Ode to a Strange Dog

So this is about neither biking nor food, but rather something much more important.

Remember this little screwball that I posted a picture of around Christmas?

That's Shelby.  When I was 12, I went to the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania with my mom, grandparents (who were visiting from Arizona) and sister, and we made the mistake of wandering into the pet store.  Now, my family are a bunch of hopeless dog-lovers through and through, so although we don't support the sort of stores that sell animals like they're things (it even makes my ears twitch when I hear someone call a dog "it"), our hearts melted when we saw a four-month old cocker spaniel who was shoved into a cage that was too small for her.  She was on clearance.  While I'm not sure if they were planning to euthanize her, I doubt that her future was looking too bright.

So after much begging from my sister and myself, Mom let us play with her.  She had a lot of pent-up energy and she was really skittish.  Not exactly a cute and adorable fuzzball, either--she had awkwardly large feet, a lazy eye, and scraggly fur.  After looking at her pedigree, we discovered her father's name was "Booger".  We loved her.  Though my grandfather wasn't at all pleased, we took her home.

When we all piled out of the car, the neighborhood kids immediately saw her and taunted, "She looks like an upside-down cow!"  And they weren't totally wrong.  Shelby had all-white legs and a mostly black body, and she had spots everywhere.  On the pads of her feet, on the skin around her eye (which accounted for the "lazy eye" look)--even her toenails were different colors.

Her personality matched her goofy appearance.  She remained skittish, and she was mean to other dogs.  Although Mom had bought her partially to liven up our older cocker spaniel, Lady, Shelby assumed the position of alpha dog, bossed her around and stole her toys. (As an aside, Lady was the nicest, gentlest dog anyone could ask for.  She got put down when I was in high school.)  She liked to chase cars, and she would do so while woofing with her stuffed pink pig (i.e. "The Pig of Safety") in her mouth.  After she ran away one time, we had an electric fence installed, but that hardly stopped her.  She would just bound across the yard along with the cars as they drove by, muffled woofs emanating from her jaws.  Shelby also had "submissive urination" issues, and she would pee all over the floor whenever she got too excited or scared.  Oh, and she was racist and didn't like men--she barked especially loudly when black or Hispanic males came to the door.  She also hated my ex boyfriend.

She was very curious about my sister's parakeet.

In spite of her quirks, Shelby quickly became a member of the family.  We're all a little nuts, too, so the relationship worked somehow.  She learned to come when she was called, she learned how to walk on a leash, and we taught her how to sit/shake/down/roll over (and once taught, she would only ever do those tricks in that order).  Rebecca discovered that she howled when she heard the sound of a sheep, so we spent many fun hours going "Baaaaaa!" at her and making her howl.  We even found her a toy sheep that baaed.

Ultimately, she morphed into adulthood well.  She loved car rides and got really excited when Mom jingled the car keys and said, "Let's go get the girls!" When my sister moved out of the house, and when I went off to college, Shelby still got excited whenever we were coming home and she heard, "Let's go get the girls!" When my parents moved back to Arizona, Shelby patiently rode with them in the truck's jumpseat across the entire country.

Most of all, she loved my mom.  She would follow her around the house, "helping" with various chores, shoving her nose into Christmas boxes as Mom wrapped them, snuffling around for crumbs whenever she cooked, wandering around listlessly with the pink pig in her mouth whenever she got tired and wanted Mom to go to bed (so she could go with her, of course).  She liked to spread herself out on my parents' king-size bed, and we have more than one photograph of Shelby's head resting atop one of Mom's legs as they both slept.

Unfortunately, this past Christmas was the last time I got to see Shelby.  I knew something was wrong because rather than running around and unwrapping everyone's presents for them (she loved the sound of ripping paper), she just laid quietly on her side.  On Christmas Eve, we discovered blood on the floor, called the vet, and on his advice, took her to the ER.  After a vet tech ran $500 worth of tests, we were told that the results were inconclusive, and that we would have to wait.  They gave her some antibiotics, the bleeding mostly stopped, and Shelby seemed to get a little better.

Last night, I got a call (well, four calls) from my sister.  Apparently after looking at some ultrasounds, the vet discovered a rapidly-spreading form of cancer.  Chemo would only have bought her a few more months, and my parents had to make the very tough decision to put her down.  My parents fed her lots of roast beef and peanut butter, I got to see her on Skype, and Dad was tasked with driving her to the vet this morning.  He did take her pink pig with her.

I can't write conclusions for crap, and now I'm crying all over my keyboard in the middle of an office building, but needless to say, we love her and we'll miss her.