 |
| Tazzy (April 1, 1992 - December 26, 2008) |
|
FAREWELL,
GOOD FRIEND
By Bob Chochola
’Twas the morning after Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring – until the phone rang at 6:30am. It was my friend, doggie sitting my two beautiful K-9 friends for the holidays, informing me that my dog Taz (named after a favorite cartoon character) had had a seizure and was lying “stiff as a board” and unresponsive on her living room floor. I rushed to the scene.
In July of 1992 I was a married man with two small step-daughters. My wife (now my Ex) and I were on vacation, on our way to Hayward, Wisconsin’s Chippewa Flowage to do some fishing and camp in a tent for two weeks. We had recently discussed getting a puppy for the girls, ages four and one. On the ride up north from our home in Chicago the subject was discussed further.
I remembered a shelter in the town of Hayward (the kind that does not keep animals very long) and suggested we consider adopting. She agreed and before we ever set-up camp, we stopped to see the animals there.
It was a sad situation indeed: many of the animals rounded-up were older dogs and (we suspected) had been abandoned by their owner, or were runaways. It was tough to resist taking them all home, but we had two small reminders that maybe a puppy was a better decision – if we could find one?
We made it almost to the last pen, when we spotted the perfect pup. He was soft, cuddly, and had paws that told us he would be big enough for the girls to saddle-up in a year or so. He was only “weeks” old and found waddling along a lonely stretch of wooded road. How he escaped the many predators found in those woods amazed us, but we didn’t care. We fell in love.
There was one hitch. Shelter rules (also state rules, I believe) required that the dog remain “in custody” for a full seven days before we could take him home and he had just been brought in that morning. We had two weeks and decided to wait.
Of course, that meant we also had to pay our newfound pooch a visit every day until it was time to rescue him. By week’s end that dog was part of the family and we stopped on our way to pick him up on day seven to buy food, doggie dishes, collar, leash, and an assortment of noisy toys and chewy things.
When we arrived at the shelter our hearts were broken. As we pulled up to the building, out came a young girl (about the same age as our older daughter) holding “our” puppy – tears of joy rolling down her face and happy Mom and Dad right behind. We were crying by now too realizing the happy reality that a young child had been reunited with her beloved pet. Ours were not tears of joy, however. We were crushed.
We headed back to camp sobbing and not saying a word.
On the way I spotted a veterinary hospital and without even knowing if hospitals dealt with abandoned/adopted animals, I pulled into the parking lot.
Figuring it couldn’t hurt to check it out we went inside and told the nurse/receptionist about our week-long puppy pursuit and subsequent heartbreak.
Her face filled with sympathy anguish over our situation, but quickly lit-up with optimism and she asked us to wait a moment while she disappeared to the back room.
In a few minutes the woman returned – a small puppy skipping and slipping across the polished tile floor as if he were trying to run on an icy lake. He slid into the waiting room full of pets and pet owners like Mick Jagger hitting the stage at the beginning of a Stones’ concert. He scrambled right past the twenty, or so, folks scattered about, scampered past dogs, cats, and even a few kids playing, right to my feet and rolled over so I could scratch his tummy.
I looked at my wife and didn’t even have to ask. I said, “Wrap him up, we’ll take him!” No one had to wonder who Tazzy wanted to go home with, that’s for sure.
Taz we learned, was about four months old and had been abandoned at the hospital by his owner after he escaped a yard, then returned almost a month later with a broken rear leg. The owner apparently could not, or would not, pay for the Vet’s services and just left him refusing to take repeated calls from the hospital staff. The puppy was about to be put down.
We set April Fools Day as our new puppy’s official Birthday. No one really knew for sure, so we picked April 1st because it was probably very close and it suited Tazzy’s playful personality very well. I spent months rehabbing his broken leg too.
The Vet told us surgery to repair the broken leg was risky (amputation and/or death) and would not guarantee 100% recovery. On the other hand, he also said no repair may cause the leg to heal poorly and give the dog pain later in life.
