Over 15 years ago, I left for an out-of-state convention and James bought a dog. (I'm sorry.......excuse me??) Maybe he misunderstood. I never wanted a dog. Our friend Paula told him that if we REALLY wanted to have kids soon we needed a dog first so we could begin practicing things like, well, not leaving the house without a sitter. Practical advice but still. Paula didn't have kids, she had a dog.......how good could that advice be from a non-child person?! I returned home from my trip to find a tiny chocolate lab puppy who had JUST been weaned from her mom. She fit in one hand. She was adorable.
James immediately began HIS duty of crate training her because lets face it, I DIDN'T WANT A DOG. If he insisted we have a dog, HE was going to house break her AND she was gonna live inside with the people so I didn't worry about her freezing or suffering from heat exhaustion. Period. End of story on that one. I was NOT gonna budge. The crate sat next to James' side of our bed. Puppy cried because she missed her mom and siblings so James slept with his hand dangling over the side of the bed in front of the door to the crate so puppy could smell James and feel safe. Since we live in a split level home and puppy's tummy was too big and her paws too short to make it down the stairs, James would dutifully get up every night and carry her down the stairs and out to the yard. I must admit, it worked beautifully. She was crate trained in no time.
In an effort to appease me, James let me name the puppy. I chose Madison (Maddie for short) because I liked the name a lot but not enough to use on a female child we may have later. Plus, I strongly believe in two-syllable names for dogs because of the snappy cadence when barking out (get it....barking out?) commands; ie, Ma-ddie: SIT, etc. This left the middle name for James to choose. He chose
Tecumseh. Again, excuse me?? (According to Wikipedia the name means: "pron.: /tɛˈkʌmsə/; March 1768 – October 5, 1813) was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy (known as Tecumseh's Confederacy) which opposed the United States during Tecumseh's War and the War of 1812. Tecumseh has become an iconic folk hero in American, Aboriginal and Canadian history.[1]")
Okay, whatever. Maybe we never had to actually SAY the middle name and thus explain all of THAT nonsense. Now, part of my demanding that we have an indoor dog that I did not want involved a discussion revolving around the ever-so-important manners of an indoor dog. This landed Maddie and I straight into dog school. I gotta say, I loved dog school. I really did. There is so much power in training and commanding a dog. I had no idea. Our only problem was that Maddie was a bit like her handler and often lazy. She was the only dog in dog school that performed a lay down-stay in stead of a sit-stay. She just didn't have all of that interest in sitting. Luckily the teacher took pity on us and we passed with flying colors. By the end of our time at school she had earned her basic obedience 1 & 2 degrees AND her canine good citizen degree. She was trained, well behaved and most importantly, I was the alpha dog in the house. This is where our relationship truly began.
Maddie slept on our big bed every night. We decided that her weight multiplied exponentially when she laid down because once down, that's it. The covers were NOT moving. We got used to it. We added her name to our answering machine message. She took center stage in all of our Christmas photos. She had a bed with her name on it and her own personalized suit case for travel. We were DOG people now. She had become our child and we loved her very very much.
Sometime during this period, my grandmother began creating those towels that you button around your stove handle. We had dozens of them. I once buttoned one around the refrigerator door. One day, we returned home to find the fridge door wide open and all of its lower level contents strewn about the entire upper level of our house. I'm talking ketchup, salad dressing, syrup, mustard, mayo, plastic containers with left-over treasures from our meals, etc. Did you know that a teenage chocolate lab can chew right through plastic?! Its true. They can. Her artistry all over our carpeting was brilliant. We now have hard wood in the dining room area. Enough said.
Once, James was making a Chef-Boyardee pizza. It was warm outside so he set the dough to rise in a bowl out on the top ledge of our deck. When I went outside to retrieve it I found the bowl empty but Maddie quite full. We 911'ed the vet, certain of her immediate demise. The joke was on us though as the vet said she would be in a carb-coma for awhile but otherwise fine and by the way, what were we now gonna do about dinner?
If you know anything about chocolate labs you know they have very powerful tails. To this day, we do not have a coffee table in our living room because we quickly grew tired of her standing in front of us with her tail wagging and completely sending all of the coffee table contents across the room after a short flight. You know, things like candy dishes, candles, full glasses with colored drinks in them. It was fine. She was our baby and we loved her. We didn't really need a coffee table.
The Maddie stories are endless. One of my favorites is the conversation James and I had about her being sick. (see Christmas letter 2007). Not long after falling in love with her we decided to try our hand at actual human family members. The day we brought Alex home I laid him in his bassinet next to our bed. We had a large four poster (tall) bed at the time and when Maddie jumped up onto the bed she could put her nose down into the bassinet and literally be eye-to-eye with Alex. We were tentative as we had read everything written on introducing your new human-baby to your older dog-baby and we knew this could go either way. Maddie approved, gave Alex a big lick in the face and the two of us lied down on the bed and watched Alex sleep. Soon, Alex was laying on a blanket in the middle of the living room with Maddie right next to him. After considerable training, Maddie learned which squeaky toys were hers and which were Alex's but there were times when I wondered if maybe they really just shared all toys. Alex grew to crawl after Maddie and eventually try and ride her like a pony. She was the most tolerant dog you can ever imagine. She loved Alex just like we did.
