Yesterday we had to put sweet Prissy to sleep. She was 16 (almost 16 and a half), and we've had her for 15 years. Fifteen years. I've got human friendships that haven't lasted half of that, and friends who have put up with a lot less. When we got her, she was afraid of newspapers and men in hats, which we thought might be a sign she'd been mistreated. She trusted us anyway.
I got her in 2005, when I was out of college and working my first grown up job. The Husband (who was then The Boyfriend) got her for me, after we found her on a rescue site. Our adoption was delayed because she was recovering from heart worms and was supposed to be resting for 6 weeks. We didn't know at the time that she would have heart worms two more times, and Novartis would pay for her third round of treatment since she had been on preventive medicine at the time. After the second round of heart worms I asked the vet if we really had to keep doing meds, because what were the chances that a dog would get heart worms a third time? She said "you're actually the patient we tell other patients about when we suggest they keep using heart worm prevention after they've been infected." Apparently she was remarkable.
She has also been quite ambitious. When she was younger she used to jump up in a chair at our kitchen table and eat things off the table. Once she knocked over a beer, spilt it in the floor, then drank it all off the floor. She got into a cake that was cooling on the counter. She has eaten LOTS of food out of my children's' hands, and ate coffee ice cream out of the trash. She ate Hershey kisses leaving the entire wrapper intact and precisely unfolded. She once jumped out of the window of my moving car, with her leash on and still attached inside the car. She jumped in our friend Marvin's lap and peed on his pants. She's run away multiple times, always to return with a smile and a wag of her tail.
She had that beagle bay that was loud and persistent and beagle-y. When she used to have a dog door into a fenced back yard at our old house, she would come and go a dozen times an hour, and announce her presence to everyone every time. God forbid a neighbor would walk by, or a dog or a squirrel or a leaf. She'd announce all of that too. We got a bark collar that sprays a puff of citronella when a bark activates it, so it deters barking but isn't painful. The first time she barked in the yard, she was afraid of that spot and wouldn't return over there again. It took her a while to realize it was the barking causing the citronella spray. Bless her sweet self.
In about 2008 my BFF Kati and I were in New York City on a trip that Kati won on The Price is Right the year before. (It was Kati's dream to be on TPIR before Bob Barker retired, so we flew to LA and slept out on the sidewalk all night to get onto the show. Then Kati ended up getting called to "come on down" and she won the whole showcase showdown. Since I had joined her on her dream to participate on TPIR, she took me on one of the trips she won). Since the flight and lodging were all paid for, we were living it up in NYC- shopping, eating, seeing comedy shows, making memories and taking the world by storm. We were shopping in a department store one morning on this girls trip when The Husband called to say he had found Prissy under our bed, unresponsive after chewing on some AA batteries the night before. He had taken her to the emergency vet and they said she was in anaphylactic shock. They administered epinephrine and kept her overnight. It was touch and go, and we didn't know if she would make it. "Do anything and everything you can" I said to him, as I started hanging clothes back on shelves, clearly not wasting money on fashion with a sick (and expensive) girl at home. That Christmas, we paid vet bills as our gift to each other.
When I was pregnant with The Boy Prissy wouldn't leave my side. If I was at home, she was beside me. If I was in the kitchen she was in the kitchen right up under me. If I was in the bedroom she was in the bedroom. When I'd take a bath in our small bathroom she'd lie down on the mat beside the tub. I swear she knew there was something going on, and she was keeping a close eye on me. When The Boy was born we brought a baby blanket to her so she could get used to his smell. She had a hard time with the change, and I was surprised that it was harder on both of us than I'd imagined. She stopped eating and wasn't acting like herself, and she would take any bottles or pacies she could get ahold of outside and chew them up in the yard. We took her to the vet and she started on antidepressants, which helped. I think it was just one more way in which she was aware of what was going on and feeling the same way I was. In time she improved and came off her meds.
Despite her hesitancy to embrace change, she was tolerant of The Boy. She was curious and patient, even when he pulled her tail and poked her eyes. She used her dog door to escape when she'd had enough, and when he was old enough to have an awareness of her, he was in love.
