A story about rescue and adoption, and loving to the end. About a family, a dog, and why we love and need dogs so much.
Why We Love and Need Dogs
I love this exchange from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest:
“Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?”
“I give.”
“You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there’s a dog.”
Here I am sitting before the fire, albeit without my friend Tikka. No doubt she would be with me here right now, for she found the fire comforting, and our togetherness even more so.
That’s how I believe it is with dogs, or most domesticated dogs at least. I read somewhere that a dog’s life is all about loving and being loved, and as I reflect on Tikka’s 12 1/4 years with us, that’s what she was all about.
My wife saw an image of Tikka one day, a day when she thought it would be good for us to have a dog. She showed me the picture from the rescue centre website of a forlorn looking terrier laying, spread eagle on her back on a blanket, with the biggest brown eyes and a most adorable bearded muzzle.
“This is our dog,” she said across the table emphatically. “She’ll be a perfect pet for our family.”
I glanced over and took a look at this adorable dog with the peculiar name: Tikka. I wouldn’t have thought of calling a dog Tikka ever. It sounded mysterious and deeply connected to the earth–though if you look at a take-out menu for an Indian restaurant, Tikka means something else …
We went to see Tikka at the foster parents’ house. When we first met her she seemed shy. She didn’t come to us right away. She had spent a year or so chained outside to a tractor, then abandoned by her owner, so she wasn’t so trusting.
But I called her and she came towards me, and when she got close enough for me to reach out to her, she lowered her head and muzzled in. I stroked her head. Her dog smell sent me back to the two dogs of my past, and all the joys I had growing up with them. I stroked Tikka’s head some more and that’s when we bonded. I watched how gentle she was with my younger sons, and I could see that she really liked children. To me, it was a done deal: Tikka was our dog.
We got the kids settled into the van–it was a dark frigid week in January–and as we were pulling out of the drive way, my wife said to me with a slight wince, “You’re probably not interested in Tikka eh?” “Oh absolutely interested,” I shot back, “She’s our dog!”
The early days with her were filled with joy and wonder as we watched this dog jump and leap and play. She loved kids. One day we put a garden table and chairs in our backyard for the kids to play with, only to find Tikka had jumped up on it and was sitting looking out at everything. And we would find out later when we sent her to a kennel while we travelled that she would jump up on her dog house and go to sleep on the roof.
Because she had been chained to a tractor for so long, she was used to asking to be let outside, and she would just sit at the steps of our deck and just stare out for the longest time–even in the cold. And she loved to jump up on the couch and snuggle up with us until we realized it was bad behaviour for dogs to get up on couches and beds, and not a good habit of us to get into.
She was a medium sized dog who loved humans but had no less than pure enmity towards other dogs, especially small ones. She made friends with larger dogs but had to be off leash to do so. She was difficult to walk. She would see a dog and immediately turn from a placid peace-loving dog to a complete terror pulling us all over the place. The number of times she pulled me off my feet or threw my shoulder almost out of joint was countless. But it didn’t matter. We loved Tikka and we just kept walking her waiting for the day she’d settle down, which really didn’t ever come. Even in her twelfth year she was barking at other dogs and pulling at the leash. One dog owner observed, “She’s probably trying to protect you because she loves you so much.” Often I’d have to call out to the owner of the other dog while Tikka was lunging and twisting and turning at the leash, “It’s not you, it’s me!” Or, “Sorry, I’m friendly but my dog’s not.”
Regardless of how she was with other dogs, almost everyone who encountered Tikka loved her; and I’m sure she loved almost everyone she met. She was friendly and loved to just sit or lay around with everyone around her. And she was always the first to greet people at the door with a wag of her tail as if to say, “Hi! Welcome–c’mon in!” Even in her later years, she’d be sleeping upstairs in her bed, and still make that long track down the stairs to the front door to greet us at the door. She was a good traveller too, particularly when I drove her with a friend of mine–and our bearded dragon–from Ontario to Alberta. She just sat up in her seat and looked out the window before curling up into a ball and going to sleep.
It thus gave us pause when a few weeks ago a dog on the corner of our street that Tikka would always get into barking fights with darted to the fence and startled Tikka. My wife walked Tikka way from the fence into our back alley, and there Tikka collapsed and passed out. I was away on a business trip and my wife didn’t know how she would get Tikka home. Finally Tikka came to, but took a long time to get some strength back in her legs to get up. Eventually my wife was able to walk her a few houses up to our home and inside. That evening, Tikka started throwing up.
