Well, it's been a while. Like, A WHILE. Awkward.
Let me bring you up to speed.
This guy? Rigby? Otherwise known as Crazy Dog?
He's dead now. The cancer got him. We saw the tumor only a few months after my last post on here and he died by December of 2016.
We always joked that he was an asshole. And he was.
But he was also my light and my heart. I did not know at the time how much he meant to me. It has been over two years and the wound is still very very fresh. Dumb things can set me off into some ugly crying. Like, really dumb things. Dogs that look like him. Those stupid videos on Facebook of dogs finding their owners after being lost for a year. Watching the recent movie, Dumbo, which wasn't even that good, TBH, but when that baby elephant had to leave his mom, I. LOST. MY. SHIT. I was blubbering and dripping snot all over that fancy theater seat.
And I still do weird things, like refer to "the dogs" when we only have the bitchy corgi left. I don't know why but I can't quite pry his presence out of my life. Even new people I meet, when asked about pets, I will bring him up. WHY. He is dead. Over two years gone. Those people have GOT to think I am crazy. I don't want to get all sappy, but he's not gone from me, I suppose. He defined so much of what I have done since he entered my life in 2004: this blog, lots of research into dog behavior, a passion for rescuing, a distaste for chihuahuas (worst breed, pretty sure), friends I have met through animal rescues... a lot of stuff. He was the first dog I had as an adult, even if I didn't really want him originally. He was the first dog that confounded me so much by his behavior (DRAMA) that I one time sat on the floor of our first apartment in 2005 and cried over all the damage he had done to our stuff and all the stress he was serving me.
When Crazy Dog was diagnosed with cancer I left this blog and I left my writing mostly. It hasn't been a healthy thing for me, but I am still processing it. My therapist (who is great) told me to write about how I was feeling on here. My response was something like, "But my blog is funny and this isn't. No one wants to see me cry all over their browser." So I wouldn't do it. And she kept prodding me.
I loved that dog more than any other non-human creature I have ever known. Still do. When I admitted that, shamefully, to my therapist, she told me, "He was not just a dog. He was a family member." (AND NOW I AM CRYING AGAIN.) She's right. I don't know how to be better. So I am writing this and putting it out there like that same therapist told me to do.
But, wait! There's more!
We lost Crazy Dog in December 2016 and then in December 2017, my horse, Sassy, died. Yep. Same month only one year later. TRIGGERED.
I loved Sassy. She was my first horse. She was weird and goofy and had her own opinions on specific things (apples were great, pineapple was disgusting). She gave me confidence to stay in the riding game after being thrown from a horse years ago. She gave my niece and nephew some of their first pony rides. She carted around a friend's son on trail once she was too old to carry my adult ass around. She forever loved scratches on her withers and would always scratch you back with her prehensile nose, no matter how shitty she felt. Even with her degenerative tissue disease making it hard for her to get up, she would always roll in the warm arena sand on a sunny day. But then she could barely stand because she was in so much pain. And she passed peacefully a few days before Christmas in 2017.
And while her death was certainly hard for me and I cried for days and still miss her when I am at the barn now, it wasn't quite like losing CD. I think one of the hardest parts of losing Sassy was that it came so close to losing Rigby. And now December kind of sucks, you know? I keep checking the corgi's breathing when she's napping (she's old as shit now, too) and tell her to NOT DIE in the month of December. Pretty please.
I know a lot of you have asked me to write here again. All of the above is why I haven't.
So here I am, doing what I think is a cathartic thing. And maybe I will be back more. I'm not sure. I still have that terrible corgi who is still terribly terrible and I have some new pets, including a new horse and some pet rats, and they are all pretty funny too. But this blog was born out of CD and the corg. So, we'll see.
But in memory of these animals who changed me for the better and entered by life for what feels like too brief of a time, some photos:
It's not fair that animals don't live with us forever. I don't know how I will handle my fur babies passing- which lotto has kitty dementia so I will be a hot mess when that happens. Keep writing for you. Keep going for your new fur babies. You are a crazy strong, you are crazy passionate, and you keep being you.. all of YOU from funny, sassy, sad, and even a hot mess- and I am here to love you through it all. *hugs*
Posted by: Heather Chen | May 01, 2019 at 06:17 PM