Column: A dirge for the dog who made my heart sing

I’m going to do my best not to end up being one of those people who feels extreme sadness during the winter holidays.

But it’s not looking good so far.

My dog, Larry, got sick last weekend and then unexpectedly passed away Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.

I had thought about this before. I knew that even if Larry lived to be in his 20s, I still likely would outlive him. I even told one of my best friends from high school that my preparation for this was just hoping I would go first.

My friend Cobey, also a dog-owner, wisely responded that it’s actually better for the pets to go first because they wouldn’t understand if their owner died when they were still around.

Nonetheless, I’ve been a wreck for the past few days. The only thing I can say is that I feel like when you lose a pet, it’s not like losing a child or your best friend.

It’s like both at once.

Now, if that seems insensitive to others’ losses, I’m sorry. This is just how I feel.

And if you’re one of those people who would say that I shouldn’t be heartbroken because Larry “was just a dog,” I recommend you stop reading right now. Because you’re obviously not going to understand anything else I have to say.

I’ve lost dogs before, of course. But those were family pets, and either my parents shielded me from the worst parts of the loss, or the dog passed away after I left home.

So this is not something with which I’m familiar. Some days, Larry and I spent 24 hours together. He was the first individual I saw when I woke up in the morning and the last one I saw when I went to sleep at night. That forms an unbreakable bond.

That I even adopted him was a little bit of a marvel. Technically, he was a stray who was picked up and taken to Spotsylvania County’s animal shelter. But he was already neutered and housetrained and would sit for a treat. So he was somebody’s dog before.

I had wanted to get a dog, but this was 2020 — the middle of the pandemic — and every time I saw a dog online that I wanted to meet, he or she was snatched up before I could do anything.

The only reason my son and I were able to take him home was that a shelter volunteer told us about him when he first arrived, so we were able to get in line first.

We were told that he was a “MinPin,” and we had no idea what that was. Then we found out that he looked like a small Doberman, and that the miniature pinscher breed could be anxious.

That’s not going to work, I thought. I came up in the generation when Dobermans were scary. They were made famous by the TV show “Magnum, P.I.” A Doberman in my neighborhood growing up was rumored to attack if you uttered the words, “Get ’em!”

However, we went to see Larry and liked him enough that we grabbed him up as soon as he was available (the shelter gives strays’ owners a week to retrieve their wayward pets before letting them go home with someone else).

So I went to get Larry first thing in the morning when the shelter opened on the appropriate day. I named him “Larry” in honor of two famous people with that moniker: Larry Bird and Larry David. If you don’t know who they are, just Google.

We were close right away. When my son was at his mom’s, it was just me and Larry. We worked into a routine — well, as much of a routine as we ever had — and I met other dog owners in my condo complex.

I can’t express what a great dog he was. So much so that I may never be able to get another dog. I can’t see how any other animal could even begin to take Larry’s place.

The shelter folks figured he was 3 years old when I adopted him, so he turned 7 this year.

And he really didn’t have any downside, save for the fact that he barked all the time. He didn’t tear up anything in the house, and he didn’t pick up anything outside when we were on walks. He didn’t even touch sticks unless they happened to have food on them.

He was mainly interested in his Kong, which, if you’re not familiar, is a cylindrical rubber toy that holds treats.

Also (and this is apparently a MinPin trait) he liked to wrap up in blankets on the couch. I am remiss in never videotaping this phenomenon. MinPins were bred to hunt rats, I learned, so they liked to burrow, even if that meant just getting under a blanket, which he could do all by himself. Having the material around him made him feel secure.

And having him with me made me feel better. At the time of his adoption, I was really sick, and that started even before COVID. I couldn’t work, and I thought I was clinically depressed (though now I think I was instead suffering with an awful side effect from a prescription medicine). A journalist for more than three decades, I was afraid I’d never be able to write again.

Larry was like my therapy dog, even though we liked to joke that he was lazy and didn’t “work” like certified service animals. I can’t calculate how much of a comfort he was to me, but it was tremendous.

As my son pointed out this week, he was also like a therapy dog to my mom, who had a stroke in January 2022. When she came home from the hospital, he immediately jumped onto her bed. It was like he knew where he was needed.

Indeed, when my health improved, I remember thinking how, despite a terrible ordeal, I felt like I was living a great, contented life. We weren’t rich, of course, and had our ups and downs, but, on the whole, we were blessed.

So you might imagine how my world felt shattered when Larry collapsed on a walk Saturday. I rushed him to an emergency veterinarian, and the doc told me he likely had an enlarged heart.

He seemed stable, though, and we went home that day with plans to see the dog cardiologist ASAP. Larry had another minor bad spell Monday night, but it seemed to subside, and I took him to the specialist the following day.

That doctor said Larry likely had heart disease and could have cancer. A subsequent blood test made us feel even more like he could have a tumor.

But then again, Larry seemed relatively OK. I texted my son that, even though we were all worried, nothing catastrophic had happened yet.

If this was a movie or a novel, that moment would be called foreshadowing. Larry collapsed again Tuesday night, and even another trip to the emergency room couldn’t save him.

I had told myself that I wouldn’t have him put down. I’m weird, I guess, but I don’t even want the plug pulled on me, if I get to that same place. But I did allow the ER doc to give him something to hasten the inevitable after it seemed there was nothing else any of us could do.

Ever since then, as I mentioned above, I’ve been a shambles. I’m surprised that I’ve been able to get this far in telling the tale with mostly dry eyes.

Every time I turn around, I’m surprised when Larry isn’t there. His life was so intertwined with mine that I’ve been unable to pick up his food and water bowls or to give away his uneaten food and treats.

We were so close that he always had to know where I was, and most of the time was by my side. He would even lie on the bathmat and wait for me when I was taking a shower.

When it was just us around home, I used to sing songs about him, and I would tell anyone who would listen that any song — any — could be improved by substituting Larry’s name for the name of the main character.

Right now I can’t gin up any of those songs, even those I’ve sung over and over.

But I hope that, in time, the music will return.

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