Good Bye My Best Friend

When I was 20 I worked and lived at a dude ranch full time. One of the perks for being a full time employee was after working there for 2 years you could own a dog. I missed the fact that we still had to clear it with the owner and I went to looking. I scoured the ads in the local newspaper and found a breeder an hour and a half away that had purebred chocolate lab pups for sale. They were only 4 weeks old and therefore too small to take home but that didn't stop me from falling in love. I bought Maddie the second I laid eyes on her weeks before I could take her home. I drove an hour and a half each direction every week to visit her until I could finally take her home. She was finally all mine.

When the owner found out I had bought a dog she flipped out and called me into the office. She was irate and almost made me return her. I think she knew that I was already in love and would have quit before I let that happen so she said I had to make sure Maddie was well trained because she was going to be around people and especially kids. The owner used to be a dog trainer so she helped me kennel train Maddie and teach her how to sit, stay and come. One day my boss said it was time to teach Maddie to stay out of the kitchen. No matter what. You see Maddie came to work with me and the restaurant kitchen was right across from my office. Dogs could NEVER go in the kitchen. My boss had me go into the kitchen while she stayed out of it with Maddie on a leash. She had me call Maddie. When my dog ran towards me, like she had been asked, my boss ripped so hard on the leash that my Maddie spiraled backwards. I didn't know that was going to happen and never would have gone along if I had. I scooped Maddie up, walked away and decided from that day forward I would train her myself. Maddie and I worked very hard to make sure she was a wonderful dog to be around. We were constantly training. Our hard work payed off. She was spectacular.

One of the games we played a lot was tug of war. I played tug of war with her from the time that I brought her home at 9 weeks old. I usually didn't pay attention too much while I was doing it because, after all, she was just a pup. One day I was sitting on the second stair of the staircase talking on the phone while playing tug of war with her. She tugged and I tugged and then she tugged so hard she ripped me off the staircase. She had tugged so hard I almost didn't catch myself. That's when I realized that she wasn't a puppy anymore. She was growing up. Fast. I had to pay attention now.

Another one of the perks of living at the dude ranch was the hiking. The ranch was situated at the bottom of a valley surrounded by 350,000 acres of national forest. She and I hiked. A lot. We would choose a different trail everyday and just go. Rain or shine. Winter or summer. We hiked. She often would find a stick along the way to take with her. My favorite memory of that was the day she grabbed and drug a stick for almost 3 miles. All the way to the top of the mountain. The stick wasn't actually a stick. It was an 11 foot pine tree that had fallen over. She tugged and yanked and pulled that tree through the narrow trail and I didn't stop her. She was determined. Who was I to get in the way of a girl and her determination? When we reached the top of the mountain she put the tree down looked at me with a sense of accomplishment and waited for her treat. I would always bring a orange with me when we hiked and she knew she would always get half. That day she extra earned it.

She loved playing fetch. One day, when the horses were in the pasture right by our house, she and I were practicing bringing the ball back to me in the backyard. Over and over again I threw the ball and over and over again I bribed her to bring it back. The last time I threw the ball it bounced off a rock and flew over the fence into the middle of a herd of horses. That didn't stop her. She barreled through the fence and right into the middle of the herd. All I saw was horses rearing up and running in all directions. Dirt and grass was swirling through the air and I couldn't find Maddie. I thought for sure the dust would settle and I would see that she had been trampled. I should have known better. She came trotting out of the dust cloud triumphantly carrying the tennis ball in her mouth with a bloody foot. She wanted me to throw the ball again. Instead, to her deep disappointment, I checked her foot. The outside toe of her right foot had been stepped on and was bleeding everywhere. That toenail never grew back right.

When I left that job and went to work on the performance horse ranch she went from being around 5 or so dogs when we would go to work to being around 1 but only when the shoer was onsite. At that time I traveled 5-6 days a week to different horse shows and took her with me. The day I had to have 4 hauling horse trailers pull over and after leaving a gas station so I could check for her because I couldn't remember putting her back in the trailer I knew I couldn't take her anymore. She had to stay home. We went through a couple of weeks of that before I asked to be moved to the office. All of that traveling was getting to me.

I worked in the office for weeks before one day I realized she was lonely. Very, very lonely. She didn't have anyone to play with. I decided to go to the pound to find her a companion. The paramiters I was given by my boyfriend of the time was small. He wanted a small dog. I was looking for a dog that was a little older. I came home with a dog that was only 1 of the 2. I came home with a 100lb dog I lovingly named Howard. It was a stark difference when he stood next to Maddie. Her body absolutely rippeld with muscle. My boyfriend said he should have known to not send me by myself. When I first took Howard to my vet, Pat, I had barely walked in the door when Pat looked up and saw Howard. I got no hello that day. Instead I got, "What. The. Fuck. Is. That." Howard was so fat. Huge really. I was given 1 task and 1 task only. Get Howard to lose weight. Luckily we lived within walking distance to the Stillaguamish River in Oso, WA so we would head over there a couple days a week. Both of the dogs loved the water. Maddie would only get in it if I threw a stick or ball for her but Howard would get in, swim to the middle of the river and swim against the current the whole time we were there. 30-45 minutes a couple times a week. He lost 30 pounds within the first couple of months of living with us.

