Mark Twain once wrote, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
He may have meant this in the literal sense of the word 'fight' but as I apply it to a different interpretation with size in mind, in an attempt to describe our brave, beautiful little Chihuahua Daniel - he was a giant!
I say 'was' because we lost him recently.
I've tried repeatedly to write about the loss we've experienced from his passing but each time I open my laptop and begin to type I struggle to transform a series of coherent thoughts into suitable prose or accurately frame a favorite memory I have of his life as part of a short narrative aimed at summarizing what he meant to me, my wife, our family, and friends who knew him.
The effort to write about Daniel is rooted in a flawed effort to venture down some cathartic path to a healing process that fails each time as I near the end of the first paragraph, falling apart like an unfinished sentence that is void of the requisite beginning capital letter, the period at its end, and the appropriate verb or adjective to accompany the subject, in Daniel's case - a fearless little giant of a dog who overcame long odds and taught all of us who loved and cared for him so much in six short years.
“It’s just a dog, get over it.” No one has ever said that to me, nor to my wife, as we've announced in piecemeal that he succumbed to a series of seizures, dying in our arms about 10 nights ago and I don't suspect anyone ever will - especially if they've ever known the unconditional love, loyalty, and companionship of a dog.
Danny, as we affectionately called him, deserves to have his story told in full and I will make every effort to do so but for this exercise of catharsis, it's imperative that I finish what I started, even though the likelihood of the goal is unachievable.
If I've learned anything in life its that there is an abundant truth in the expression that what you get out of something typically is what you put into it. The saying can certainly be applied to pet ownership. You can have a dog, you can have a pet, you can have a well-trained animal you take pride in, you can even have a furry best friend. You can have all of that or very little, it just depends on what you want - what your motive is for taking on the responsibility of caring for a dog.
Six years ago my wife read the story of a tiny Apple Head Chihuahua that had been found with a massive head injury and delivered near death to a neighboring pet rescue. The rescue was run by a friend of hers in Iowa and she began to follow his progress as a team of caring humans operated on and nursed him to recovery. That part of Daniel's story alone is awe-inspiring, but in getting at the motivation to adopt him is stating emphatically that we both fell in love with the little guy, my wife immediately and me shortly thereafter. We cheered for his survival in reading daily updates of his progress on Facebook. So the idea that should anyone be able and willing to bring him to their home, where special care would be needed for the remainder of his uncertain life, that it would and should be us, was cemented in my wife's conscience early on, even though we live in Northwest Georgia.
Our decision and journey to bring him home and the subsequent joy he gave us was never eclipsed by doubt. We felt we were constantly proven right over time when he had many more good days than bad but the pain that was a consistent presence in his life and the neurological challenges he faced, exaggerated by blindness and never-ending trust issues, always nagged at the confidence in our resolve to see him through it all. Medication and a climate controlled padded environment seemed to hold in check, what had become in a terrifyingly short amount of time, the regularity of abnormal electrical activity in his tiny little brain that seemingly cut short his life expectancy, as each time he recovered, he seemed to lose a step. A step he defiantly seemed to recover over time until he began to noticeably rapidly decline, especially in the last six months of his life.
That was the giant heart of this little dog, that he never seemed to give in, never seemed unable or unwilling to overcome a physical obstacle or setback from one of these convulsions, and always until the end of his life he tried and succeeded at being the best furry friend we have ever known, albeit in his own mostly untrusting way. I used to explain to strangers when they first met him, that in a way it was just like the movie 'Groundhog Day,' that you started each morning taking small steps to remind him who you were, someone to help him, to love him, not harm him. And that at the end of the day when you knelt to say good night you hoped you had done enough to start further down the road of trust the following morning, but often that was not the rule, merely the exception.
His entrance into my life was at first, one I resisted, given he was nearly a thousand miles away and in a tough spot medically. But my wife turned that resistance into equal parts affection and convinced me that working together we could provide adequate care for his well-being. It would be an adventure we were eager to share to this bring this brave good boy home to Georgia.
