Sunday evening there is a knock at my door. It’s the neighbor across the street and a glance out the window shows that she is disheveled and crying. When I open the door, she bursts into fresh tears. Her dog has died, in front of the whole family eating their dinner. Poor woman is crumbling and weeps, “I don’t know what to do”.

I take her by the hand and say let’s go home and take care of things. I lead her to her house and see yes, the dog is indeed dead there on the floor of the silent, seemingly deserted house. Yellow haired Lab-mix, she has peed a bit in her dying. She is stiffening but still warm.

Where are your children, I ask. She has sent them to their room. I sigh. Here is my task. I look her in the eye. Get them. She hesitates. Get them, this is sad, but not horrifying. This is a lesson for them about death.  Keeping them away will make them more afraid. Let them say goodbye to her.

She ushers three small boys into the room where their dog is now cooling on the tile floor. 6, almost 4, and 2 1/2, blondes that will turn brown haired as they grow. Mom sobs something like Trinity has died, we need to say goodbye to her. 2 says Bye Bye Trinity. 6 says nothing, holding himself together bravely. He is the only child who  really knows what is going on. Almost 4 says, Is she with Jesus? Yes! I turn to middle boy, grasping at the first clue on how this family needs to handle this. Trinity is with Jesus now. Her spirit is, she is done with this body now, and we need to make it ready for her funeral.

Where is your husband? He is calling around seeing where a cremation can be affordable on a Sunday afternoon. The dog is leaking gas and I know she will poop soon. Get him, we need to wrap her in a blanket. Middle boy says, She peed! Woman crumbles again and hurries out of the room leaving me with her kids and her dead dog. I know her husband does not like this dog, he has said so more than once. I also know this is her dog, about 3 years older than her first child, both from her first marriage.

I have a moment to look around the home, noting crosses and plaques with bible verses. Me, in this so obviously Christian home alone with a stranger’s kids looking at death for their first time. The parents are useless in her grief and his irritation. Yes, I tell middle boy, she has peed and she might poop soon. Middle and little giggle, oldest still stoically trying to not cry. When our spirit leaves our body we don’t need our body anymore and so it forgets what it knows and it can make a mess.

Husband arrives with a blanket and we get the dog on it and wrapped just in time. Middle and little follow Dad down the hall and into a room. Oldest stays with me. No. Oldest stays with his dead dog. I start to cover her head and he sets a gentle hand on mine, stopping me. I nod. I remove her collar and hand it to him. This is for you to keep. Your parents are going to take her to the vet to prepare her body. Let’s go see what they have found out. I take him by the hand and lead him down the hallway.

Husband is googling dog cremations, getting hits for the human funeral homes that also do pets at truly phenomenal fees. Call your vet, I tell him. He tells his wife to call, she gets a recording. I give him the name of the weekend and evening vet to search. Oldest sits on the bed beside the computer desk. No one seems to notice the great struggle he is having controlling his face. I give Husband a significant look and nod toward the child. He gives the boy a manly hug, boy bursts into tears. Husband lets go and goes back to googling. Boy sits back down on the bed and renews his struggle with his face.

Husband asks if $180 is a good deal on cremation. It is, so he tells his wife to call that number. Woman calls and starts sobbing so hard she cannot speak. I take the phone and handle that part, too.

We are all crammed into a small bedroom/office, the youngest kids running in and out with toys. I sit on the bed next to the oldest, who is still trying to control his face but leaking tears and snot. I see the youngest two run into the family room, where the dead dog is partially wrapped in the blanket. No one else seems to notice, so I follow them. They are very curious about Trinity’s situation. I call Husband to us, we need to finish wrapping her and get her in the car. I finish the wrap while Mom sobs, oldest attempts his leaky stoicism, middle and youngest run off to play some more. Husband is mentally tapping his foot. He moves Trinity to the car. By this point I’m getting really irritated with him. All that is left to do is the driving, so I hug the Woman and go home.

The next day after work she is at my door again, looking her usual pretty self. She thanks me for helping and tells me what happened at the vet. She invites me to the dog’s funeral Saturday. Of course I will be there. She says she is so grateful I took charge. I smile, and tell her I was grasping for some direction until her middle boy said is Trinity with Jesus now. Then I knew to take the Christian route. She looks puzzled. I tell her, Oh, I’m not Christian, I’m pagan. She says, but that was such a Christian thing to do! I smile and hug her and say, yes, but being nice and helping neighbors predates Christianity by a long time. I tell her I am honored to be invited to the funeral. Her face sort of falls and freezes, then she smiles a sad smile, says thank you again and goes home. I say let me know what time. She lifts the corners of her lips and waves her fingers, turning for home. 

