I spent the past few weeks taking care of my rapidly declining, beloved "feral Yorkie" Pebbles. She was my everything. I got her through a Facebook post 14 years ago that changed both of our lives.
One day back in early September of 2012, writer John Shirley—who happens to be a member of the same fake church as me, The Church of the SubGenius—got on Facebook and told a wild tale of a feral Yorkie he'd encountered while driving through the East Bay. She was running around in a field and couldn't have been more than three pounds, emaciated and struggling to survive. Being a big softie, he pulled his car over and tried to catch her. He followed her as she traversed an alleyway, where she looked into the fence of a yard filled with kennels, and kept running. When he finally cornered her and reached down to pick her up, she bit into him so fiercely that she punctured his skin right through his leather glove and left him with a bloody finger... then she took off, basically giving him the finger as she fled.
He got on Facebook and proclaimed, "I just found a feral Yorkie!" and then he proceeded to weave the tale of his harrowing encounter with a tiny warrior whose balls were so big that she threatened to take down this giant man with zero fucks given, as if it was just another Tuesday for her.
I was instantly smitten. I knew right then that this little vixen and I belonged together. I commented on his thread, "You'd better go find her—she might have rabies... and if she doesn't, I want her!"
After getting an absolute assurance from Animal Control that they would not snuff her out, John gave in and called them for assistance. They caught her, and while this might sound like a scene from a movie, this actually happened: they drove her over to his house for John to identify her. He claimed that she flashed him a gang sign from the cage they were keeping her in, identifying her as the feral Yorkie who nearly severed his finger... only because she couldn't gain access to his throat. They then took her to Doggy Jail, where she was processed and quarantined for ten days. I was given regular updates as he received them. On the tenth day, when we expected her to be released, he said that they had given her a "behavior test" and she got a "D." She was going to have to be released to a halfway house (a local rescue) where she would integrate back into society for a month before I would finally be able to welcome her into her new home.
Her backstory is the most colorful backstory I've ever heard, and I needed a little levity right now, because I have been in non-stop grief which increasingly escalated into an absolutely broken heart yesterday. This is where I find myself as I write this. This girl had been abused; that was clear. John found the people he suspected she had escaped from—the ones with a backyard full of dogs in kennels, pit bulls and tiny little dogs like her—and turned them in. After confronting the homeowner, who was vague about knowing her, John asked why he was keeping all these dogs in cages. The guy told him he was "training them." John suspected a Michael Vick scenario and turned them in. After knowing Pebbles long enough to see her PTSD, her broken tail, and the most telling thing—an enlarged uterus—I suspect that while they absolutely may have been training dogs to fight, I didn't think she would have survived being a bait dog. I don't know for sure, but I do strongly suspect that they bred her until her little body couldn't do it anymore. She really didn't like other dogs unless they were truly blank slates of innocence. She walked around constantly assessing threats, and this turned her into a tiny alpha who could terrify large dogs.
I spoiled the shit out of her. I made her a ridiculous little Jackie O-inspired Chanel pink and black outfit with a little beret right before I brought her home. She had no interest in being posh little arm candy; she wanted to brawl. I gave her a steak bone one night after having dinner with a friend, and five minutes later, as I walked by her while she was buzzing through every last piece of meat on that bone, I heard her growling at me. I was puzzled by the logic, but it made me laugh that this girl was such a badass that she literally threatened me—the one who provided the bone and a healthy amount of meat attached to it—simply for walking by. She was endlessly entertaining. She had no time for my bullshit of dressing her up, but yet she accepted that this was part of the deal. She had no problem sinking her teeth into my flesh if I crossed a boundary (you know, like cleaning the goop out of her eyes, or brushing her teeth; I even got her chicken-flavored toothpaste, but that did not stop her from taking her revenge on my audacity). I knew that these little aggressive behaviors were part of welcoming a dog into my life who had been in survival mode since day one. I was willing to put up with whatever it took to make her feel safe and loved, because nobody deserves to be treated the way she was before she came to me.
We spent 14 years together. Our anniversary—the day I call her birthday—was October 11th. She was my muse, my mirror while I went through the Jungian Individuation, using my paintings as a way to bring the unconscious to consciousness. She walked right through hell with me like a psychopomp who'd done it before. She was the most loyal and true friend I've ever had in my life. She was also my little baby, and she loved that, because nobody had ever taken care of her and she was finally able to get out of survival mode. She flew on planes with me; she went to spas and fine dining establishments with me. She had a bougie life and she deserved every second of it. I'm pretty sure she has had more portraits painted of her than any other dog.
