When Billy died I got the dogs

When Billy died I got the dogs.

 

September 21, 2019

Autumnal Equinox; the day Earth begins to prepare for death.

 

 

I was at DelRae’s house when I returned Linda’s phone call and the four messages she left, “Call me.”

 

That evening, out of cell range, DelRae, Steve, and I were helping to celebrate a wedding party ten miles south of Grand Quivira.  Since I couldn’t receive calls anyway I had left my phone in my purse and had left my purse in in my truck.  Steve drove. Once we were done celebrating we headed back to Del and Steve’s house and arrived around 11:00 PM.  I went out to retrieve my phone and saw the messages Linda had left.  At first I thought the gallery had had a big sale and she wanted to share the good news…But DelRae had a message on her answering machine, too.

 

“Hi DelRae, it’s Linda. When you get this message can you please have Rebecca call me?  It doesn’t matter what time it is. Thanks.”  She sounded tired and worried.

 

Not good.

 

Images of family members, now probably dead,  raced through my mind.  One of my brothers had died less than a year earlier, quite unexpectedly, at the age of 62.  Now who?

 

I borrowed Del’s phone and called Linda.

 

“Hey Linda, what is it?” I took a deep breath.

“It’s Billy.  He was hit by a car while riding his bike. Karl was with him.  Billy is dead…” Linda was crying.

 

“What? No. No. No…”

 

Linda told me what she knew but it wasn’t much, The story was still unfolding.

 

Once she had finished speaking I realized that I had happened upon the accident on Highway 60 not too long after it had occurred.  That afternoon I had left home later than I had planned to, heading to DelRae’s to meet for the party.  On my way, driving west, traffic had come to a halt just before the 45 mph sign outside of town.  I slowed the truck to a stop.  When there was no movement and no indication that we’d be moving soon, I turned off the engine and got out.  I considered walking up towards the emergency vehicles to see what was going on and decided against it.  The first responders didn’t need any looky-loos.  A text to the mayor  indicated that there may have been a motorcycle/vehicle accident and that the highway would be closed while an investigation proceeded. I called Steve and told him I would be arriving late and walked to the side of the highway.

 

A couple of motorcycle riders were standing in rare shade next to their bikes so I joined them and we began a conversation.

“Motorcycle/vehicle accident,” I said, shaking my head as I approached them.

They mirrored my gesture.

“My best friend died in a motorcycle accident last week,” said one.  “He had just got a new bike, one of those Honda crotch rockets, and was driving too fast down 40.  We warned him all the time not to do that, to slow down.”  The biker kept shaking his head.  “Wheelies.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told him, my heart sinking.

“This ride, our ride today,” he glanced toward his companion, “is in honor of him.”

“And now this,”  I added.  

The two nodded. Now this.  

“I am so sorry.  Please stay safe on the rest of your ride today,” I walked back to the truck. 

The now growing line of parked vehicles waited another twenty minutes, or thirty, I’d lost track of time, before the decision to divert traffic was made. All the drivers made the U-turn, following the official lead vehicle west to take an alternative route into town. I began to stream a Hindu mantra on my phone for the injured people we were leaving behind.  Under the clear turquoise sky the caravan wound, along the dusty back roads, through a ranch, past the cemetery and up the hill towards the water tower.  The mantra played on.  I listened intently thinking of the people involved in the wreck having no idea I was sending Billy home.

 

I NEVER…yes I mean NEVER, until that day, streamed Hindu mantras on my phone.  (Who does that?) and I haven’t since.  I had listened to a podcast with Pema Chodron at my house that morning making an attempt at forgiving Billy.  A divorcee for eight months, I still loved him.  That’s why I was so pissed.  That’s why I needed to forgive him, because I loved him.

 

Though perhaps I should have been, I was not the one who wanted the divorce.

 

That morning I found that a podcast with Pema and a Hindu mantra were at least the tiniest bit helpful.

