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September 10, 2005
I Miss My Doggy
In the summer of 1994 I was driving back to Chattanooga from T-Wall along Suck Creek Road. My Subaru wagon was filled with trash - water and soda bottles, empty cigarette packages, newspapers, and tons of other crap - which was being whipped around in the back of the car by the windows-down wind. I pulled into the parking lot of the boat ramp on Suck Creek Rd. to clean out the U-R-A-BUS (Subaru spelled backwards) because there was a large dumpster there at the time. As I was tossing all this crap into the dumpster I repeatedly heard this muffled, high-pitched whining that seemed to be coming from/in/around the dumpster. I poked my head inside the sliding door thingy and the sound grew louder. The dumpster was almost empty, with the exception of my recent contributions, and I was curious, and a little bit freaked out, so I jumped in the dumpster to investigate. What I found would be one of the greatest blessings in my life.
Inside the dumpster were three cardboard boxes. One contained some large woman's underwear and a couple of small stuffed animals; the second contained some crumpled-up newspapers; and the third contained three puppies about six or seven weeks old. I tied some accessory cord to the box, jumped out of the dumpster, and fished the box of puppies out of the dumpster, and then emptied the adorable and fuzzy contents into the back of the URABUS. Two were blonde with dark brown patches, pointy noses, and brown eyes - they looked like German Shepard puppies, and both were boys. The other one was all blonde, almost golden. She had one brown eye, and one mostly blue eye with a brown streak: a gorgeous little girl puppy. When I got home I put the little golden girl with the funky eyes inside, and put the two boys in a basket and tied some bandanas around their necks (to make them look absolutely irresistible to anyone), and walked door to door around the neighborhood trying to get the pups adopted, which only took about ten minutes. I returned home to find the golden girl sulking in the corner, a fresh pile of doo on the carpet. I got the doo cleaned up, scheduled a vet appointment, bought some puppy paraphernalia, and named my puppy Isis, for no particular reason, I may have been listening to the Bob Dylan song, I may have been reading a book about Egypt; to tell you the truth I don't remember naming her, or why I chose Isis, but that became her name.
From that day on she was my companion. She went almost everywhere with me, she loved to hike, and hated to swim. She had a litter of puppies when she was two years old (which were adorable, of course, and distributed in the same basket-bandana fashion) before she was spayed. She was one of the most intelligent beings that I have ever encountered, people included, calm and serene, loyal and loving. She was with me for eleven years, one of the only constants in my adult life.
Last winter she started having grand mal seizures, and was diagnosed with brain cancer. Kate Allison, Isis' wonderful vet, put her on a regimen of Phenobarbital for seizure control, and Prednisone to reduce her cranial pressure, which gave her several more months of enjoyable doggy life, with just the occasional seizure now and then, but eventually, around May of this year, her condition worsened so that medication could no longer control her severe seizures. I had to euthanize her - one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. I buried her in my parents' backyard, and I was just over there looking at her grave yesterday, which is, I guess, why I'm writing this now.
I miss my doggy, and love her like crazy. Isis was a wonderful being and I am grateful that I had the privelage of having such a wonderful and pure relationship with such a cool dog.
| By Joshua Daniels | 10:49 PM