Yesterday morning, I woke up and realized I had waited too long. Wanting more time with her, I foolishly believed that if she was suffering and I gave her permission to let go, she would simply pass in my arms the night before as we were sleeping. To look at this from another perspective, I was unable to fully let go, and I unconsciously put the burden on her. It was a burden she was unable to carry, because all she wanted was for me to help her feel safe and at peace.
When we woke up yesterday morning, I knew I had made a mistake. She was unable to do anything, and simply being awake was agonizing for her. I can't express how broken my heart is as I write this. Even the vet's words of comfort to me—to give myself a little grace for the impossible situation I was facing—were cold comfort. Nothing prepares you for this. You are asked to break a physical bond that held more importance in your world than anything you've ever experienced, and it's permanent.
I called the vet first thing and they told me to come in at 10:00 AM. I cleaned Pebbles up, because she had reached the point in the last few days where this had become a morning routine. There was no more grace period and I knew it. The window had closed. I knew without a doubt that I was the one who was going to have to be strong and do this paradoxical thing—a thing that on one hand, I was morally opposed to, but on the other, knew was the final act of love I could extend to this tiny, helpless being in my arms. She was looking to me to make the decision that would finally take her out of her misery, because she too was so bonded to me that she was not strong enough to fully let go either.
The mind has ways of fucking with you during these intense times. I was in a room surrounded by love and compassionate experts who knew all too well how agonizing the grief of letting go of a beloved companion can be. Yet, as I held her in my arms when the first injection—the calming anesthesia—made its way through the catheter, she suddenly jolted awake and attempted to fight it. My mind went to a very dark place. Suddenly, all I could think of was the botched execution of that woman in Tennessee a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know why, but I knew that the next injection was supposed to end her life, and a part of me panicked that it might mysteriously fail. I just kept holding her and telling her how much I loved her, but at the same time, I felt like the Knight sitting across the chessboard from Death in Ingmar Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal. I hated it.
It wasn't until later that the deeper truth of that projection hit me. Ingmar Bergman didn't just write The Seventh Seal as a period piece; he wrote it as a profound allegory of his own Jungian individuation. The Knight, Antonius Block, spent the whole movie torturing himself, locked in his ego's desperate need for control and intellectual certainty, playing a losing chess game against Death. But at the very end, he finally surrenders. He realizes he cannot defeat Death, so he sacrifices his own game—deliberately knocking over the chess pieces to distract Death just long enough for a young, innocent family to escape the ravages of the plague. In that moment of sitting in the room with Pebbles, I realized I was living out that exact role. My ego wanted more time; it wanted the comfort of a peaceful passing in her sleep so I wouldn't have to carry the agonizing moral weight of the needle. But when the reality of her suffering arrived, I had to throw myself on the sword. I had to knock over the board and take the ultimate psychological blow of being the one to make the call, entirely so that she could escape the failing fortress of her physical body and slip away safely into the light. This is the Rubedo. I have crossed the Rubicon. Alea iacta est.
The weird thing is, I had an image of that exact scene in my mind’s eye just days before, when I prepared our final meal together. I hadn’t felt much like cooking lately, but I knew we both deserved a good meal, and it was the one thing I could do for her in this increasingly narrow window of time we had left. I made her favorite meal, which also happens to be mine: roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach. Before I added the cream and butter to the potatoes, I tossed a piece in with some breast meat and spinach, and ground it up for her. It was the last meal she fully ate. Prior to that, she even got an amuse-bouche of chopped organ meat, which she absolutely loved. I even got a bottle of wine and raised my glass to Death, because I knew it was coming and resisting it would only bring more suffering. Even so, resisting the icy hand of Death seems to be a hardwired impulse in us, and it took baby steps for me to fully get there.
Trying to explain why this little girl meant so much to me is merely one of a myriad of human perspectives on how deeply those who choose to open their hearts fully must also experience the fullness of grief. Both are important life experiences. They exist on a continuum—a Möbius strip of eternity that we are all here to experience. But free will allows us the choice as to whether or not we choose to partake, and if so, how fully we allow ourselves to feel. I’ve come to realize that this is the true essence of love. It’s not an absence of fear—that’s impossible. As H.P. Lovecraft paraphrased it, the most intense human emotion is fear, and the most intense fear a human can experience is fear of the unknown.
With that said, I am guided by the words of Carl Jung right now: to hold the tension of opposites, feel the feelings in their absolute fullness while allowing myself to be afraid of the unknown, and just sit on the floor and play with rocks until the storm passes and the Third Thing arrives.
So long, my precious Pebbles. I will never forget you. I am as certain that we will meet again as I am that we have known each other since the beginning of time. You changed my life.
0 comments