(13 Weeks)
Valentine’s Day last year marked an end of an era. I said good-bye to my beloved dog, Enzo. Having presented my almost 2-year-old daughter with a new puppy on Valentine’s Day 2002, although difficult, the date presented for me an appropriate bookend to a 22-year run with two special canine companions.
My husband’s dog, who came to live with us once we bought a house in 1997, was elderly by then and he was gone not long after our daughter was born. He was named, Cody, which came from Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Cody. He had been with Chris all his adult life at that point. I have come to understand only in the past year, why he couldn’t bring himself to get another for a year.
Fueled by the need for comfort after 9-11, we began talking about the possibility of another dog, and by February of 2002 had found a Wheaten Terrier who seemed worthy. I let Chris name him. He chose Malachy, continuing the literary theme, from Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. Malachy was a high-maintenance dog. He took longer to housebreak than we would have liked. He was a little rougher with our 2-year-old than we found acceptable, and Chris believed, “this dog doesn’t even like me.”
He suffered from “hot spots” that drove him so crazy, he’d chew off a whole bunch of his hair and make his skin bleed. He puked all the time, so required a special (expensive!) food. He went through three groomers before we found one (at Petco of all places) that could handle him.
The vet gave us a sedative for him after the failure with groomer #2. When I booked the appointment with groomer #3, I explained the issues we were having and how the vet had provided the sedative. Her response was, “Oh, we would never want to groom a dog under sedation.”
When I picked him up, she said, “Yeah, maybe a little bit of that sedative would be helpful next time.” She continued to charge us an extra “challenging dog” surcharge, until we found the 4th and final groomer when he was around five. Chris had threatened to rehome him many times. But Malachy eventually learned to play nice with his human sister and put up with a lot from her including dress up and parties with the other (stuffed) animals.
I also somehow managed to introduce him to the joys of running. It took a while because his herding instinct was strong. When he tried to “herd” me by knocking into my legs when we started running, I’d simply stop. And then start again. He quickly learned he liked running and didn’t want to stop, so he stopped herding me.
I started taking him down to the park for group runs. He always had to be first. The fastest mile I ever clocked was a time we arrived late and tried to catch up to the group. Having never been good with leash walking, Chis wondered how it was going. “You run with him? Really? How is that possible?”
But he had also read in book about the breed that “a tired Wheaten, was a good Wheaten.” As our runs got longer, so did his afternoon naps. I had gotten him up to 10-mile long runs on the weekends. I was even able to include him when a local magazine was doing a piece on “busy people who run.” Without a doubt he became my dog. So, you can imagine how heartbroken I was in early fall of 2010, when he was diagnosed with cancer. After having a couple of seizures, a grapefruit sized tumor was found in his abdomen. It all happened rather quickly, but Malachy was gone a month shy of his 9th birthday.
I felt I was robbed of four or five years with him. But in looking back, had he lived for the typical Wheaten Terrier lifespan of 12-14 years, I would have lost him at a time when I was sustaining other monumental loses and a cancer diagnosis. God works in mysterious ways.
Less than 3 months after Malachy’s passing, we found Enzo.
To be continued…
Did you really think this wasn’t going to include a fundraiser? It’s me. Of course it is! Over the course of these 60 weeks, I am hoping to raise $6000 for the children of Mercy Home for Boys & Girls (that’s just $100 a week!). To learn more about Mercy Home and my why, please visit my fundraising page. Thank you.
