RIP Gypsy Rose Jingles January 10, 2007 to September 20,
2016
When Gypsy breathed her last, a stupor of shock swept over
me. She had been diagnosed only four months earlier and she was, plainly, too young.
Gypsy was more than incredibly intelligent. And she wanted
more than to simply please us. She
anticipated our needs and made sure she was always right where we’d be. She
knew what room we’d be heading toward to do laundry, to sleep, to pray. And she
went ahead of us quickly and waited. She checked out repairmen with a few
sniffs and then let them go about their maintenance. She loved to near us –
playing, sleeping, keeping watch.
About a month before she died, she had stopped her favorite
activities with us that involved a red Kong ball and Frisbee. And she stopped
chewing dog bones that she had been nearly addicted to her entire life. I imagine
the three massive tumors on her face and neck stole her joy.
Though she didn’t run back and forth through the yard anymore as I clapped my
hands and shouted, “Go, Gypsy, go!” she
continued to take walks, and follow me around the house.
On a Friday, we had to shorten our walk around the block
because she slowed down that much. I knew that was our last walk. We decided then
that we would know life was over when she stopped begging when I chopped
vegetables in the kitchen and when she no longer let us know her ‘dinner’ time
approached.
The next Tuesday when I came home from work she didn’t greet
me, which had begun on and off over the last few months. But, highly unusual,
she never came out to the living room at all. I found her under my desk, ears flat
against her head, a sad look of guilt,
and her tail barely thumped at my entrance to the office. I called her
out from under the desk and, to my horror, discovered that the three tumors had
grown enormously since morning and were all bleeding. I guess the guilty look was because she knew
she was making a mess wherever she walked. She kept licking her little arms
that were covered with blood, taking care of her mess. I hugged her, told her I loved her, and cleaned
her up.
Two hours later than her meal time, I offered her
‘dinner.’ She walked away without
finishing. I chopped vegetables for own dinner and she didn’t appear by my side. Instead,
she laid in a corner of the house that she never had before.
I knew the message from her actions and sad countenance, “I’m
sorry, Mom. I’ve been trying real hard to be here for you through all this mess
in my body, but I just can’t do it anymore.”
A few hours later we wept goodbye to my dearest and most
devoted four-legged friend.
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