lives.
When we first got her, we didn't have a name picked out. There aren't many things that I give myself credit for, but coming up with good names on the spot is one of them. I was on the phone with Jenn shortly after she had brought the new puppy home and we talked about what to call her. Then it hit me. Jenn has a mild obsession with Harrison Ford and loves the Indiana Jones movies. And well...
We'd end up calling her Indy (see, the Indy-Mindy thing was a total coincidence). If she did something bad, she was Indiana. And if she did something really bad, we scolded her with a "Dr. Jones!"
I wasn't entirely sure whether I would like the new pup. Mindy was a big lumbering dog that didn't make a lot of noise. This new dog was tiny and made lots of noise. But she had personality. And the way she got excited every time I showed up at 2am after an eight-hour Friday night drive reminded me of how Mindy reacted towards me when I was younger. It wasn't long before Jenn was jealous of how Indy reacted towards me ("she never gets excited when I get home!"). It had been more than a dozen years since Mindy had passed on, but I was finally ready to have another dog.
After Jenn finished law school, the three of us moved to Philadelphia together, getting an apartment near the art museum. We had spent a lot of time trying to find a good apartment, but it wasn't until we stumbled upon this one that we felt like we had gotten a deal. Most of the places we saw were either crappy places in nice neighborhoods or nice places where a murder scene was being cordoned off a block away. This apartment was in a good neighborhood and actually gave us two floors of living space (ok, maybe more like one and a half). Indy didn't love the new arrangement. Brimming with energy, she was constantly running around and barking. You can imagine how much the neighbors loved us. (Then again, our neighbors were assholes, so too bad. Wish she barked more than she did.) I was away one weekend and got a panicked call from Jenn saying that she had opened the door downstairs for a split second and Indy went sprinting out. It took a team of people in the neighborhood to finally catch her. That was Indy. If she wanted to do something, she was doing it.
Her new nickname became "punk dig". The punk part because when you tried to tell her what to do, she would huff or snort at you. The dig part was in reference to the fact that she tried to dig through everything in the apartment. She dug into the floor, the couch, the bed. She was always attempting to escape the apartment when one of us opened the door. She was not a big fan of city life. One year on the fourth of July, she was spooked by the fireworks. The fireworks display was shot off behind the art museum, so we were only a few blocks away from it. In fact, you could sit in our living room and have the best seat in town to watch the display. Indy wasn't having it. She never liked loud noises, unless they were coming from her mouth. She sprinted down the stairs and jumped on to my lap as I sat on the couch. And then...
This was the first time it happened, but it wouldn't be the last. If Indy got overexcited, she would channel her inner-Stan, seek out her daddy, jump on him and vomit on him. Jenn found this endlessly amusing. Me, not so much.
After Jenn and I got married, we got a house in the suburbs (that is what your supposed to do after you get married, right?). We made sure that it had a big yard for Indy so she could run around like crazy. Naturally, Indy sprinted around the yard and then immediately tried to burrow under the fence to go run elsewhere. No one was going to tell the "punk dig" where she could and couldn't run. Her new nickname became "the Queen of Pomerania". She trotted around like she was royalty. When she got up in the morning, she had this extensive stretching routine that had to be fully completed before she would eat her breakfast. It was all very regal.
Indy always scared us with how intelligent she was. Not that she ever used those brains for good. More often than not she was plotting how to outsmart us. Jenn and Indy used to battle over who was in charge in the house (I was always a distant third). Indy somehow always knew what day of the week it was. When Jenn and I got ready for work in the morning, Indy would watch us but not give us too much grief. But if we got up early on a Saturday or a Sunday and started to get ready, she would bark like crazy. Where are you two going? And don't tell me work, because I know it's the weekend! If one or both of us was going on a trip, we would try and quietly grab the luggage, but Indy would start freaking out. There was no getting anything by her.
It was always difficult being away from Indy. When Jenn and I went on vacation, we kept her at a kennel where they would send you an e-mail about midway through her stay letting you know how she was doing. The e-mail would always be glowing (we knew better), but it was comforting knowing that she was okay while we were gone. If I was out of town, Jenn would text me a picture of Indy saying good night. She had become a part of my everyday life, whether she was in the same room with me or a thousand miles away.
Jenn always knew how close I was with Indy, so in recent years she became concerned. Indy was getting older. There were no more wild sprints around the yard, only some jogging around, usually followed by some rolling around in the grass. We got the impression that her eyesight might not be as good as it once was. She used to always leap up on to our bed, but now there were times when she needed us to help her up on to the bed. One day I brought her to the vet for some tests and for a dental examination. When I picked her up, the vet told me that she had removed 16 of Indy's teeth. I barely made it home without crying. I didn't even know this poor dog had 16 teeth total. (Note: The vet later explained to me that Indy had about 32 teeth and that teeth issues in smaller breeds were common.) We had given her treats that were supposed to be good for her teeth, but she wasn't overly fond of them. The Queen had eating habits more in line with her father. If it was good for her, she was suspicious of it and tended not to eat it. And she seemed to know which ones were the healthy treats. Even if Indy was getting older and not eating healthy, I could bank on one thing. I explained to Jenn that there was nothing to worry about. The Queen of Pomerania was immortal, she had inside her blood of kings.
