I was reading a blogpost by my California friend Kay Murphy, one of the best writers I know It was about almost losing one of her dogs in the foothills in the Inland Empire, and even though it ended happily, I finished it with tears in my eyes.
Not because of her dog. As I said, that ended happily. But it brought back two of the saddest memories of my 20 years living in Southern California.
It was the late summer of 2001, a few weeks before the 911 attacks on New York and Washington. The memories have nothing to do with that, but I wanted to set the stage.
We had two wonderful dogs, both pedigreed. One was a Chinese Shar-Pei and the other a black Lab.Charlie the Shar-Pei came first, in 1995. Maggie the Lab came along a few years later.
They were such wonderful dogs. I don’t know if I have ever seen a dog love someone as much as Charlie loved Nicole. Each day, near the end of her workday, Charlie would sit just inside the front door and wait faithfully until she came home. Then he would jump up and down in ecstasy.
When Maggie came along, she was a larger dog than he was. Still, there was no question he was the alpha dog. She would jump at him and lick him, but when he had had enough, he made sure she remembered who was the boss.
They definitely loved each other, and Nicole and Virgile walked the two dogs in the foothills above our home in La Canada Flintridge at least four or five times a week.
Both dogs were well-trained, so they often walked without being leashed. One day in August 2001, they were walking in the hills and Maggie slipped on the edge and fell back to an earlier part of the switchback, a drop of 15-20 feet. She landed hard, knocking the air out of her and apparently did enough internal damage that she couldn’t recover.
Before they could get back down to the car to go to a vet, Maggie died.
Charlie never got over it. Everywhere we went, he was looking frantically for his missing friend.
One Sunday night we were in the park for a band concert, and Charlie saw a white dog about the size and shape of Maggie. We had Charlie on a leash or he would have raced over to see the white dog, who he obviously thought was Maggie.
He never really recovered. He died a month or so later, technically from kidney failure, but as much as anything else it was a broken heart that killed him.
Two wonderful dogs, and we lost both of them 21 years ago.
Sadly, we never replaced them. That wasn’t my decision. I would have loved to have another dog or dogs, but Nicole couldn’t bear to do it.
With our children grown and living far away, and with no dogs, we truly have an empty next.
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