I struggled a bit with the decision to post this here. I originally wrote it as a long Facebook post. And my feelings about it were still really raw. Today, about 24 hours later, the searing pain is starting to become a dull ache but one that does not seem like it will ever go away. Bottom line is that this is very emotional and not what I set out for this Substack to be. but I also know that Facebook posts, by their very nature, disappear into the never-ending sea of poop that is Facebook and I want this to be able to stick around. Maybe at some point someone will share it with someone else dealing with the same thing Linda and I are dealing with now. We are getting ready to do another podcast episode with out first guest and it will be all about music and gear again as this was always meant to be. So, I ask for your patience with me posting something that might not be totally appropriate for this channel. We’ll be back on track in the next few days.
-b
Gutted today.
It was January of 2015. Rough time for us. Our German Shepherd Rhianon had died pretty suddenly a few months earlier right around Thanksgiving. Much worse, Linda's dad had passed nearly as suddenly a year earlier. Out of nowhere, my lovely bride announced that our remaining doggie, Diego the Devilish beagle was not used to being the only dog in the house and needed a friend. I was skeptical at best.
But, as usual, she was smarter than I. And I don't think it really had anything to do with Diego needing a buddy. About a year and a half earlier, I had taken what was supposed to be a part-time job just for the medical insurance. But it had morphed into full-time-plus-crazy-amounts-of-OT. It was also the beginning of my withdrawal from any kind of social life.
I was working graveyard and virtually every weekend which made going out to shows and interviewing audio crews tough. And as time went on I was, not to put too fine a point on it, embarrassed at what my life had become. It's never easy to go from "being someone" to being really insignificant and living a life that seemed to get smaller by the day.
Which is all background to how, on Super Bowl Sunday, we ended up at Leid Animal Shelter on a day when they were waiving adoption fees to find a "friend for Diego." I would not have let that job consume my life if we were not broke, so the waived fee thing was a big deal.
Anyone who has ever been to a shelter in Vegas knows that they tend to be full of pits and chihuahuas and not much else. And I was interested in neither. As we made our way through multiple buildings full of sad, scared dogs, Linda found a black and white doggie of a breed we could not determine, but neither pit nor chihuahua and insisted we take her out to the play area.
It was not an immediate love connection. At least not for me. The dog was neurotic and terrified. Linda was sold. I was totally not. Not close. I told her no. That the animal was too damaged and more than we could handle. But anyone who knows us knows that my wife generally gets her way. And this was not an exception.
She was not a stray. She was an "owner surrender." Who knows why, but they obviously loved her. She came with a slim notebook full of info about what she liked and didn't. Most of which was wrong. But someone made the effort. Her name was Luna.
We got her home and the first thing she did was hop up on our bed, something we had never allowed any of our dogs to do in the past. But we turned to each other and one of us said something like "ok, so that is how this is gonna be?" for the next almost 8 years she treated our bed like it was hers. Not a joke, that. When we redid the floor in that room and went from a queen-size bed to a king on a raised platform with sets of drawers in the platform and the new bed was too high for her to get up and down, I went out and bought a little set of stairs. Because by that point, it was her bed as much as ours.
When I very unexpectedly started playing the kinds of five-sets-a-night-five-nights-a-week gigs one is supposed to do when they are in their 20s at age 53 and would make my way home in the early hours of Monday morning, I knew I was going to have to fight for space in that huge bed as Luna literally laid on top of me. It was as if she was making sure I would not leave again.
When that band imploded in I guess early 2019 my life got even smaller. And, I'll be honest, it often felt like Luna was my only friend in the world. I know that's not actually true. But it felt that way pretty often. I can't tell you how many times my wife or daughter would ask me to repeat what I had just said and my reply was that I was just talking to the dog. I know she didn't actually understand but, there ya go.
Thousands of walks. My phone has beeped at me every day for years now with a reminder to feed her. And every night she would be there. I would wake in the middle of the night and know all was well just because I felt her weight against my leg.
We knew she was getting old. Close as we can figure, she was about 3 when we adopted her and he had her almost 8 years.And she was a big dog. Again, close as we can figure, an Aussie Cattle Dog/Border Collie mix. And we all know the deal with bigger dogs. They don't live a long time.
She was always a dog who panted a lot, but in the past week or two, that seemed to be even more the case. But she was still enthusiastic about walks and dinner and treats and eating and driniking normally. Then two days ago towards the end of our walk, she seemed to get very tired very fast. I always walked her using a long, retractable leash and have never been able to out walk her until Thursday. Yesterday, I overslept and it was too hot by the time I got up, so no walk. This morning, we went out and less than a block away from the house she fell and I had to help her up. Got her home and arranged an urgent care visit to the vet.
The news was not good. There was what appeared to be a mass on her liver and when they checked her blood, her liver numbers were really high. Really high. The vet and I talked. She said it was probably cancer and terminal. I said I would prefer to let her pass at home where she was comfortable and knew she was loved. And the vet gave us meds to ease the way a little. Steriods and pain relief. And she told me that Luna would not make it more than a couple of weeks.
I got her home and she made it barely an hour.
I am, or at least have become as my life got ever smaller, a pretty stoic guy. When our other dogs have died, I can't remember crying. But I've cried more today than I have in a long long time.
If I'm honest about it, the love of that dog was often the only thing that got me up in the morning over the past several years. And I miss her terribly already.
Luna was a "rescue." But in oh so many ways, she rescued me, not the other way around.