Get Out Your Handkerchiefs - I'm going to grieve and get a bit preachy...

My best friend Amy lost her dog Rita to cancer last week.

I wrote about Rita almost a year ago in honor or Amy's birthday in a post describing Rita's nasty smell and obstinate, curmudgeonly disposition.

Smelly and undisciplined though she was, Rita was not without her charms and I loved her very much for many reasons, but mainly because she was deeply loved by someone who I deeply love. Going to Amy's house just won't be the same anymore without Rita there yipping at my heels and trying to lick my brains out.

Rita developed a tumor on her front leg that was removed in early July and made to suffer indignities while the wound healed by being forced to wear not only the perfunctory plastic funnel around her head to keep her from chewing on her stitches, but also a glitter encrusted 4th of July preemie sized t-shirt, not unlike this, that Amy bought at the dollar store to prevent the doggie from digging at her bandages.

Rita was not the kind of dog you put clothing on.

Not if you wanted to keep your fingers. She had her dignity. So for Rita to sit still while being dressed and then actually keep the t-shirt on long enough for it to be beneficial is really saying something. After awhile she was back to her old spry, naked self. Good as new.

This fall however, a little more quickly than expected, the tumor came back with a vengeance and after only one watered down chemotherapy treatment Rita seemed to wither. The tiny, stinking dynamo became unrecognizable as the sassy pain in the ass she once had been and rather than put her through any more misery Amy decided to have Rita euthanized and made an appointment with her vet last Thursday.

Amy is inconsolable and understandably so. Rita has been her constant, faithful companion for the past 13 years.

In addition to her overwhelming grief, Amy worried that she put Rita down too soon. She and I spent a lot of time talking about this all throughout Rita's illness, starting way back when the tumor first developed and right up to last week when Amy made the final decision.

Although I couldn't make that decision for her, I think it was the right one and I certainly didn't think it was too soon.

After working in vet clinics for so many years I have seen people do some crazy shit in attempts to keep sick and dying pets alive. Some of them work out and are very inspirational, but most of the time these attempts just seem cruel to me and I'm amazed at how much money people are willing to shell out to keep their pets with them just a little while longer.

This is what I think, and maybe some of you will disagree with me, but here goes:

Your job as a pet owner is to give your pet the best quality of life possible for as long as it lives. That doesn't merely mean feeding it, making sure it has clean, fresh water and cleaning up it's crap. It also means keeping it safe from harm and getting regular check ups with your vet. It means teaching it not to jump on people and not to bite. To take it a step further, I also believe it means that you should try to shape your pet's behavior in such a way so that it can get along in the world, be more easily loved by you and others and not get kicked, beaten, bitten or taken away from you by the authorites.

Otherwise your pet is either a large pain in the ass or livestock and unless you are a giant asshole or a farmer, what's the point?

Anyhoo...

You cannot explain to your pet that it has cancer, or kidney disease, or liver failure or whatever it has wrong with it. Your pet doesn't understand why it feels sick or has pain, so your pet isn't going to understand why you are forcing it to swallow pills or give it daily shots or IV fluids or whatever horrible hell you have to put it through to keep it alive. Being a pet owner involves a certain amount of selflessness and that sometimes means deciding whether or not your pet's quality of life is being compromised by medical treatment.

Maybe it isn't.

If the medical treatment is minimally invasive and/or your pet has the kind of disposition that doesn't mind being poked, jabbed or prodded, then maybe you can stretch things out a little longer. Lucky you.

Otherwise you have to think about how you want your pet to spend it's last days and how you want to spend your last days with your pet.

Amy decided that she'd rather have Rita live a shorter life as her yapping, obstinate, brain licking self. I'm going to go cry again now.

Note to self: Less PBS, More Animal Planet

My best friend Amy is having some major doggie drama. We had a long talk about it last night. Having been married to Ted for less than a year it seems her newly blended family situation is in crisis mode.

Here is a list of all the critters currently living under her roof:

1. Her husband Ted

2. Her tween age daughter LBL

3. Ted's younger teen age son Sporto

4. Ted's older teen age son Emo

5. Ted's jumping, yapping 2 year old dog Chloe

6. Amy's jumping, yapping and curmudgeonly dog Rita, who is older than dirt

7. LBL's noisy, stinky guinea pig Sprinkles

8. Amy & LBL's cat Macy

9. Amy & LBL's cat Sebastian

10. Ted's 8 year old asshole Schnauzer named Max.

11. Let's not forget Amy, who is also noisy, stinky and yappy.

Max is causing monstrous amounts of trouble. He bites. He pees everywhere. Mainly the problem is He Bites.

I won't get into the details, but I'm sure you can imagine that their house is like an upside down zoo.

Anyhoo... after talking to Amy about her animal troubles and teen angst I talked to my friend Steph on the phone and set about recounting my entire conversation with Amy to her.

Gossip is such an ugly word. I prefer to think of it as a graphic and meaningful exchange of personal information about people other than myself.

Whatever you call it, when I was finished telling Steph all about the demon menace in Amy's household taking the earthy shape of a grouchy Schnauzer, Steph made the following insight:

"Sounds like they need to give Max the Caesar treatment."

I thought to myself, Well that seems kind of harsh.

Not understanding why Steph would immediately choose to resort to such violence and imagining poor old Max being stabbed repeatedly in the back by the entire family with a set of Chicago Cutlery steak knives.