 

When he died, Billy was sort of a Buddhist. Before I met him he was a Christian, then his brother convinced him convert to Islam. I met Billy when he was dabbling a little with indigenous beliefs, and lived with him when he toyed with atheism.  He finally, again, settled into Buddhist meditation most mornings, praying for all those who had gone before him.

 

 

 

I hung up with Linda and bawled.

 

Poor Steve.

Poor Linda.

Poor DelRae.

They all had to hear my grief that night.  Del had to see it, the sliding to the floor with the phone in my hand; rocking my body, hands to my face, copious tears. “I need to call my sister…”

 

There I was sitting on the floor, back to the wall and there I was, outside my body watching me sitting there grieving my ex-husband.  It wasn’t pretty but it’s what I do. 

 

Just ask my siblings.  

 

“I’ve got to get the dogs,” I told DelRae once my mind had cleared a bit.  “I won’t do it tonight. It’s too late but I will get them first thing in the morning.  They’ll be okay overnight.  There’s a doggie door.”

 

“I’ll go with you,” DelRae told me and then rethought her statement.  “Do you want me to go with you?”

I nodded.  No love lost between me and Billy’s family, I figured I’d better have a witness to verify that I was only at the house to get the dogs.

 

And the gun.

During my move from his house Billy had taken my gun.

 

It’s a 1952 Colt 45 with a custom, hand tooled holster that straps to the right leg and holds 50 shells in the belt.  I’d only shot it a few times the day my oldest brother gave it to me and it nearly landed me on my ass.

It’s worth over $2,000. 

During the move, while I wasn’t looking, Billy must have stashed the bag it was packed in because the gun never made it to my house. 

 

Having suffered from bad bouts of depression all of his life Billy thought I would kill myself.

 

 

In the morning DelRae and I drove separately to Billy’s house.  

In their bouncy exuberant, barking, waggy tail way, the dogs ran to meet the truck. Buddy pushed up against me and leaned hard into my leg.  Po circled my feet and Pepper’s milky eyes peered in my direction. We hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months.  They had missed me.  

 

 

Inside, the house was quiet.

Really quiet and musty.

The ghosts were asleep.

 

I loaded the dogs in the truck, got their beds, their dog dishes, dog food and collars, gave DelRae a “thank you” and a hug and headed home. 

 

Maybe I didn’t need the fucking gun!

 

 

The Pack

 

Pepper was a 19 year old terrier who ate, twice a day because Billy and I fed her by hand.  She was nearly deaf and nearly blind, incontinent at night, had tooth problems and gum problems and, now and again, suffered from TIAs. Buddy, an 11 year old, 100 pound malamute mix, had, at different times, blown out both of his back knees.  He was on Tramadol twice a day, had a minor limp, needed a ramp to get into the truck, and got VERY nervous when temperature, sound, or routine were out of his norm.  Po, a 20 lb chihuahua mix (hijole Roly Po-ly!) was the only living dog that Billy and I had acquired together. Trigo, a previously emaciated, nearly dead, Walker Tree Hound that we had found four years earlier in the Manzano Mountains after a hike had died fat and happy the year before, hit by a car one month after my brother had passed.

 

During the five years Billy and I were together we had set up a routine of walking the dogs morning and evening along the RR access road that ran behind his house.  Buddy and Trigo would wander about sniffing at rabbit holes and tag teaming the critters they flushed.  Now and again they were successful in the hunt and Buddy would lope into the yard with a hare in his mouth.  

 

Happy, so happy, so happy they were whenever they proved their hunting prowess. 

 

Most days, on our daily walks, the hunters having curled off the back, Pepper (even in her advanced age) and Po would chase each other up the road and bark and play and stop for breaths, panting heavily when they stopped for a rest. Age for one and weight for the other, were taking their toll.  Pepper rarely walked the entire way but she loved the ventures, none-the-less.  Po typically walked a bit further than Pepper but often  stopped when she did to sit and wait with her.  If both Billy and I did not go on the walk, if one, for whatever reason, elected to stay at home, the walk would not happen.   The dogs would sit in the yard and stare through the open gate without moving a muscle.  They’d look back to the house hoping for their second human to emerge but if he or she didn’t come out they’d refused to go. The walk did not happen if we all didn’t do it.