Four years later, Adam came along and they quickly fell into the same routine.
Her name was removed from our out-going message as the kids' names were added but she was as ever present as always.
Time passed as it always does and Maddie grew older. Her parents died as did every one of her siblings. James, who had declared MANY times that once Maddie goes he is NEVER getting another dog fell in love with a Springer Spaniel named Lucy that we met at my Aunt Polly's house. Polly and her partner Sherry work in social service but had also been avid dog rescuers for quite some time. (I think after meeting Maddie) There were always MANY dogs to play with at "camp" in Iowa and it was during our frequent trips there that Adam decided he wanted to be a vet when he grew up. Here is a pic of him and "Barney" one of the Polly/Sherry Iowa dogs.
James' new love interest Lucy is an adorable dog who was ALREADY trained. James made us all take a picture of her to send to her original owners (who could not house her anymore) to illustrate what a wonderful family she would have with us and instead of finding a way for them to keep her, could we please just have her?
James and the boys drove back to Iowa a few weeks later and Lucy has been with us for nearly two years now. We can't imagine our life without her. One of the most interesting things is that she kept Maddie young. I firmly believe that Maddie stayed with us for as long as she did because she was determined to go up the stairs every time Lucy did. James liked to tell people that we got a dog for our dog.
Last year in January of 2012, we returned home from a New Year's Eve trip to the lake. We had to board the dogs while we were gone which we do not like to do but since it was Christmas break, I had no college students to call upon for in-house dog care. After getting Maddie home we noticed that she had significant trouble standing and walking. I sat all night with her on her bed in the living room, willing her to move.......but nothing. When James and the boys came home from school, we all said our goodbyes to Maddie. James carried her one last time down to our back yard for a visit. He laid her down in the grass. It was just about this time when the kids came running into the yard from the side gate and that dog STOOD UP and walked over to them. We were dumb struck. Tears in our eyes, I am not quite sure we believed what we had just seen. James carried her to the truck and took her to our regular vet who met him outside. He took one look at Maddie and told James he would not give up on her yet and to take her home for awhile. It was a miracle.
Maddie stayed with us the entire next year. On Christmas eve of 2012 she was at a different vet where we take the dogs to be groomed. The vet, a woman with children of her own, called and asked if she could run some tests on Maddie because she did not look well. The result was leukemia and the time had come.
Initially, my plan was to send James to the vet to be with Maddie as she made her transition and to tell the kids she had a heart attack and died while there. Things turned out very differently. Because it was Christmas Eve I had an entire house full of relatives. One of those relatives was Aunt Polly. We shared our news with her and she encouraged us to ALL go (even the kids?!?!) because we were all a family. Now I need to tell you that I had SERIOUS doubts about this course of action. In the end, I said the only way that I would do it would be if Aunt Polly (who had been through this numerous times) went with us. Into the truck we then all piled.
When we got there they put us all in a room together and James and Adam and I sat on the floor and Alex and Polly sat on a bench. They brought a blanket in and then brought in Maddie who was so happy to see us all! I told the vet that Adam wanted to be an animal doctor when he grew up and she said something I will never forget. This woman whom I had never met and who was helping us in this most special way looked at my 8 year old son and said "this is the hardest thing that a vet EVER has to do. When you become a vet you make a promise to the whole world that you will help all animals to get better. If you cannot do that, then you promise to help them to not hurt anymore." He looked at her with his big brown puffy eyes and I KNEW this was gonna be okay. The vet sat on the floor with us and I asked her to explain the procedure to the boys who listened and petted Maddie. She gave us treats to feed Maddie as we all sat there on the floor and she talked us through it. When Maddie left, all of our hands were on her. We cried but felt some peace in the notion that this is what responsible pet owners do.
After she was gone, the vet told us that we were looking at a unicorn........that labs in general never live this long and she must have been very well taken care of and very much loved. No truer words were ever said.
Now, this experience could be viewed (and read) as a negative thing what with having to say goodbye to your long time friend on Christmas Eve but I will ask you to consider some things for a minute that might help you to look at this the way I do. There were many blessings at work here. First of all, because it was a holiday, our home was filled with family. Instead of returning to an empty house (except Lucy) we had the grandparents to help with sad feelings. Grandparents are great at that. Additionally, Aunt Polly was in town. There is NO WAY I would have gone and taken the kids to this event if she had not persuaded us to do so. Alex felt safe in shedding tears because his great Aunt was also. Looking back, I would have had it NO other way. Finally, we were with a female vet who knows how to talk to kids. In its sad own way, that was a beautiful thing.
The way I look at it, God was in complete control of this situation. He had it taken care of and did not need my help in the least. (Hard to believe I know LOL) Maddie had the miracle of an extra year with us AND Adam has Lucy to snuggle every night.