Well damn, Cyn, open mouth, insert foot.

Saturday comes and goes. I did not go ask what time they have their ceremony, I know I have been uninvited. Poor Trinity. Poor Oldest Boy who loves her. Poor Woman who accepts the kindness of strangers who do not share her dogma in an emergency, but does not welcome them into her home when the crisis has passed. I am sad, but it is not my place to intrude. 

That night I go out in my yard under the moon and cast a circle. I ask Jesus to look out for Trinity, she is a good dog. I ask him to look out for her people, because they surely need his most wise counsel. I ask my gods and goddesses to help them in the same way. I write Trinity Is A Good Dog on a piece of paper, set it in a bowl of sand and light the paper with a short candle. As the smoke and ash rise, I say Trinity is a good dog, thank you for helping with that most excellent child and for loving his mother. The paper burns down to a smolder, then black. I crumble the ashes under my rosemary bush and rub them into the dirt. I blow out the candle. I break the circle. The night is clear and starry.

copyright 2012 by Cynthia McCollum 

Cynthia McCollum is a dog trainer, writer, and poet. She lives in the Clearwater, Florida area. She can be reached through www.TrainWithCynthia.com.

Just a few years ago, I lived in a densely populated city in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I was , by and large, dependent on  dog parks for my dogs’ off-leash exercise. You know how when you see something all the time, you become accustomed to its quirks, to the point where you don’t see them so much? That’s how I was about dog parks a few years ago . . .  but not now. Today I’m lucky enough to live in a small town that is literally surrounded with public open spaces, wildlife areas where dogs can be walked off-leash.

Recently, I spent the better part of a morning at a large, nice dog park in the town where I used to live. I wanted to get some new stock photos for WDJ’s files; it’s been literally years since I did this at a dog park. Perhaps because I have been absent a few years, some of the things I saw shocked me! Such as:

–How most of the people who brought their dogs to the park stood in one spot, not far from the entrance, and talked with each other (or on their cell phones!), mostly ignoring their dogs. How few people walked with their dogs to the far corners of the park.

–How much poop there was that was lying around, un-picked up.

–How many of the dogs were wearing all sorts of gear that is unsafe for playing in groups, including pinch collars, choke chains, and harnesses. (It’s all too easy for a dog to grab another dog by the collar or harness, and get his teeth or jaw stuck in the other dog’s gear, leading to panic and injury – or even death by strangulation, if the panicked dogs cannot be freed quickly enough.)

–How many “bully dogs” there were. (I’m not talking about “bully breeds” – pit bulls, bulldogs, and the like. I’m talking about dogs who seem to enjoy picking on and harassing other dogs. There is a big difference between a dog who likes rough play and a bully. The most significant one is that the bully won’t ever be caught rolling on his back or playing the “submissive” dog role. Many dogs who like to play rough but are NOT bullies will voluntarily take their turns at the bottom of a wrestling match.)

–How the most aggressive dog I saw was owned by the most aggressive human I saw. When a scuffle broke out between two other dogs, this one man’s dog dove in and attacked one of the dogs who was involved in the original skirmish. Given that the new aggressor was a mastiff, his owner had to literally throw himself on the dog’s body – twice – in order to pull the giant dog off his much-smaller victim. (Shortly afterward, a woman who watched this whole scene from outside the park called to the mastiff owner to put his dog on a leash. However, he, at least, if not his dog, was still quite “amped up,” and he started yelling at her to mind her own business, with a few curse words thrown in for emphasis. When she said it WAS her business, as she wanted to enter with her dog but didn’t feel his dog was safe or under control without a leash, he cursed at her some more. And even though the pack was populated by a number of people and their dogs, no one else either came to the woman’s defense – even though she was right, the dog should have been put on a leash following the fight – nor attempted to calm the obviously upset, out-of-control mastiff owner.)

Dog parks can be fantastic resources for people with well-socialized dogs who have energy to burn and need space — and other well-socialized dogs – to play with. But they are not without drawbacks.

Do you still use dog parks for exercising your dogs? How do you feel about them?

My Ella is a chow hound. Not only does she eat everything I offer her, including lemon slices, but she thinks the purpose of walks is to see how much food she can find. It’s amazing what she comes up with. In the first year and a half that I had her, we spent one night at the emergency vet after she ingested paintballs, and she also had to see a specialist to remove a peanut fragment that she tried to cough up but which got caught above her soft palette in the back of her nose instead.

I mention this so that maybe you’ll understand why I panicked when the cap from a container holding a fly paper strip disappeared after I dropped it. I didn’t think much of it at the time, just finished putting the strip up, and then looked around to pick up the cap, which I had heard fall, but it was nowhere to be found. I wouldn’t have been overly concerned, except that the top had a thumbtack pushed through it for hanging the strip. Normally, Ella would be unlikely to eat anything that wasn’t food, but the top also had some of the sticky stuff from the fly paper, and I thought that might have attracted her to it.