 

 We were a pack.

 

 

If Trigo and Buddy didn’t come home with a rabbit an hour or so after the rest of us got home they would often return with a sheep’s head.  Trigo would push through the doggie door to get inside the house and lie on the living room floor licking out brains. (NO, but it sounds good.  I never saw the brains.)  She did this to get away from Buddy who, with his considerable size, could only exit through the little flap at the side of the house. Once out, he could not come in unless we opened the door made for humans.  As the alpha, he would have insisted, under-no-uncertain-terms, on keeping the sheep head all to himself. Trigo the zeta dog, was lowest on the totem pole but she was not stupid.

 

Buddy and Trigo didn’t kill sheep.  Let’s get that clear right away.  They killed cats, mice, rabbits, squirrels and would have killed ravens if they could have caught them but they did not kill sheep.  They stole the heads from the meat processing plant outside of town, just south of Billy’s 29 acres.

And those sheep’s heads stunk.

Often, with a head in her teeth, Trigo would prance through the back gate like a Diva in toe shoes, head held high, long thin neck reaching to the moon.  It didn’t happen everyday but it did happen about once a week.

 

“Look what I found.  Look what I found.  So proud, me. Look at me. Me, me, me.”  The decapitated head with the tongue sticking out of it’s mouth and eyes missing, covered in mud was barely identifiable.  The first time I saw one I had to look closely, too closely, to know what it was and I nearly retched. 

OMG!

Ugly and stinky did not stop Big Hunting Dog. She was not discerning about looks. Scent was her driver and it D- R-O-V-E her. Once she caught a scent she could not be brought back. Oh the heaven she lived in right next to a slaughter house!

 

Oddly enough, like Buddy, Big Hunting Dog was scared out of her mind by gunfire. I know because 2:00 AM shots fired was a regular occurrence across the road.

The combination of the two, “must get that bear, must get that lion, must get that bunny,” and “holy shit, GUN,” are probably what got Trigo lost and nearly dead, as a two-year-old, in the Manzano Mountains.

 

Finding Trigo

 

Billy, Karl, and I had gone hiking April 9^th, 2015 having made the plan the evening before.  The 9^th was to be the last balmy day of the week before the temperatures were, again, expected to plummet into the teens. Through Winter we would normally take a bimonthly excursion into the desert wilderness but we took advantage of that warm day and chose, as our launch point, the trailhead at the top of Capilla Peak. Pepper and Buddy, who carried both his and Pepper’s water and snacks in dog saddlebags, trotted along, tongues hanging out, smiles on their faces. Before his injuries, Buddy was a nimble giant who moved his legs in a graceful lumber while Pepper, before her advanced age, appeared to walk on high heels, skipping across the path like a ballerina. The five of us proceeded along the ridge of the Manzanos, south towards Trigo Canyon, and followed the saddle to a picnic stop. Years earlier a fire, The Trigo Fire, had torn through that section of the forest and the hiking trail became difficult to find in places and a struggle to navigate in others.  After lunch, having had enough of climbing over charred blow down, we turned back.

 

On the drive down the mountain I caught a glimpse of an animal hunkered down in the trees.  It was black and white and curled in a ball.  

 

“Billy stop,” I insisted. “I think there’s a calf at the edge of the trees.  I need to go see if it is alright.”

Karl agreed.  He, too, had seen an animal.

Billy stopped the car and I got out.  When the door shut behind me the animal looked up.  “Billy, it’s a dog.”  Cautiously I moved towards her, worried she would flee but she didn’t move. 

Skin and bone, she was too weak to stand.  Her ribs protruded from her sides and her eyes were closed to slits.  I tried to help her to her feet but she collapsed in my arms.  I picked her up like I was carrying a lamb; all her legs tucked together, cradled in my embrace, and headed back to the car.  She did not resist.

 

I poured some of Buddy’s water into a dish and she drank feebly, barely.  Halfway down the mountain, after tossing the GPS collar that had encircled her neck out the window, I reached for some kibble.  She ate a few.