Fading Out
When I got home I saw Tikka had lost weight and was very sick. Tikka had only a few mouthfuls of food the whole week. She would slink past me darting glances at me through the whites of her eyes as if she were a ghost. I was waiting for her flu or whatever to leave her–I lied to myself so I wouldn’t have to look at just how sick Tikka really was. Nevertheless, throughout the week while at work I texted my daughter to check on Tikka. I was concerned she had passed out again and fallen down the stairs.
The Sunday after I had returned, Tikka came to my side of the bed at around 6:30 in the morning. I stroked her head as I would often do first thing in the morning when she came to see me to be let out and fed. As I stroked her head, she started coughing–something she had been doing for weeks. She coughed and choked before collapsing banging her head against the floor. I shot out of bed and held her while my wife joined me. Tikka was out cold, just like what happened the week before on the walk. We helped her lay down and come to.
After a while we both realized Tikka was really sick and it was time for us to support Tikka and put her down. I carried her downstairs, concerned that she was going to collapse again. It was the second time in 12 years I had carried her. I set her down on the floor. After a few minutes she vomited blood, then lay back panting. We called the kids from their rooms–they’re older kids, in their teens and one twenty–and told them what we were going to do that afternoon. We all sat around Tikka and wept and hugged her and held each other. My wife’s sister and her family came to say good-bye to Tikka. And as sick as Tikka was, she stood up to greet them with a faint wag of her tail (this is one of the amazing things about dogs, how even when close to death they will still greet you).
Tikka got up enough energy to walk herself to the van. We took her to a university veterinary hospital where they put us in a kind of hospice room with paintings of dogs, a couch, some urns scattered around. They catheterized Tikka, then brought her in to us to say our last good-byes.
Tikka came to me and, just as she did when we first met, lowered her head and nuzzled in. I held her and kissed her head and prayed that God would bless her–as I had for years–before looking her in the eyes and giving a departing word that I learned from my Mohawk friend, “I’ll see you after …” Tikka gently laid down knowing she was ready to go. My wife and I held her and cried. The vet gave her an initial injection of a strong sedative to which Tikka responded with a long sigh of relief. I held her head and stroked her while my wife knelt in front of her and stroked her body. The next injection, this time of the drug that would stop her heart. I felt Tikka slowly go limp, and I held her head in my hand how I would do when she was going to sleep, and waited as the third shot was delivered and Tikka breathed her last. I gently set her head down on the floor and continued holding her until the vet checked her heartbeat, then nodded to us and said solemnly, “She’s gone.” My wife and I wept the rest of the way home. The grey sky was the colour of our hearts as we sadly reflected on Tikka’s life, and how hard it was to put her down but that she needed us to support her and end her pain.
I wrote my brother a text shortly after:
She was once abandoned. But we adopted her, loved her the best we could, and held her at her last breath. So beautiful. Everyone’s out right now. I’m vacuuming, cleaning the floor (there were remnants of vomit etc), and crying … I miss my old friend already … and the house is so quiet and empty without her.
My priest called me a few days later, and we both got choked up on the phone. He breeds very beautiful dogs and has a lot to say about them. He told me, “Jeff, I know some people don’t believe this, but I firmly believe that we will see our dogs in Heaven. That our animals have a special place there and we will be with them again.” It reminded me of a quote I believe from Mark Twain, “If there are no dogs in heaven, then I’ll ask to go to wherever they are.”
Dogs Open Us to Beauty
As I’ll write in the next segment, dogs, and animals in general, open us up to Beauty in a profound way. This I believe is why many artists kept dogs and cats and animals–I think of Flannery O’Connor and her farm animals, including a peacock–because it does something to us that impacts our lives, our hearts, and our art. Again, they open us to Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. And when we’re open in such a way we can do nothing else but thank God for them and bless them.
That opening to Beauty, Goodness, and Truth is critical for us to develop poetic souls, as St Porphyrios wrote about, and why he too loved and kept animals.
With more to write, I’ll end with this:
Till after, old friend …
In loving memory of Tikka: 13 November 2011 – 23 March 2025