We decided on option number two (letting the leg heal on its own), because Taz was very young, seemed to have adapted well to the three-leg lifestyle, and most of all we figured that a big risk now was not a better choice than something that “may” hurt him ten years down the road. Little did we know how long that road would be?
I worked that little guy every day. At first he’d hop on three legs and drag the broken leg. Then he kind of looked like a bunny rabbit hopping with the broken leg working in tandem with the good foot.
After about six months all legs were functioning like they should have been and no one could tell Taz had ever broken the leg. He became quite the family pet too – guarding the kids in their wading pool in the summer to keep them from harm and accompanying me on long journeys around town in deep snow during the winter. Taz was a trooper, a watch dog, a good friend.
He was a real hoot too!
Like the first day back at the veterinary hospital in Wisconsin, Taz seemed to always pay more attention to me than anyone else. Maybe it was because I was an “authority figure” to him. Alpha dog, if you want? Maybe it was because I would be the one to get dressed and go for a walk at ten o’clock at night with two-feet of snow on the ground and sub-zero temperatures blowing through a thirty mile per hour wind. Either way I was “the guy” in his life. There was no mistaking that fact.
Taz loved the snow. So much so he’d roll around on his back like he was making snow angels. He’d push his nose along the ground like a sniffing snow plow and look up at me with those big doe eyes and a pile of fresh powder on the tip of his snout.
He loved my shoes. He loved to steal my socks and underwear out of the laundry hamper. Stinker! He never chewed ‘em – not ever. He just liked to lay with something of mine under his head. I always looked at it as a compliment.
Taz hated – I mean HATED – motorcycles. On a car ride one day he very nearly went through the windshield trying to attack one. As much as sixteen years later, he would growl and raise the fur on his back just walking past a motorcycle that was parked. He didn’t even need a rider present to express his dislike.
Over the years, being that he never liked them as long as I knew him, I theorized that it was probably a motorcycle that broke Tazzy’s leg once upon time when he was lost and alone and scampering fearless through the dangerous north woods as a puppy. Yeah! It was that kind of angry.
No matter, he was a great friend to me through many tough times and monumental life changes.
He was there through a divorce. Guess who got the dog?
He was there when I took a new job and moved away from Chicago to St. Louis after the divorce, then transferred on to Dallas all in less than a year’s time. Anyone who has moved away from their home town (or been divorced) knows how lonely it can be. Tazzy’s was the warm familiar face welcoming me home from work so many times. But then again, he knew exactly what it’s like to be lost and alone.
The years went by fast, as they seem to always do. The older, the faster, I think? Tazzy was there through it all every step of the way.
His last steps were on Christmas Day. The next morning he was clinging to life and fighting the inevitable, as you might expect from such a trooper.
I carried him from the house to the car, then into the animal hospital where Tazzy’s Vet (and staff) had treated, groomed, boarded, and had grown to love this magnificent animal over the span of the last thirteen years. I knew this would be the last visit to “the Doctor’s house” of Tazzy’s long and wonderful life.
Sixteen years, eight months, twenty-five days, seven hours, and forty-five minutes later Tazzy died in my arms. I cried and cried knowing how much I will miss him.
Any friendship that lasted as long as ours did has many stories to tell. Many great stories, for example, in spite of his love for snow, Taz would refuse to stand in grass when it was wet from rain. Don’t ask me why… he never told me. But he would stand on three feet and it didn’t matter how long he had been holding it, he refused to do his business. He was stubborn as a mule. I got soaked many times just waiting.
Then there was the time he ate my pizza. Not the whole pizza, he left me half. But in spite of knowing better (and he did know the rule: floor good, kitchen counter bad) he waited for me to turn my back just for a second. I looked back and there he was smacking his lips gloating – four out of eight slices history. The thief!
I don’t know if all dogs go to Heaven, like the movie says they do. I like to think it’s true. I do know that if we humans were capable of the unconditional love, complete loyalty, and undying respect that dogs seem to give without fail, then the world would be a much better place.
I hope that wherever Tazzy is now, there’s lots-and-lots of snow and good pizza.
Goodbye, Tazzy, my friend.
|