 

“We are not keeping that dog,” Billy insisted when we got home.

“I didn’t say we were keeping it but she is NOT going back to her previous owner.  Who would leave a dog like this in the mountains to starve to death?  She had a GPS collar on for Godssake.  They knew where she was and they left her to die on the side of the road.  Besides,” I had done a little research on the dog hunting company that was listed on her collar, “they hunt lion for trophies.  TROPHIES!  She is not going back there.”

 

“You are stealing that dog.”

“I am saving this dog and I am saving the lions.”

“You are not keeping that dog.”  

We did not argue well.

“I tell you what…I will watch the online lost pet websites and call the local shelters.  We will take her to the vet to see if she has a chip and to have her looked over.  If someone advertises that they’ve lost her, if they make an active attempt to get her back, I will return her.  Until then she is staying here.”

 

The next day we drove to the vet.  

“What happened here,” the vet wondered peering at the emaciated hound lying on the exam table.  I explained the way we found Trigo in the mountains only leaving out the part where I tossed away her collar.  “She looks to be about two years old and has probably had at least one litter of pups.  She’s in terrible shape.  If you hadn’t found her she would not have survived the night.” The vet hooked her up to IV fluids and gave her a thorough exam.  “She doesn’t have a chip.”

 

“Give her one.”

“Are you going to keep her?” the vet tech asked.  I nodded.  “Good for you.  So few people do under these conditions.”

 

On the drive home Billy named her Trigo, “since we found her after our hike to Trigo Canyon.” I looked at him, ever the Gemini, ever the conundrum.  “And,” he added, “we were not going to keep her.”

 

It took Trigo three days before she finally could stand and then we went for our first (short) walk down the road with Buddy and Pepper.  Once she regained her strength it didn’t take long for her and Buddy to start tag-teaming rabbits. 

 

Pepper never took Trigo.  Every time she entered the room Pepper would stand up and growl.  If Trigo got too close she would hop up and down on all fours and bark.  

 

Billy felt similarly.

 

I think Billy wanted a dog who cared that he was in the room but it was clear that Trigo was not that dog. She was not used to living with humans.  She did not, at first seek out attention and she did not join us in the evening to watch TV.  Except for the walks and galavanting with Buddy, Trigo kept to herself.  As a purebred hunting dog, who had, clearly been used for such, she had probably been raised outside in her own kennel, separated from people and other dogs.  What hunters did with their dogs angered me.  I was sad that she isolated herself.

 

I was co-dependent.  

 

So, at night, before climbing into Billy’s bed, I started lying down with Trigo, draping my arms and legs all over her body.  “This,” I hoped to teach her, “is how we pack together.”

 

In the months before she died she began climbing into bed with Billy and Pepper and Po and me.

 

We packed.

 

 

On Trigo Finding Po, and other attempts at dealing with being spayed

 

 

On March 24, 2016, the day Trigo found Po we were hiking in the Quebradas, a swath of BLM land 60 miles south of Mountainair by car.  Trigo was still “learning” to walk on lead. Once it was clear that no one was advertising for a lost Walker Tree Hound I had settled in to training her.

 

 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

 

I had bought her a pink leash, a pink halter, and a matching collar with little pink flowers on it.  On two separate occasions during hikes she chewed through the lead and the halter and ran all over the mountainside baying at the wild turkeys. I bought a second leash and repaired the halter.  In no time she had learned how to shed them both.  

 

She always came back. She never got lost and I suspected she knew exactly where we were at all times but her escapes made me nervous. I remember how she looked when we had first found her.  If she got lost again…

Eventually I bought a bell to hang from the collar so I knew, and so her quarry knew, where she was off to when we went on our hikes.  And I persisted in teaching her to “heal.”

 

Heading back to the car, hike completed, Trigo dug in her feet and howled.

I tugged, three quick jerks on the dirty pink lead, and said, “leave it.”

I tried to walk.

Trigo leaned back on her heels.

“Leave it,” I commanded with three short tugs at the lead, “Come on!”