I must have spent half an hour searching my small kitchen for that cap. I got down on hands and knees, felt around the bottom of the lower cabinets in case it had somehow bounced up and stuck, checked the box it had come in, checked Ella to make sure it hadn’t somehow stuck to her, even took off my shoes and walked around barefoot, figuring that if the thumbtack was in the vicinity, I would find it that way, but nothing turned up.

Reluctantly, I finally called the emergency vet (of course, this would happen on a weekend), who suggested I bring her in for an x-ray. $350 later, the mystery remained — while a plastic cap might have been hard to see on an x-ray, that thumbtack would have lit up like a Christmas tree on the film, and it simply was not there.

So, back home we went, and I began the search again. In frustration, I decided to check inside the dishwasher, even though it had been closed at the time I dropped the cap. As soon as I went to open the dishwasher door, I saw it — sitting on top of the door, the black of the dishwasher completely camouflaging the black of the cap, which had the thumbtack pointed up so that it was almost invisible. It was a relief to know what had happened, and that my dog was safe, but I felt like an idiot for taking her to the emergency vet.

How about you — has anyone else had a scare that turned out to be nothing?

Mary Straus is a regular contributor to the Whole Dog Journal. She and her Norwich Terrier, Ella, live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I just finished reading a book about the life – and death — of a special dog, a much-loved Border Collie. Of course, I cried like a baby at the end of it, knowing how hard it is to lose such a very special dog. I have to say I haven’t cried like that in a long time, and even as I think about it now . . .

Somehow it really hit me especially hard, since the description of the dog reminded me so much of my dog DeeDee, who I still always think about. The dog in the book was independent, didn’t care much for cuddling, kept her own counsel, but always aware of her owner’s presence, whereabouts, and predicaments, and always wanted to work. DeeDee always wanted to be with me, though she, too, was not crazy about hearing sweet nothings. And when I took her to try out some sheep, she made my jaw drop; she knew exactly what she was supposed to do without having any prior experience. And yet, she wouldn’t work with the sheep and the instructor unless I was in the ring. Once I entered the ring, she was ready to get to work. When her time was up, she ran over to me with the biggest grin on her face that I had ever seen, albeit an exhausted grin! She didn’t get to work with sheep for a living, but she was a lucky dog in that she got to live on six acres with a swimming pool that she took great advantage of, other dogs that she got to harass, and enjoyed lots of games such as obedience and agility. She was also lucky in that I had the luxury of not needing to work 40-plus hours a week, loved to go running and hiking, and loved doing pretty much anything with her. 

Both of these dogs were very lucky to land in the homes they did. I wonder how they would have survived if they had been adopted into a suburban or city pet home, occupants busy with work, kids, social lives. It really makes me sad when I see dogs who end up in circumstances that just don’t work for them, don’t meet any of their needs, and yet they try so hard to adapt, having no other choice. Their people try to make it work:  condition, desensitize, habituate, DRI, DRO, extinguish, shape, Premack, reinforce, punish, chain, bridge, medicate, and so on. Sometimes everyone comes to a middle ground, it works to an extent, everyone continuing to work hard, yet the fit is never really right, the haunting existence of a whole different life somehow being missed. DeeDee would not have been the right fit for so many. My family was often amazed and puzzled by her level of intensity, and never would have wished for it. I loved her beyond compare.

I have seen these intense dogs become neurotic, exhibiting behaviors that are anything but normal. The behaviors come up out of necessity, as a side effect of a life not fulfilled, because they are jammed into an existence that has no way to meet their needs. I have seen it with some of the sporting breeds as well as the herding breeds. Their owners then have to try to get help for issues that percolate up because due to the mismatch. It’s not unlike kids placed in the wrong adoptive environments, the situations that have no connection to their needs. They, too, are often medicated to try to make them fit where they just don’t.

I always hope that breeders and rescues are sensitive to the results of their placements. I also hope that people searching for a dog understand that, although they had a young Brittany pup many years ago, and had the energy to tend to its needs, at a later point in their lives, it might make sense to look for a dog with less horsepower.

Tricia Breen has been involved with horses and dogs for most of her life. For the past five years, Tricia was the Director of Animal Care and Adoptions at Marin Humane Society, always keeping an eye toward helping dogs and volunteers with shelter life. She recently left this role and went back to assisting people with their dogs to build relationships, consulting with behavior and training issues. She can be reached via www.trishking.net as a new partner in this endeavor.