Little Annie (her original name is unknown to us) wandered out of the tall grass following one of my other dogs on an incredibly hot and humid spring afternoon. Who knows how long she’d been out in the sweltering heat – days, maybe weeks? But she managed to find us – people who would love and care for her. The minute I saw that little dog I fell in love with her.
My neighbor and I loaded her into the van, and my wife drove as we rushed her to the vet – isn’t it always the case that things like this happen after hours?
Well, now she was ours.
To me she looked like the tiniest German Shepherd I had ever seen. Same markings. Same body type. Just a light-weight at less than 30 pounds, standing about three hands tall. Her coat was soft and beautiful, her ears were just a little too big for her head, her tail, though it never wagged, was long (I often told her how much I admired it, even if she never heard me), and her little gray face – well, just look at it.
A subsequent visit to the vet a week later disclosed that she had kidney failure, was totally deaf, was almost completely blind, had some kind of tumor on her eyelid, and had cancer. Unspecified cancer. The blood work just showed cancer. A physical revealed it was in her gut. Our vet said it could take her quickly or slowly. His advice – make her comfortable and take it one day at a time. And so we did.
Annie was an ancient soul. She had probably wandered away from her home or was dumped by the road. Either way, no one came looking for her. Or maybe she belonged to some old person who simply couldn’t look for her. Who knows what her history was, but it was apparent that she was quite old. Maybe 15 or 16. We had no idea what kind of life she’d had, but we were sure her remaining days would be as peaceful as possible.
In the subsequent weeks, I learned she was an All-American girl. She loved hamburger and hot dogs, didn’t care much at all for dog food, and could take or leave chicken. Because she was nearly blind, she had some interesting run-ins with her water bowl, and she may well have had a little brain damage as well, as she had to learn to eat all over again, every meal time. But even then we managed to get the eating down to a routine. She liked her straw and blanket beds, so well in fact that she frequently tinkled on them just to watch me clean it up. And she loved to bathe in the sun.
Annie found us May 11th and stayed with us until August 4th. She took a turn for the worse that night, so at 1 AM on Thursday, I loaded us into the van and through a terrible thunder storm found our way to our vet’s house. Her little body already limp, he gently put her to rest there in the rain. It took mere seconds and her suffering ended.
I don’t know more of her story than that. I simply know it took only a moment to fall in love with her and I miss her as if she had spent her whole life with us.
This is the third dog I’ve lost to cancer. Something has to change.
Thank you for reading her story.