A bay and a woof and a jerk of her head caught my full attention.  She was NOT leaving.

“Fine,” she always won this battle.  I really wasn’t a very good trainer. “What is it?”  I went to where she stood and checked the bush on which her nose was locked.

 

“Hey Billy! It’s a dog.”

 

Billy kept walking.

“Leave it,” he said.

 

“I am not leaving it in the middle of the desert.” 

“Leave it.  It just probably wandered off.”  I picked up the skinny chihuahua mix and looked around. “Wandered off, from where?”

“There’s a house we passed when we entered Quebradas.  Lots of white dogs there.”

“White big dogs.  This is some sort of Chihuahua.”

“We-are-not-getting-another-dog!”

“I did not say we were going to keep him.  But I am not leaving him here in the desert.”  I was more like Trigo than I realized. I am not well trained either.

 

That night Billy named the scruffy dog Po.

 

Poder means power in Spanish. Poco means little. Poster, Po-Po, Poser, Poco a poco, we used all of those names and, little by little, he blended into the fold and got pretty darn fat. When he and Pepper became inseparable when he became her superhero, guardian angel, therapy dog we crowned him Teeny Little Super Dog; “you can’t tell a hero by his size he’s just a teeny little super guy.”

 

  (Google https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjvt6xqKwV8 )

 

Po wasn’t the only lost dog that Trigo found.  One day, on our walk, she found a Pug near the railroad, hiding under a Juniper tree.  He had ran away from it’s owner when they were visiting from Texas.  When the owner came to pick up the Pug and put him in the truck Trigo began to whine.  She followed them for a distance down the dirt road and then came back to me hanging her head.  It was her find, after all.  She got to keep the last dog she found. 

 

“Wanna Pug. Wanna Pug.”  Her eyes pleaded with me.

 

She was rewarded $400 for that find with which I bought her brand new pink saddlebags and a flashy new collar. The next hike we went on she promptly chewed her way out of the décolletage and slipped her collar.

 

On a different day Trigo came home with the neighbor’s puppies.  I brought the pups back to their owner and apologized profusely.  Trigo stood at the gate and howled. She must have liked being a mom.  We were a lot alike, in that, she and I.

 

Trigo was such a sweet, demure dog but she was an aggressive escape artist.  After repairing the perimeter fence several times; laying hog fencing at it’s base for hundreds of feet to prevent digging out; building up the back gate; borrowing a friend’s kennel; I gave up.  Trigo could not traverse a fence but she could figure out how to open gates.  If we didn’t always roll a rock in front of the driveway gate when we closed it then she would get out.  And she liked standing in the middle of the road. Since I refused to chain her it was inevitable, what happened and it was my fault. 

 

But that was later.  For three more years she lived like a queen and the sheeps’ heads continued to appear in our living room. And, though I thought about it, I never rented her out as a search and rescue dog.

 

Trigo was buried in the front yard after her pack mates sniffed her body.  Billy and Karl dug the grave in the frozen ground and wrapped her in her favorite blanket.  I put her saddlebags and leash, still pink from disuse, beside her and filled the hole.  Buddy and Po lied down on the grave for awhile and then left to be alone. 

 

After the separation, Billy’s and mine, I would take the dogs to my house for a few days.  Each week I’d pick them up after work and later bring them back.  But that only happened for a few months.  Seeing Billy’s house that frequently, seeing Billy, the reminders of that life eventually became too much. I’d be sick for days afterward and not be able to eat. (It’s an effective way to drop a few menopause pounds, 10…20… but not recommended by the AMA.)  By the time I was feeling better and able to eat it was time to get the dogs again.  It was untenable.  I stopped the visits, until the day after Billy died, when I picked them up from his house for what I thought would be the last time.

 

My cousin called after I got the dogs and told me that she and my older sister were going to drive to New Mexico to stay with me for a few days.

“We’ll leave tomorrow about 11:00 and see you in the evening. You shouldn’t be alone.”

“It’s a 9 hour drive from your place, Julie. It’s going to be late when you get here.  Why don’t you wait until the next day when you can get an earlier start? You’ll find my place easier.”