Howard quickly became Maddie's best friend. They went everywhere together. They were amazing and a little naughty. There was one particular time I remember when I let them outside, at home, together. Again, I lived at the ranch but this time my house was right by a barn. I went to call them back in and they were no where to be found. I called and I called and I called. Nothing. Panic started to set in. It was dark and there were predators in this area. I went looking and they finally came waddling home. I mean WADDLING. They were both stuffed to the brim. Literally. I squeezed Maddie's belly and whole pieces of grain came out of her mouth. I then had to go find what they had gotten into. I found a half HALF! consumed 50 pound bag of horse grain. HALF! Between my two dogs they consumed 25 pounds of grain. I knew who had instigated that scheme. Maddie. One of her nicknames had always been the "food whore". She loved food. It took a couple of weeks for their bodies to get back to normal.

Another memory I have of Maddie at that ranch was right after we had gotten home. One of my roommates, Mark, had consumed an entire bottle of wine and was determined to fly a kite. The problem was there wasn't a lick of wind in the air. It was completely still. He had a plan. He would run as fast as he could around the pasture in front of our house with the kite behind him and make it fly by creating the wind with his speed. I stayed to watch. I'm pretty sure anyone in my spot would have done the same thing. With Howard on one side of me and Maddie on the other Mark readied himself. He got the kite in order behind him and took off. Around the the pasture, about the size of a football field, he sprinted. It was working! The problem was so did Maddie. She took off. Like a bat out of hell she ran straight across the field straight toward him. The closer she got the faster she seemed to run. I kept waiting for her to slow down. She didn't. She was almost to him who was still, by the way, sprinting at full speed completely unaware that she was running toward him. I was screaming for her to come back. She wasn't stopping. They met in the far side of the field. Her body took his feet right from underneath him. so hard he did a front flip. It was dead silence as he laid there. I was stunned. I was absolutely frozen in my tracks. When I finally snapped out of it I started running towards him. At this point Maddie was trotting back to me seeming to be completely unaware of what she had just done. Mark wasn't moving. I had scared energy coursing through my body. Then I heard something. It started very faint but quickly got louder and louder and louder. It was Mark. He was laughing. He got up and limped his way towards me. We met part way across the field where we both collapsed laughing over what had just happened. Maddie had never done anything like that before and had never done anything like that since.

When I decided it was time to come home (back to Arizona) I had to move into an apartment. It wasn't fair to keep even 1 let alone 2 dogs in an apartment all day so my parents took Howard. Maddie and I visited him all the time. When it was time for Howard to go "home" I had to stop taking Maddie over to my parents because she would search every room looking for him only to come back to me and, in her own dog way, ask me where he was. She was heart broken. It took her years to play with another dog again. Other dogs would come around and she didn't give them the time of day. She only played with her rope, frog or tennis ball.

Living in the city seemed to stifle her spirit. We couldn't hike like we used to. I had to leash her because some city people are completely irresponsible when it comes to their pets so leashes are a law. She really was better off a leash then on. When I was married we used to play cards with a couple of my friends every Tuesday. We would play for hours on the back porch at the table. She used to sit in the chair next to me and look around the table like she herself was playing. I swear she thought she was a human.

Her behavior had been progressively getting worse as the last couple of months wore on. She misbehaved on walks. She seemed to not want to go. We just thought her joints hurt. We assumed it was because she was getting older and that she acting out a bit because of the new baby. When we got back from Christmas vacation I almost didn't recognize her. Whatever the problem actually was had taken over her body. I called a couple of vets to get information and was told that just running the tests to find out what it was would cost $4-500, that treatment would be a lot more on top of that and that from the sounds of her problems they prognosis wouldn't be good. We didn't have that kind of money to throw around hoping to find a magic answer but I couldn't leave it at just that so I took to the world wide web and did tons of research. The more I researched the more it pointed to congestive heart failure and she was in the end stages. When we took her to the vet this morning I think I wanted him to tell me it would be okay and we could easily fix her. He didn't. Instead he told us that we were doing the right thing and based off of her looks and behavior she did, indeed, have congestive heart failure. His diagnosis was either kidney failure or a heart tumor. Neither of which could be easily fixed or really fixed at all. The treatments would be expensive and would only prolong her life by a short time but she would be confined to no activity. That isn't living. If I kept her it would only be because I selfishly wanted her for my sake. She wasn't even able to walk up the stairs.

As the vet talked I started to cry. And cry. And cry. He asked me if I wanted to be in the room when he did it. "Of course!" I said. I kept crying. He asked me that question 2 more times and the last time I lost it. I couldn't. I turned to Jason, asked him if he would stay with her, grabbed Jackson from him and left the room leaving my best friend of almost 11 years behind me.

She gave me almost 11 years of love and friendship surpassed by no one. She got me through a 2 year relationship, 3 1/2 year relationship, a brutal marriage and divorce. She was with me through graduating college, quitting my corporate job to do what I love, a pregnancy, birth and many, many moves. She was there when my Grandma died and when friendships began and ended. She has been my only constant for the last 11 years. She helped me through my sexual assault and all my health problems. She laid by me when I was sick and felt my loneliness. She was with me for happy times, sad times, hurt times and excited times. I miss her so much already. I love you Maddie girl. I love you so much. You will be very missed and, most certainly, never replaced.

Howard

Howard and Maddie

Maddie and Howard