I already miss her. A lot. As I was heading out this morning
for a meeting in Des Plaines, I caught myself saying, as I usually do, “See you
guys later,” forgetting that there is only “guy.”
Pepper’s health had been rapidly degenerating over the past
few weeks, to the point that we sought medical help. And we discovered August
13, that she was so far gone that it would be better for her if we let her go.
Since making that decision, my mind has been whirling with memories and regrets – a
state that could, I suppose, be described as mourning.
I am gradually remembering all of the things that I really
loved about Pepper, some of which were somewhat shrouded in my memory by her
more solitary nature later in life and her recent lethargy and deteriorating
health.
Pepper was only a few weeks old when we first met her. Our
Cocker Spaniel, Coco, had just recently met a very tragic end, and we (mostly
me and Janelle, I think – Janelle was almost four years old at the time)
decided to look at these Australian Shepherd pups that were advertised in the
Iowa City Press-Citizen.
Pepper’s mom was a blue merle, and her dad was a tri-color,
like her. The whole litter was adorable, but Pepper seemed mellower somehow,
and while the others were jumping all over us like a bunch of honyocks, Pepper
seemed drawn to us. We liked her right away.
A few days later, when we brought her home, she was
terrified and didn’t leave the couch for days. She was a giant ball of black
fluff with a little white face. It took her several days to adjust to being a
Taylor, but eventually she took to us – even our cat, Zip. I don’t know if she
and Zip were ever friends, really, but they were tolerant of one another.
We brought Pepper home to a house with a big, fenced-in
backyard, which she loved. We could just let her out and she would run around
and chase all of the other critters out.
One of the really endearing things about Pepper that
manifested right away was her instinctive shepherd behavior. She would lie
across the entrance to the sheepfold (also known as our front door) to keep us
from leaving and prevent any wolves from coming in to eat us, and she would
shepherd us, literally. Whenever she was outside and we were walking on the
sidewalk to the garage, Pepper would switch back and forth to either side of us,
herding us onto the sidewalk. It was a little annoying, but adorable.
Pepper seemed like kind of a doofus, because she was very
submissive and lovey (her standard greeting was to try to climb your front in
order to get a hug, then to immediately roll over on her back to get a belly
scratch), but she was not. She was smart. And very trainable. At one point, we
thought about entering her in those contests where she would navigate obstacles
and whatnot, but I could never get her to go up the angled plywood mountain
thing on her own (I know, there are names for all of these things, but I don’t
care. I wasn’t that into it). But she could sit, stay, shake, and rollover like
a champ. And, when she was little, with no training at all, she could catch a
tennis ball in midair like it was a game she’d played a 1,000 times. Crazy.
But later on, she became the worst “fetch dog” that ever
lived. She would bring you a stick, all excited and wagging her whole body as
she always did when she was excited (she had no tail, so she wagged her whole
back half. It was hilarious), and you would throw it, and maybe one time, she’d
bring it back, but for subsequent throws, she would run out, then forget what
she was doing and go smell something, or just lay down in the grass like a lazy
bum and stop even looking for the stick.
I wouldn’t be talking about Pepper if I didn’t mention that
she had a couple annoying habits. She was ALWAYS hungry, so you couldn’t leave
any food on the table or the counter or you would come back to find it gone.
Also trashcans without lids were not an option.
We always buy cheese in big blocks and slice it ourselves.
Once, I left the cheese out on the counter, and I came back later to put it
away, and it was gone. All ¼ pound of it!
Another time, Eddie and I won a cake at a Cub Scout cake
auction – we paid a ton of money for it because it was huge, and it was Broncos
themed (Eddie’s favorite team), and we had just brought it home and had yet to
figure out what we were to do with such a huge cake. Pepper was not similarly
confused. We left for a little while, to go out to eat, I think, and when we
returned, there was a huge hunk of the cake missing right out of the middle of
it; the cake was completely ruined and completely inedible – for anyone but
Pepper that is.
Unfortunately, as amusing as these food-pilfering stories
are in hindsight, the thing that was NEVER amusing was that every time Pepper
would snatch some “human” food, she would get a terrible case of diarrhea. Have
you ever tried to clean diarrhea from the butt fur of a big old fluffy
Australian Shepherd? Well, you don’t want to. It is horrifying, and it would
usually end in a bath, which Pepper hated but tolerated. I would have to ask
Kim for sure, but I think I did all of Pepper’s baths, because she was really
heavy, and there’s no way she was going into that tub on her own. You had to
hoist her in, unwillingly.
The other annoying thing about Pepper was that, especially
in summer, she would shed EVERYWHERE. I can’t imagine where all of that fur
came from. She was like a ridiculously efficient fur factory. There would be
little balls of fur in every corner of the house and, within a couple days
after vacuuming, the whole carpet would look like a black fur coat again. Only
just recently, when Pepper was staying with the kids, did Janelle come up with
the idea to give her a summer haircut. It made her look adorable and young and
thin, and she didn’t shed. Yay!
One other thing: she got Lyme disease when she was about
five, which was scary, but she recovered. After that, though, she always
tested positive, even though she wasn’t showing any symptoms or anything. She
was cured but it would show false positive every time, which was also annoying.
And every time, I would forget and get all scared again. Then I would remember
the false positive thing.
Just about a year after we got Pepper, we “rescued” a Jack
Russell Terrier named “Charlie” from a relative’s home, not because of abuse or
neglect, but to prevent him from going to a shelter. Right away, we changed his
name from Charlie to Rocky, because it just seemed right. His full name was
Rocket J. Squirrel, but, like the flying squirrel of Bullwinkle-sidekick fame,
we called him Rocky for short. We gave him this name because he was always
jumping. Always. I think he thinks he can fly.
He and Pepper were fast friends, and one of my favorite
things they would do was play tug-of-war, which was hilarious because they were
so mismatched in size and weight. But Pepper would let Rocky think he could
win. She would toy with him for hours playing tug-of-war with the two-foot
knotted ropes from the dog area at Wal-Mart. It was so fun to watch. There was
growling and snarling like the fight was fair, but when Pepper wanted Rocky to
settle down, she could swing him around like a kite. But there was never any
doubt; Rocky was the alpha.
And while on the tug-of-war thing – we would sometimes board
Pepper with a friend from work who had two Newfoundland’s. If you’ve never
seen a Newf, they are like a cross between a dog and a bear. They are huge.
Pepper would run these dogs ragged, chasing them around the farm where they
lived, and then later, when the Newfs were exhausted, she would still want to
play. They would be down in the basement of the house, and Pepper would get
them to take the other end of the rope and then, literally, drag them around
the cement basement floor like a rag doll. The Newfs were so tired they would
just lay there and get dragged. It was awesome.
Those last few days before we had to let Pepper go were
really sad. She was very lethargic, she wouldn’t go outside much and she
wouldn’t eat. In fact, she hardly moved. It was so unlike her. She had
certainly slowed down – she was like a 95-year-old woman after all – but now
she just seemed to have run out of steam for living. When I finally took her to
the vet to see what was wrong with her, I couldn’t even get her to stand. I had
to carry her to the car.
I couldn’t sleep tonight because I kept remembering stuff
about her, so I got up and started typing. I wanted to get some of my memories,
fond and not so fond, of Pepper down on paper, because I wanted to make sure I
never forgot them. Worse than losing her would be forgetting her.
She was a great dog, and I wish I could give her one more
hug, get one more shake, and scratch her tummy one more time.
