Tribute to Jenny

May 31, 1988 – October 15, 2002

Jenny died today. She was 14 and a half years old.
     Two months ago, the vet said she had congestive heart failure and sent her home with some meds. Jenny recovered nicely though she was a little slower. I spoiled her with home-cooked food — good cooked ground beef mixed with rice, and baked chicken chunks that I buried her daily pills in. Shiva, our other dog (only 4 years old) put up with seeing Jenny treated like a queen with her usual good humor and equanimity.
     At 3:30 a.m. today she had a relapse. I brought her to the emergency vet right away, but despite their continuous care, she died in their office four hours later. Barely one minute before they were going to bring her out for me to take home.

I opted for a simple "communal cremation" — St. Francis Pet Crematory picks up the dogs remains and cremates them in groups, then buries them. So I'll use this web page as my memorial instead of an urn with her ashes.

We had a good day yesterday. I took her and Shiva and my 4-year-old nephew Tago to the local park. We were there about 2 hours on a sunny and crisp October afternoon. Jenny, allowed to roam free with her leash dragging behind her as always, meandered around, sniffing all the kids in the playground to their parent's dismay. ("Timmy! Don't pet strange dogs!"). I kept having to go bring her back to the grass. She liked little kids as long as they didn't pull at her. She submitted calmly to the gentle head pats of a 3-year-old girl before her Dad ran over to rescue her from certain death.

At the emergency clinic, I was in one of the exam rooms where they told me to wait while they fetched her. They wanted me to take her to our regular vet as soon as they opened at 7:30 a.m. to see if she needed more meds. The lab tech said she'd be right in with Jenny. I had her leash and her favorite blanket to wrap around her for the chilly early-morning car ride. Then the doctor came in by himself — no Jenny — and said in a hushed tone, "I'm so sorry. Jenny just died, just now, about one minute ago." When I burst into tears, he wrapped me in a hug and let me cry on his shirtfront. His name is Dr. Derek Landisi. He said she was in no pain. She just took a final breath.

Jenny was born on my bed on Memorial Day weekend when my daughter was only 5 years old. She was the puppy of a stray I had taken in.
     Jenny was Nicky's sibling while she was growing up. They played dress-up together — well, Nicky would dress Jenny up and then take pictures of her with a Polaroid and put them together in a book. They're called "The Books of Jenny (Part 1 and Part 2)" and I still have them.
     When we moved to our new house a few years ago, Nicky said she wanted a dog that would be more "hers," like how Jenny, who slept at the foot of my bed all her life, was more "mine." So we adopted Shiva from Chicago's dog pound. Jenny and Shiva were peaceful co-companions in our new home. They both loved laying on the deck to soak up the rays.

They brought her body into the room on a soft towel and let me spend a while with her alone. I petted her and scratched the top of her head where she liked it best. I told her she was a good girl. I told her thank you for everything. I told her to look for my grandmother in heaven and to stay with her till I got there. My grandmother loved dogs and loved Jenny, who I used to take along with me to visit her in the nursing home. I leaned down and buried my nose in her ruff and stroked her soft ears. I wish I had gotten a chance to hold her one last time while she was alive.

I've worked from home for the past fifteen years. Jenny slept in the well under my desk during the day. In the winter I would bury my stockinged feet under her to warm them up while I worked on the computer.
     In the evenings when I watched TV, we'd share the small couch, her in her corner, me in mine. When I sat at the kitchen table reading the paper, she'd lay on the tile floor next to me. At night she'd follow me upstairs and sleep on my bed, next to my feet. Sometimes she'd even follow me to the bathroom because she knew I'd be sitting down with nothing blocking access to her back, leaning on my knees for a scratch. She wouldn't leave until she heard the toilet paper roll start to turn.
     Sometimes this would drive me crazy.
     But when Nicky left for college last year, and it was just me and the dogs in the house all day, I appreciated her constant companionship all over again.

Jenny loved Montrose beach. I would sometimes play hooky from work and take her out there for a couple hours. When Shiva joined the pack, she came along as well. Neither dog liked to actually go in the water, but they didn't mind getting their paws wet. What they really liked was having the whole beach to explore.    

The hardest part was telling Nicky. Over the phone, from the exam room, while she was hundreds of miles away at school. She took it as hard as I did. We talked about creating a something in her memory that we can keep in the house— a photo collage or shadow box or something — when we're together again for the holidays. Nicky is an artist and can get to the heart of the matter with honesty and sensitivity, and simply.

Jenny liked going to the park, eating ice cream off the stick, falling asleep in my arms, nibbling at my brother John's beard, play-biting at Nicky's feet. She calmly endured toddler nephews who would fight over the chance to walk her. Her favorite table scraps were pizza crusts, spaghetti bits with tomato sauce, and the leftover milk from Nicky's cereal bowl every morning.
     She was a good barker — not too much, not too little. She was something of a scaredy-cat, especially around my mom's cats, but didn't hesitate to stand up to strange dogs twice her size and anyone who climbed our front stairs. She liked to cuddle and would often fall asleep in my arms with her muzzle in the crook of my neck.
     I took her to obedience training when she was one year old and she won first place, even though she stopped for a poop in the middle of the off-leash testing. She got a huge round of applause.
     Jenny put up with a lot from me and Nicky over the years but seemed to always know that she had a special place our hearts. We will miss her dearly.

Thank you to the staff at the Chicago Emergency Veterinarian Services, who were sensitive and compassionate and tried their best. Thank you to my sister-in-law, Janet, who helped me get through the first hour after Jenny died. Janet and my brother Ralph "have been there" so I knew they would understand when I showed up at their front door at 8:00 in the morning on the way back from the vet's, holding Jenny's empty leash and collar and sobbing. Ralph had already left for work but he called a short time later. Thank you to my brother John (he of the irresistible beard) who came over this morning for an hour just to be with me and hear what happened. Thank you to Strom for being there to hold Nicky when I couldn't. And a big thank you to everyone else in my life who knew Jenny and loved her as I did.

I am making a donation in Jenny's name to the newly-formed non-profit arm of Chicago's Animal Care and Control Commission, headquartered at the David R. Lee Center ("the pound"), from whom we adopted Shiva when she was 9 weeks old. They do an incredible job with limited resources. If you would like to contribute to the same, send your donation (you will receive a letter of acknowledgement and thanks from the Board) to: