The thing about spring? It’s filled with change.
The first day of the spring of 2020 was a typical March day, with winter’s snow almost gone. All that remained was the slowly melting mounds left behind by the plow trucks. The lawn was bare, robins were arriving, and the air during a walk with the dogs was brisk but pleasant.
A few days later, an overnight storm covered everything in white, but under the warming sun, there were soon clumps of snow dropping from the trees to help restore the yard to its pre-storm state — or as close as possible while the moisture turned the ground to mud.
Mud season this year has taken a staccato approach. It’s muddy for a day or two, then it dries out for a few more days, then the mud returns. The shoes get switched to mud boots, then snow boots, then back to shoes — but that, too, will change.
Nothing lingers forever, and as we’re constantly reminded, what we see today can be gone like that early-spring snowfall. We’ve endured the cold, seen our friends called to war, witnessed tragic accidents, and lost former acquaintances whose days came to an end. We’ve all known that our lives could be over at any moment, but nothing drives that home like stay-at-home orders amidst rising numbers of sick people from the new coronavirus. The reminder can even come through a well-intentioned visit to the veterinarian that ended the life of our canine ward, Miss June Bug, also known as “Boo”.
We adopted Miss June Bug, a mixed-breed dog that was part Chow-Chow, seven years ago. She had been rescued from a tragic life as a breeding dog in a puppy mill where they would use an electric prod to separate her from her puppies. She never saw affection or kindness in her five-plus years there until an organization called Merlin’s Hope came to her rescue.
When we picked her up at Merlin’s Hope, she was practically feral. She had learned to walk on a leash, but getting that leash on her collar was not easy because she would back away from any person approaching her. She would retreat into a corner where she could be certain that there was no one behind her before she would allow that leash to be clipped to her collar.
A small indoor kennel was her safe space. Shortly after adopting her, I made the foolish mistake of crawling into the kennel to clip the leash on her collar when she refused to come out of the cage to go for a walk. She reacted as I should have expected, giving me a quick bite on the hand.
With our other two rescue dogs, we’d take Miss June Bug — whom I dubbed “Boo” because I didn’t like the name she came with — on long walks through the woods. Never having been outside a cage before, she didn’t know what to make of the woods, but she instinctually reacted to seeing a squirrel or chipmunk with little squeals of excitement. She hated water at first, and did not like to cross streams, but stream crossings were often necessary. She’d jump across, trying to keep her feet from getting wet — even while the other dogs happily waded in and lay down in the cooling water.
Gradually, she loosened up, getting excited when the leashes came out, and learning that spring water tasted pretty good on a hot day. If we put leashes on the other dogs first, she’d come up behind us and rake the backs of our legs with her toenails to get our attention — and it worked. Her insistent pawing could be painful.
It was a long process to get her to fully trust us. Seven years later, she still preferred walking behind us so she could see what we were doing and so we couldn’t surprise her. However, she went from hating for us to touch her to craving that touch. At first, we had to be sitting and paying no attention to her: She would approach and wait for us to notice her and, if we did not, she’d make noises to get our attention. If we still ignored her, she’d bark until she got that scratch under the chin or have her ears rubbed.
Recently, she became so comfortable having us approach slowly with an outstretched hand that she would sit still until we gave her the ear rub or scratched her chest. More importantly, we could rub her entire back and sides. Previously, she hated to have anyone get near her tail, and her paws were always off-limits.
Something she always hated was a visit to the veterinarian. She would get so upset we needed a muzzle and had to give her tranquilizers so she would sit still long enough for an examination. In order to clip her nails or groom her, we had to have the vet inject a “cocktail” of sedatives so she’d sleep through it. Even then, with a cocktail that would knock out a much larger dog, she would fight off sleep and try to keep vigilant, typically taking an hour or more to nod off.
Yesterday, when it was time for her annual grooming, she was much better-behaved, and only betrayed her fear by quivering a bit. She got her injection and soon nodded off, allowing the grooming and annual vaccinations. By the time we brought her home, she was groggily alert again, but not quite ready to walk on her own. We carried her into the house and placed her in her kennel.
She nodded off again — and never woke up.
Perhaps it was her age and the stress she’d endured during her early years that made this year’s tranquilization fatal. She was at least 12 years old — we’re not sure of her actual age. She’d had such a hard life before we took her in that she never fully recovered from the abuse.
We can be thankful that her last years were different. She had learned to relax, enjoy those outings in the woods, experience some love and care, and know that she was safe.
Her death was a blow to us, though. It demonstrated how quickly life can pass, even during routine activities. Who would have thought that getting rid of that winter coat of fur, something intended to make her more comfortable, would end up taking her life? Of course, we now feel guilty that we put her through that. We console ourselves knowing that she simply went to sleep and did not endure the pain and suffering that accompanies many deaths, animal and human.
COVID-19 could bring death to our door at any time — unexpected, unprepared-for. On the other hand, we could die in an automobile accident, a flood, or a heart attack. Everything passes.
Several people have posted on social media the conversation between Frodo and Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”