Steph is a dog lover so I shook off my murderous canine mini drama and asked for some clarification.

Turns out Caesar is a reference to the canine behavior specialist who calls himself The Dog Whisperer. I've actually heard of this program, but had no idea that the guy's name is Caesar.

What a relief.

BTW - MDH and I have finalized plans to go on a long weekend, double date with Amy and Ted in June to Philadelphia.

I'm brimming over with excitement over this scheme.

Amy and I would never have attempted anything like this when she was married to Assface. I LOVE her husband Ted for many reasons, but not the least of which is that he gets along so great with MDH. It's like the perfect best friends scenerio when your choice of mate gets along with her choice of mate. Presto Pefecto.

Your Lucky Has Run Out

In honor of my best friend Amy's birthday I thought I would share a story about Amy's devotion to her dignity and her little dog Rita.

Rita is a 12 year old, 15 pound, black and white Rat Terrier with a little snub of a hot dog for a tail. She is hands down the cutest and most frustrating dog I have ever known.

She is yappy, obstinate, has the worst friggin' breath paired with the longest, slimiest tongue in the entire galaxy and wants nothing more than to lick endlessly inside your ears until she tastes your brain.

This is why when I am at Amy's house I never pick Rita up, lay down on the floor or allow my head to be anywhere near the level of that dog's reeking snout.

Even though Rita sheds enough to knit another dog, her breath smells like rotten eggs and her feet like Chili-Cheese Fritos, Amy loves this goddamn dog almost as much as she loves her own daughter LBL. Sometimes I wonder though, because Rita doesn't lie, ask for money, or whine about having to practice piano.

I helped Amy pick Rita out of the litter when she was a wee, bitty puppy, so in spite of all her smelly and irritating insubordination, I love Rita too. I however can say for sure that I love Amy's daughter more than Rita because along with many other wonderful qualities, at least LBL comes when you call her and nobody has to clean up her shit from the back yard.

Next to licking inside people's heads, all Rita wants in life is to sleep, sit or stand next to Amy - in exactly that order. Which is why she doesn't try to lick inside Amy's head. Ever. Rita needs desperately to be with Amy at all times (unless I'm there, and then she wants to sleep, sit or stand next to me) and knows that if she tries to taste Amy's brain that Amy will not hold her or let her sit next to her.

Rita has never had any training whatsoever (surprised?) and as I mentioned before, she is obstinate and she doesn't come when you call her. She will just stand there and look at you, lie down, or to prove herself to be even more of an asshole, turn around and walk away. She won't even come for Amy.

The old house that Amy lived when she got Rita had a beautiful fenced in back yard for the doggie to run around in. Since Rita only wanted to be inside with Amy, she just went out long enough to do her business, after which she would wait pathetically, with doe eyes and perked ears by the screen door to be let back in.

Rita hardly ever got outside of that fence without being leashed and when she did it was a huge ordeal to get her back in. When she was younger, she ran as fast as a little 4-legged rocket in increasingly large circles so that at some point she would come close enough to almost grab. When you reached out to snag her, she would get away while the circle got bigger and bigger until an arc of it included the road in front of the house. During it all, Rita would wear a big crazy, tongue flapping grin. The louder you screamed at her, the faster the pace and the bigger that infuriating grin.

One weekday morning, Amy ventured out to the supermarket 5 blocks from her house. She was sitting at a stop sign 3 blocks from home and about 1 block away from one of the busiest streets in Columbus when she looked over and saw Rita running around in someones front yard.

She immediately put the car in park and started walking slowly over, calling softly to Rita. The dog stopped what it was doing, looked at Amy for a moment, then it bowed down in a playful stance and took off running in a crazy circular pattern a wearing a wild, tongue flapping grin.

The closer Amy got, the faster and farther away the dog ran, until it was no longer on the part of the block that was residential. She had started running in the parking lot of a strip mall on the busy street. The circular pattern getting closer and closer to the fast moving traffic.

Amy was panicked and crying, wondering how the fuck Rita got out of the yard and blaming herself for leaving the gate open.

The shrilly screaming of Rita's name through sobs, over and over at the top of her lungs is what caught the attention of the store manager working in the tuxedo shop in the strip mall, who for some reason managed to catch the dog's attention and lure it into the store.

Amy ran to the tuxedo store, shaking and crying. Once inside she scooped Rita up in her arms and sobbed a thank you to the store manager.

She walked briskly back to the car, which was still idling at the stop sign and loaded up the dog and drove back home in silence while the dog energetically hopped all around the back seat.

Amy later told to me that she realized as soon as she walked into the tuxedo shop that the dog was not Rita, but after all the fussing and screaming she didn't know what else to do but take the dog.

It was a black and white male rat terrier, with similar markings to Rita's, whose tags revealed it's name to be Lucky.

Once home she put it in the back yard and called the owner's phone number on the tags, feeling quite ridiculous, but also like she had done the right thing. The owner came and picked up the dog a couple of hours later.

That dog was indeed lucky. Lucky that Amy didn't notice it had a penis and a different colored collar than Rita. The store manager was also quite lucky that Amy didn't dump the dog in the tuxedo shop because she was too proud to admit that the dog wasn't hers after crying and carrying on with the hysterical screaming fit in the parking lot.

BTW, Rita is still kickin', smellier than ever and now only goes out to do her business while supervised on a leash. She still wants to lick my brain.

and... PS - Happy Birthday to Frenchie too!