Lilly R.I.P. (exact dates unknown)
Comments(2) I had a friend who had this hilarious little black dog in ’05. She was originally from PDX, OR but when I met her it was in Athens. Whenever I went to visit him, she would sit on my chest with this quizzical look. “What’s your deal?”, she seemed to be silently asking.
Soon after that, this friend decided he was going to move to China.
So the one little dog, Dudley, went back to Portland with his ex-girlfriend but Lilly, the black one, still needed a home for the years he would be away. When he pitched the idea to me my response was the obvious: I’m too nomadic to be a dog owner, but she is great. I was soon off to SE Asia myself, but there in a net cafe in Vang Viang, Laos where he’d written to pitch the idea again, I thought – fuck it: she has chosen me, and said to leave her with his parents and I’d get and adopt her when I got back to GA in a few weeks.
Lilly and I quickly bonded in the excellent little house I was staying in when I returned. A friend had it on the market (back when houses sold in America…) and I paid only bills in the months we lived there. She had a great fenced in yard, but only wanted to be back there with me. When I’d set her down to explore, she’d just stand at the gate like it was a prison until I came out to brave mosquitos and throw the golfball. Specific events I remember from this era include the day a wild hare got into the fence and I let her chase it for a few minutes, as fast as she was never able to catch him; the time we had a discipline breakthrough and I made her sit lonely at the gate until she realized chewing up flipflops as verboten; the time I channeled her chewing powers for good and we sat together as she slowly pulled all the cotton bit by bit from stuffed animals and I filled my little Thai pillow with it – the look on her face…’so this is OK? this is sanctioned destruction, usually you seem pissed, but it feels like we’re working together here…’.
Over the next few years, moving a lot between Athens and ATL, beginning a record era of house-sitting, Lilly went where ever I did whenever it was possible. My sister and brother-in-law watched her a lot, as I did there dog while they were traveling, before my niece was born, which was quite a bit. Lilly was an ever present best friend and companion, always eager to travel, patient and well behaved when I was away.
And then the time came for me to move to China for a year. I made arrangements for her while I was gone, one friend watching her most of the year, then my sister taking over again last May. Lilly and my niece got along like gangbusters from day one. I knew leaving for so long held a risk, but the way it unfolded was heart wrenching: two weeks before my return she was hit and killed. After seeing so much canine abuse and neglect in China, I’d been yearning to get home and spoil her all over again. But it was not to be. The last time I saw her, like my Dad, was via Skype and she was never able to know I hadn’t abandoned her and I was coming back. Sometimes fate has just gotta do ya like that. If she’d been killed in the first few months I was away I swear it would have been easier to handle. She felt like a big part of the “home” I wanted to come back too. This is a pain I’ll be carrying for a good long while. But I’ve got to be thankful for the times we had to ramble together, and know that despite how she must have felt at the end, she was as thankful as I was – a hell of a partnership. As close as I’ve come, and most likely want to, to having a kid. Some of you won’t get that statement, but others will. Anyway, she was a gentle warrior who now chases wild shadowy hares across the parks and forests of Asgard, and those in Valhallah can hear her excited occasional barks.