“That’s ok.  We’ll drive straight through. We only have a few days before we have to return to Denver.”

 

Nothing ever goes the way we think it is going to.

 

I texted Billy’s sister telling her that I had the dogs; that they were used to my place; that I would keep them all together, keep their routines.  But since Buddy and Pepper had, at one time, been Billy’s ex wife’s, too, I added, as an afterthought, that I would not stand in the way if someone wanted them. I couldn’t just keep them anyway, not legally.  Legally they belonged to the estate.  Billy and I only had a verbal agreement.

 

I heard nothing from Billy’s sister until after my sister and cousin had come, a day later than they had hoped, and gone.

 

In two days, after an overnight in Santa Fe, Vicky and Julie arrived. Then Bill, Leroy, and Mahmoud drove up to my house. They started dismantling the old dog run and began  building a new, larger one.  I had already acquired horse fencing and hog fencing and T-posts, (Billy had given them all to me at one time when we were going to move to my home) and had built a small space but it was clear the run needed to be of some size.  With three of us working on the enclosure and the other three running errands, getting more materials to supplement what I already had, the task was competed in just a few hours.  Julie bought pizza from Mustang Diner to feed us when we were done and we sat around eating and admiring our work, marveling at what happens when people work together. I could manage installing a doggie door in my house on my own.  We talked about the dogs and their proclivities and I shared that it was Pepper about whom I most worried.  Vulnerable to wandering off and getting lost in the tall grass and wooded acreage, and not able to hear me when I called, she was the one who needed the yard. I was relieved to know she would be safe in the newly constructed enclosure.

 

 

The day Vicky and Julie left was the day I got the text.

 

The message was simple, “Drop the dogs off at the house.  Everyone is arriving today.  Pepper is going to be put down and M and M are going to take Buddy to Kansas City.”  Oh the plans of mice… 

And Po? What about Po?

 

There’s something about lying on the floor when I am deeply grieving that comforts me.  Maybe I saw it on TV when I was a very young girl and it made an impression; a gorgeous actress, distraught by the loss of a loved one, sliding down a wall to the floor, rolling into a ball, draped in a navy velvet or gold lamé gown, voluptuous lipsticked mouth, huge tears gracefully sliding down her rouged cheeks because I have done it all my life but it NEVER looked that good. For the second time in a week I sat on the floor in roughed up jeans, rocking and moaning, snot running out my nose.

 

Oh, Billy hated that!

 

I did convince Billy’s family, after only a little bit of discussion, to allow Po to stay with Pepper until the vet appointment.  Po was the real reason Pepper was still alive.  Hand feeding was one thing and quite necessary but companionship between those two was what really kept her going. They loved each other and the thought of them getting separated right after Billy was killed, making them endure additional upsets was too much to ask of them.  It certainly was too much to ask of Pepper.  So Billy’s ex-wife and son allowed Po to stay with them, at Billy’s house, for Pepper’s last few days.

 

 

Re-packed

 

 

Little by little I got the dogs back.  First Buddy came home.  At Billy’s, he panted and paced and whined and couldn’t relax.  There was a screaming toddler in the home and boxes getting packed and people dropping by and loud music but no Billy.  It was discussed amongst them and decided that a move to the city for the giant country dog might be a problem. I was happy to take Buddy off their hands.  I drove to the house, set up the ramp, and loaded him into the truck. In the 15 minute drive to my house, Buddy fell asleep.

 

Two days before Pepper was scheduled to join Billy in the sky I picked up Po.  I was told that Pepper was not eating and she was sleeping most of the day. She never got off of her dog bed. Since Po was not behaving well with the baby and Pepper was not lucid couldn’t I come get him?

I went to Billy’s house and gently reminded the family that Pepper only ate when fed by hand. 

In the truck, Po snuggled against my thigh while we drove home.

 

The day before Pepper’s final ride down the long and winding road to the vet I got the last message, 

“I can’t bring myself to put Pepper down.”

“I am happy to keep the dogs together if you want,” I replied, fingers fumbling over the phone pad.

“Come and get her.”  

You do not have to tell me twice.  

I hopped in the truck and picked up the old girl.

When we arrived home.  I lifted her from the front seat and placed her on the ground.  Buddy began to wag his tail and whine; lift his front paws, first one and then the other, back and forth; and do an excited downward dog before he started licking Pepper’s face.  Po leapt and barked and danced circles around her.  

 

Oh happy days!

Side note: Buddy does NOT lick other dogs’ faces. Or, he never got caught doing it, until Peppy.

 

Once in the house Pepper ate Costco roasted chicken and drank fresh water like she might have been  starving. I wanted to slip into judgement, but I know from experience, people do really weird things when loved ones die.  (So do dogs, as it turns out.) And when there is a baby in the house, and a manslaughter investigation, and an estate to close, overflowing storage units, unresolved feelings, unfinished projects, and empty corners in each room, everything is up for grabs. 

 

“Bless them change me.”

 

I had the dogs. It’s all that mattered.  We went for a walk that evening and Pepper and Po raced down the road, yipping wildly. Buddy jauntily explored ahead of us.

 

Pepper died a month later.

A prairie rattler sent her on her way.  

 

Pepper makes an agreement

 

It was a balmy Sunday in November, almost exactly a year after Trigo died. I had worked all day at the gallery.  I got home around 5:00 and Pepper was lethargic.  Though she tried, she could barely stand.

“Hey, Pep, what’s going on?”

I was certain she had had another TIA.  

I picked her up.

“Hey darlin’, shhh, it’s gonna be alright.”

When I got her into the house and tried to feed her I saw that one side of her head and jaw were badly swollen. The area was tender to the touch and hot.

“Awww, Peppy-Pep.”

 

Fuck.

 

A Sunday evening, with only emergency vets open, and at least $1500 in potential future bills, I needed a lifeline. So, doing the best I could with what I had, I called a friend.  Rick, DelRae’s dog, had been bitten by snakes thousands of times and I knew she’d be able to coach me.  I held Pepper while we talked on the phone. After nearly 30 minutes it became clear to me that the only certain thing was that Pepper was going to die.  At 19 years old, survival from a snake bite, anti-venom or no was unlikely.  I brought her to bed with me (as usual), skinny little girl, and she took her last breath in my arms. It was a tough night.  It did not go smoothly. 

 

Later, my brother told me that the story of Pepper and the snake was like that in the book The Little Prince.  Pepper and the snake had entered into a pact. Yes, perhaps.  It wouldn’t surprise me; Pepper, the snake, and Billy.

 

In the morning,  Buddy and Po got to sniff on her body.

“Say good-bye to Pepper,” I told them.

They watched me dig the hole and put her in.  They lay on the grave site for a bit and then moved on.  We went for a walk, a meandering, sluggish thing; Buddy keeping close to my heal; Po stopping now and again to look back, wondering where his sister had gone.  It had been a helluva year for all of us, a helluva year.

 

It took weeks before Po would take his walks normally.  Buddy wandered along the side of the road sniffing at rodent holes and peeing on bushes while Po sat at the end of the driveway watching the two of us head off.  He couldn’t sit still but would rock back and forth and glance back at the house, wagging his tail in the dirt, waiting for Pepper to emerge, from a bush, from a pee stop, from a poo, until finally, finally, not seeing her come, he’d head out after us.

 

It’s really hard leaving the ones you love behind.   

 

We were a pack.

 

Buddy and Billy hiking,

Buddy with is saddlebags.

Rebecca and Trigo, all decked out.

Po the day Trigo found him.

Trigo, the day we found her in the Manzano Mountains.

Besties, Pepper and Po.

Pepper at the dinner table,

One of our last walks with Pepper.

Beautiful girl.

Pepper at the table in a cFé in T or C.

Handsome Buddy.

Trigo can finally relax in our bed.

Teeny Little Super Dog.

                                                                                Rick, Buddy’s new friend; snake bite

                                                                                        survivor extraordinaire. 

 

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