Over the last six months, I had to bring Indy to the vet more frequently. Every now and then she would have a seizure, which really freaked me out. The vet would diagnose Indy the same way my doctor would diagnose me: everything seems to be fine. She had developed a little bit of a cough, but the vet didn't seem too concerned. I would need to start giving her preventative medicine though (some to ward off potential heart problems, some to ward off potential kidney problems), twice a day, every day. Indy resisted at first, but I think she eventually understood my sense of urgency about the medicine. We developed a routine. When I got ready in the morning, she did her stretching, then she had to take her medicine, and then I'd give her breakfast. Same deal with dinner, medicine first. It only took 13 and a half years, but I had finally trained her to do something.
Around New Year's, I began to deal with the reality that I didn't have much time left with Indy. I felt pretty certain that 2016 was going to be my last year with her. Jenn would go to bed and I'd stay downstairs with Indy, petting her and trying to deal with my grief in advance. I was going to be prepared. If Indy's health took a turn for the worse, I was going to be strong enough to make the decision my parents had 25 years ago with Mindy. When I celebrated my birthday last month, my wish was that if this was Indy's last year with me, that she not suffer at all.
March began with Jenn in Asia for about 10 days. Towards the end of the trip, Indy began acting differently. She had developed a pattern of having good days and bad days, so at first I thought she was just having a couple of bad days. Nothing out of the ordinary. Her appetite would wane on bad days, but then when she felt better again, she would scarf down her food and ask for more. I figured when Jenn got home, she'd start on the good cycle again. Jenn texted me when her plane landed in Newark and I told her mommy was home. She got off the couch, went over to the window, stood up with her paws on the sill and looked for her. I don't know how she understood what I was saying, but she did. Jenn got home and I explained that Indy wasn't feeling so great the last couple of days, but that it comes and goes. Except this time it didn't. Indy began refusing her medicine. During her "good days", she only ate about half of her food. On "bad days", it was next to nothing. It was getting to the point where another visit to the vet seemed necessary.
This past Saturday, Jenn and I had to go to the dentist. Jenn needed to run some errands afterwards, so I came home by myself at around 3pm. Indy was at the top of the steps waiting for me when she heard the car pull in. I went into the living room and tried to get her to sit on the couch with me, but she made it clear she wanted to go up to the bedroom. After I brought her up there, she became agitated. Her heart was racing. I worried that a seizure might be coming on, but it never did. When Jenn got home, the two of us sat with her on the bedroom floor, petting her and trying to calm her down. Over the next 45 minutes, we talked about bringing her to the emergency vet as the regular vet closed at 3. Eventually Indy calmed down and decided to crawl under the bed. Her favorite place was under our bed. I don't know whether she liked it because it was darker under there or cooler, but when she was done hanging out with people, that is where she went to relax. Jenn and I let her be for a bit, figuring she wanted a nap. About two hours later, we began hearing some bad noises. I laid on the floor to check on her and immediately I knew she was in trouble. I called the emergency vet and let them know that we needed to bring her in. I put my sneakers on as Jenn went to grab a jacket. I didn't want to grab Indy as I was concerned about hurting her, so I pulled out the rug she was laying on from underneath the bed. But when I got her out, she was already gone.
I thought I would be prepared for that moment, but I wasn't. Not at all. There was no hard decision to be made. She was just gone. Didn't even get a chance to say goodbye. Couldn't do it. She was too damn smart and I never wanted her to think I was giving up on her. Nothing about it felt real. I expected her to start breathing again. To jump up and be like "got you guys!" But it didn't happen.
For almost a decade and a half, Jenn and Indy have been my family. Now half of that family is gone. She was such an important part of my life. There has been slightly less pain each day since she passed away, but everything around me reminds me of her. She was the one who would sit next to me on the couch watching TV when Jenn was off traveling for her job. She was the one who would lay in bed with me for an hour or two after Jenn got up at 5:30am to get ready for work.
The last four days have been filled with tears, but those tears come from remembering all of the happiness she brought into my life. It sucks that she's gone. Part of me thinks that her not taking her medicine at the end was her way of saying she was ready to move on. There was no stopping her when she set her mind to something.
I hope that you did not suffer at the end. And I hope that I brought you nearly as much happiness as you brought me. Love you always Indy.
Dr. Indiana Jones
First brightened up this world: 5/5/02
Made her way to heaven: 3/19/16
Dave, Cline's post reminded me that I needed to visit your blog. This was a beautiful tribute to Indy. May she reign supreme in pet heaven. Hope the past few months without her have been kind to you & Jenn.
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