Rainbow Bridge

We decided to get our first dog together –a Border collie named McGuffin. After poring over books we were determined this dog would be perfectly trained-and he was the perfect dog. He learned to help me with the laundry, put my shoes away, get the paper etc. He existed without a fence as he totally respected the boundaries of our yard even stopping on a dime in mid-chase of a trespassing dog. He was an incredibly smart dog and we had many visitors who simply came to meet McGuffin having heard about him.

Thinking we had discovered the secrets of dog training we got another Border collie when McGuffin was around seven.

We were very wrong. Jenny was a very different story. She considered our obedience training as merely suggestions to consider and had an interesting form of deafness that manifested itself only when my voice became too loud or too firm. She also perfected what I called the “Gandhi move.” Whenever she deemed passive resistance the best strategy she would go limp. This coupled with her “deafness” pretty much completed our training (as opposed to hers) and Jenny ruled us and all others she met with good humor, joy and boundless affection.

Jenny was not a typical Border collie. Her reaction to meeting a herd of goats was to stand in front of them bouncing up and down waiting for one to throw a ball. When enlisted to stand at the back of a pen to make the exercise of another dog practicing driving sheep into a pen more challenging-Jenny spotted a Ewe with a wound on her nose. Jenny left her post and began licking the wound. Although this was a bit of an embarrassment to her breeder it was totally consistent with Jenny’s chosen life’s work as a therapy dog and a nurse.

Jenny was also a bit of a politician and was always most interested in adding more constituents so she would pay the most attention to new people and animals being assured of the loyalty of the old admirers. Jenny often went to work with me when I worked at a psychiatric day program serving as our activity therapist and relief psychotherapist. Her techniques were simple. She would arrive in the first group in the morning and greet everyone. Then she would identify who was the least happy person that day. She would assign herself to that person and would not leave their side until that person’s mood had improved to her satisfaction. Usually, her ministrations were welcomed and appreciated.

But some didn’t want to let go of their negative moods and found her irritating. Jenny was undaunted. She would cheerfully persist until they relented and “got happy.” She would take a brief break from her duties to retrieve the mail bag each morning then it was back to work.

Jenny was also available for private duty work. After I had had a couple of surgeries Jenny assigned herself to me and stayed on the bed reluctantly leaving to eat and go outside until I was well. She would bring me items she could safely carry like the mail and the paper and then back to the bottom of the bed.

Jenny herself became very ill one night. I had come downstairs to check on her as a terrible storm was going on. I had put her in the laundry room as she had thrown up that evening. A quick trip to the vet and some antibiotics seemed to make things better but to be on the safe side I thought her kennel would be the best option. I found her almost comatose surrounded by pools of blood.

We raced to the emergency clinic and her white blood cell count was astronomical. Antibiotics and IVs were administered but her prognosis wasn’t good. She had Septicemia. Infection was raging through her body affecting all of her organs. But she did make it through night and we transported her to our regular vet clinic where they kept her through the day and then back to the emergency clinic at night. She wouldn’t eat so she began coming home at night where I would feed her with an eye dropper and watch her all night. She lost a third of her weight and again almost died at the vet clinic one night. Finally the crisis passed but the raging infection had created other problems. She developed an ulcer and had surgery for that. She also latter developed huge lumps on the outside of her body which abscessed and her entire midsection were shaved. Then she seemed to have neurological problems, staggering and running into the wall. After much diagnostic work (including a test done in the “human” hospital”) a liver shunt was identified. The toxins in her body weren’t being filtered through her liver but instead were going to her brain from this blood vessel and she had encephalopathy of the brain.

Once again she went to surgery and a metal clamp was put on the vessel to cause it to slowly shrink. Her chances of survival once again weren’t good. After three days in intensive care it was decided she would do better at home. And she healed sleeping by me at night, accepting the four shots a day and the special nutrition I hand feed her. Through out this ordeal her sweet and accepting nature never wavered.

She became a favorite at the vet’s office and even more precious to me. It took close to a year but she healed and resumed her duties as nurse, therapist and chief morale officer to anyone who was lucky enough to be part of her world. And she taught me that expecting the best from people and the world could result in the best happening. This was a lesson I sorely needed and always will.

A short two years latter we lost McGuffin to the infirmities of old age and I held him as we let him go soon before his fourteenth birthday. Jenny had let us know the time had come. She lay beside McGuffin with her paw across his then walked to me looking earnestly into my eyes. He went to the vet that day and none of us not even our vet of many years questioned Jenny’s wisdom.

The man and I could no longer stay together and I agreed to let Jenny go with him knowing her life would be the quieter more predictable life that would be the best for our now 14 year old girl. As a finale act of anger that seems to accompany too many of these endings he refused to allow me to see Jenny again.

So I said goodbye to this wonderful girl knowing the space in my heart for her would never be replaced no matter how many dogs followed her.

Two years latter I received a kind call from our vet letting me know that Jenny was gone.

I look back on my life to this point where 60 isn’t so far away I think of the people and happenings that have led me to where I am now and that have helped forge what I believe and where my path leads, Jenny has played no small part.

And so I say goodbye to her for the second time. I feel so lucky to have had her in my life.

I feel lucky not only that she was part of my family for so long but that I had the honor to be the caretaker of this compassionate, sweet and delightful little Border collie that brought joy and healing to so many.