Brilliant … But Bouncy

Xena Was Always Very Excited.

I told myself that I was going to get a dog “for the children.” I’d grown up with a dog, and I wanted my kids to know that same joy.

After months of online browsing, we settled on a spaniel-shaped mutt from a rescue in a tiny Pennsylvania town. Xena was white with brown ears and completely scruffy, which is how we liked her. The day we got her, she jumped on the adoption paperwork – a direct leap onto the desk from the floor. Xena was always very excited.

The kids were four and seven when we got her, so they don’t remember life without her. Xena was with us for every adventure. We walked, camped, biked, ran, played on playgrounds, sledded down the big hill, and rode pedal boats together, even though Xena sometimes fell into the lake.

I told myself I got the dog “for the children.” But Xena declared me “Alpha” in mere minutes, and I bonded with her as strongly as I bonded with my other babies.

On our first walk with her, I let Xena off the leash in an empty park. She ran and ran, until I called her. She perked up at the sound of her new name, and ran right back to where I was standing. Eventually I realized that she not only came back whenever I called her, but she was always right by my side.

She woke when I woke in the morning, and followed me downstairs. She followed me around the kitchen, down the hallways, upstairs to the laundry room and back downstairs. Once she got stuck in my bedroom closet because she’d followed too closely. She slept at my feet while I was on the computer; she watched me watch television. Xena rode in the passenger seat in the minivan. She even followed me into the bathroom. If I didn’t shut any door completely, she pushed it with her nose and came right in.

For a few weeks after we got her, we couldn’t leave home without Xena tearing apart Ziploc bags from the kids’ board games. We scolded her until Xena determined – incorrectly – that she should never chew on anything while the family is out. We gave her bully sticks to chew while we were gone, thinking it would help. So for ten years, Xena would run to the door when we got home, carrying her untouched bully stick: “See? I didn’t eat anything while you were gone!”

Xena would go off-leash for nearly every walk. She used “the facilities” on command, and would run into the woods so that I didn’t have to clean up her mess. I’ve never met anyone so eager to please. We had a crate for her, which mostly sat unused under the foosball table. But sometimes Xena would put herself in there, if she did something she thought she wasn’t allowed to do. While I rarely saw her in there otherwise, the kids said she slept in her crate whenever I was gone, even when they were home. She was waiting for me.

Six weeks ago, Xena had a mass removed and fully recovered from her surgery. She was jumping and running again like a puppy, even at 12 years old. And then, quite suddenly, she was limping – a fluke, we thought. But the cancer was back, this time with a vengeance, and it killed her in four days. Xena died in my arms, surrounded by her family, which is the only place she ever wanted to be.

Today, I am consumed with pain; I am irrevocably broken. Every day, all day, Xena told me that I was the most wonderful person on the planet, and she asked for absolutely nothing in return. How can I survive in a world without Xena in it?