Goodbye, Tai (2003 – 2014)

Tai was our little taco terrier.

A taco terrier is — well, yes, a terrier that will eat tacos, but also a dog that is part chihuahua and part terrier. In this case, part toy fox terrier, or so we were told. (Sometimes they’re called chitoxies, but as that does not contain the word “taco,” it is plainly inferior.)

My wife and I bought Tai when she was a pot-bellied little pup. We bought her from a pet store at a time we were naive enough to think that most pet stores didn’t source their animals from puppy farms. We bought her from a time when my wife wasn’t even my wife — when in fact we did not even live with one another and shared her briefly between houses.

We were young and dumb. Puppies ourselves. Everybody told us not to buy her. Why would we? My wife and I hadn’t been together all that long but we knew this dog was our dog from the moment we picked her up and she climbed all over us, not demanding pink belly rubs so much as forcibly rubbing her belly wherever she could. Snortling and snorfling. So we took her home and hurried out and bought all the canine accoutrements and everyone rolled their eyes at us wondering how long any of it would last. But our doggy did last, and I eventually married my wife, and our taco terrier was a part of our family from the moment we laid eyes on her.

Tai was pugnacious, but sweet.

She owned any big dog she came in contact with. She would bite them on the lip. And this small but powerful action would allow her to rule even the largest dogs.

(She did not trust little dogs.)

She was reluctant best buddies with our last dog, Yaga. They were like a mismatched cop team. He was blissfully ignorant as she groused at him. But her disdain of the big lunkhead was a lie — they ate together and she waited for him outside so they could pee together and they were pals.

When he died, I think she was a little bit heartbroken. This, the chihuahua curse, and a part of her that overruled her terrier components: a chihuahua often only bonds with a few others. A couple-few humans, maybe one other dog, and that was it. Yaga died and Tai never seemed quite right after. She lost a step. Our son being born and our new dog, Loa, failed to lend her any energy — and while she tolerated Loa and accepted petting and cuddling from our boy, she never really connected with either of them.

Still, she was curious and funny and weird.

She snored so loud that if you were upstairs, you could feel it in the floorboards coming from downstairs. Like a dragon sleeping on its hoard of gold.

She barked in her sleep. Little yips.

(Plus, she could basically sleep anywhere.)

She liked to lay with her back against you and her belly out toward the world.

For rubbings, of course. The sweet canine currency of belly rubbings.

She was stubborn as anything. Nearly impossible to move. For a small dog, she was basically a mountain attached to a leash — you went where she went, and not the reverse.

She was totally nosy. A major busy-body, this one. Give her a window and a perch and she will watch every neighborhood argument, every cat, every squirrel, every crankhead and mailman.

For such a small dog — and for such a stumpy loaf of bread — she loved the snow and navigated it like a dolphin. A furry, bitey dolphin.

(Though sometimes she looked more like a baby seal than a dolphin, truth be told.)

At our new house, she liked to climb up on the mound in our backyard and bark at distant, unseen neighbors. Or chime in at the goings-on of rustling deer. (Nosy even with woodland creatures.)

She was a diligent explorer.

She could make tons of funny faces.

I like to think she was a happy dog, cantankerous and cranky as she could be.

Thing is, she was also sick a lot of her life. Not dramatically so, but she was prone to allergies — early on she was basically tearing herself apart, stripping off her fur and biting herself raw, and when the vet called after many tests to read us the list of allergens, it was a five minute voicemail. I didn’t know that many kinds of grasses even existed. So, we put her on a wonder drug called Atopica, but the not-so-wonderous part of that drug was that it reduced her immune response which left her prone to opportunistic infections (usually in her ears).

Still, it allowed us to sometimes dress her in a hilarious clown collar:

Recently, though, she’d begun to suffer the effects of what seemed to be IBD/Colitis — a severe thickening of the small intestine made it very hard for her to absorb food or even get hydrated, and so she started drinking a lot and having accidents. The vet confirmed the diagnosis but suggested there could be more at play — there, that specter of cancer (and speak the refrain with me: fuck cancer) and all the while, she was wasting away and we were losing control of the situation. We tried everything. Our house became a pet biocontainment unit. We tried food, meds, ran tests, spent lots of money (her health problems throughout her life probably caused us to spend the rough equivalent of a cheaper new car — worth it, which is why we spent it).

We were at our wit’s end.

It was only recently that I’d found folks online that had luck with Atopica controlling their pets’ IBD, and so I dug out our old meds (thankfully not expired) and tried those.

We had her scheduled to be put down last week.

But literally at the last minute, she finally started to show improvement.

And we had about four or five days of steady, meaningful improvement.

The last couple days, though, she started to go back downhill again. Her face began to twitch — we suspected a calcium deficiency but the vet said it was suggestive of seizures that themselves suggested brain involvement of what may be cancer. (IBD can be caused by cancer or can be the cause of it.) The Atopica had worked, but only temporarily, it seemed. We were losing her.

We didn’t know why.

But there comes a point when it seems cruel to let them continue. A mercy humans aren’t really allowed, but one that we can reserve for our beloved animals — the ability to take them away from the pain before it overwhelms them. It’s hard to know when to do this, and even now I’m bawling my eyes out thinking, but we could’ve tried one more thing. But so it goes. She was reduced in body. She didn’t enjoy the things she once enjoyed. She didn’t eat much food. She drank so much water you’d think she was addicted to it (and yet, paradoxically, was so dehydrated we had to give her fluids through a bag-and-needle). Couldn’t get up the steps easily, as her muscle tone was wasting away. It’s true that we still saw the spark of the old dog in there a few times a day — the way her ears perked up, the way she went sniffing for food while I was cooking, the faint crankypants growl in the back of her throat at invaders real or imagined.

I’m thankful for the days of improvement we did get. She showed more of that spark. She got to play with my sister’s dog a little. Got to eat more food. Get more love. I’m glad we had her around for a few more days. A few more genuinely good days.

Still.

Those days are gone. As they are for all of us, eventually. (And here, not an urging toward the edge of the pit of grief but rather toward the realization that we all head toward the doggy dirtnap one day, and so we should make the best of the time we — and our loved ones — are given.)

Tai, I think, was letting us know.

It was time.

So, we had a new appointment.

The vet came today.

And we had to say goodbye to our little taco terrier here at home.

(Our son said goodbye to our dog, and then went off to stay with his Mom-Mom while the vet came. It was very hard to explain to a three-year-old what was happening, and for a half-hour he was basically shutting down, not acknowledging that she wasn’t going to be here anymore, and was not acting as nice as we’d like — though at that point I found it really important to realize that as much as we dream of his perfect reaction to this whole thing, I’M barely keeping shit together so it’s not very princely of me to expect the toddler to be strong and compassionate.

But just before he left, we told him outright what was happening — no mincing words. I said, “Do you know how my Daddy is dead?” and he said he did. And I said that’s what’s happening to Tai. And then he asked us to turn around so he could say goodbye to her, and he told her he loved her. Honesty, at least with our kid, seems best — even when it’s hard to hear.)

We took her outside to the front lawn. On her bed. The day was bright. The air was warm. The sun poked through the clouds and the sky was blue. Leaves of many colors fell around us. Tai stretched out and relaxed in a way we hadn’t seen her relax in a very long time. We petted her and talked to her. Told her we loved her. She went to sleep. And then she went beyond it.

Goodbye to our little Tai.

I’m sorry we couldn’t do more for you.

We miss you.