You could say Daniel's job was easy in this relocation plan concocted in concern to care for his broken little body and raise him up in our dog-loving home but nothing could be further from the truth. You could also say our job was difficult at best but you could never say that without understanding the reward we received in return from the hope of his prosperity being expressed to us in ways only Daniel could.
For my wife, it was teaching him to give her kisses and for me, it was howling with him like two drunken coyotes trying to awaken the dogs in the adjoining county.
Daniel had to be brave every day, bold and willing to face the threat of seizure, the heaviness of unrelenting pain and the fear and doubt of blindness processed in the mind of a brain-damaged little animal. He was in a word, everything his biblical name implied; courageous.
He taught us so much and we loved him in return without conditions. His trust issues, exaggerated by blindness that plagued his life as a result of his head injury, could result in an occasional bite to me, only to me because he only ever trusted me to pick him up as he grew older and became a little more salty when aggravated, but I never felt anger or resentment - only sorrow that I knew he couldn't help himself, that I had likely hastened the event by attempting to handle him when he was in pain, or startled him unwillingly in lifting him off of the ground before he could prepare himself.
In exchange for his high maintenance care, we received valuable lessons in humility, patience, kindness, giving and commitment to his wellness that could never be compromised without great risk to his health. He gave us a look often, complete with his little tongue hanging partially out of his mouth - to us a sign, that he was completely relaxed and happy to be in our company.
We bonded with him and shared special quiet times when we trimmed his nails, bathed him, wrapped him tightly in warm dry towels afterwards and rocked him to sleep in our arms on our front porch swing. We'd talk to him, tell him we loved him, wishing he could have more of a normal little dog's life, grateful to be able to care for him and hopeful for more good days ahead, void of seizures.
At first, shortly after losing Daniel, I was thankful that my wife and I had been able to be with him, to try and comfort and console him through the series of seizures whose grip he was unable to escape from this final time. We were thankful that we had not been subjected to finding him already passed and with that, knowing that he had struggled fearfully alone. But as the night of his passing wore collectively on our torn hearts I became angry, first that he had to suffer at all in the end, what with everything that life had thrown at him, and then secondly that it happened in this way, suddenly, violently, that we had not had the time to rush him to an animal hospital so he could gently be put to rest. Perhaps the path to healing will pass by acceptance of this contention I have with God in taking Daniel from us, before we were ready to say goodbye.
We have grieved separately at times but mostly we have tried to comfort each other in adapting to the loss of Daniel's presence in our lives. The routine of his care has left an undeniable void in our daily thoughts and schedule. The silence that has taken his place and the coldness that was once his warm bed are reminders that Danny is gone. Toys we played tug-of-war with him, a bright orange squeaky one that he likely had partial sight of before totally losing his vision in the past year, are now collectables on our desk and nightstands, but a few now (he had several) that are shared with our other dogs, give us pause to remember how much he loved to play with us, how much we loved to play with him.
I went to the animal hospital last Thursday night to pick up his cremated remains, to bring him back home and I struggled to keep it together until I was safely back in the privacy of my car, where I then had a good cry and told him how sorry I was that he was gone, but happy that his giant spirit was going to fill that void he had left behind in our home when he escaped his short little life of pain and challenge. I told him I hoped that if there were dogs in heaven, that God would give him his sight again, so that when we meet each other again, he could see the smile on our faces, and believing that dogs share many of our emotions, smile back at us.
My wife placed his box of ashes and a disc with his paw prints on a table in our great room. We cried and hugged and then spent some time sharing stories of his life and all that his return to our home meant to us, finding comfort that he was among us, surrounded by loving memories.
With each passing day, I miss my brave little giant of a friend, as does my wife, and I’m not ashamed to still weep for him. I know I'm going to talk to him soon the best way I know how. I've no idea if there is a path to healing from the wound of his loss but soon I know I will have the courage to sit near the space he occupied and I will howl aloud at the top of my lungs, unafraid as I always was of what if anything the neighbors might think in hearing such a thing. I'll only be afraid - of the silence I'll receive in return.