A Just Tribute
Tasha was never supposed to come into our lives. We’d adopted Kaylee four years earlier, and training her had been a difficult & lengthy task. I’d joked about getting another dog, but after a while, even the jokes slowed down.
It was a Sunday afternoon when my mother burst into my bedroom. I’d been having a nap after working a difficult overnight shift, and I was none too pleased to be woken up. But my mother insisted that it was important — there was a dog I had to meet.
The local pet supply store had partnered with the local animal shelter for an adoption day, and that’s where my mother met Tasha. It was love at first sight. Tasha was the spitting image of our old dog, Caramel, but what sealed the deal was when Tasha leapt up on my mom and started kissing her.
The adoption process was surprisingly difficult. We had to go in to the shelter with Kaylee and make sure they got along. Given Kaylee’s temperament, that was no sure thing, and my mother was incredibly nervous. Shockingly enough, Kaylee behaved perfectly, while Tasha was rather pushy and rude. That would soon become a theme.
Tasha was about a year old when we got her, and we didn’t know much about her earlier life. According to the shelter, she had run away from her previous owner several times, and he either got tired of, or couldn’t afford to, keep bailing her out of the pound. All throughout her life, she had anxiety that was triggered by rain and large vehicles, and I suspect she had at least one frightening experience while she was loose.
Oddly, we didn’t give Tasha her name. Kaylee was named for a character from Firefly (not my choice, by the way — I wanted to name her Starbuck), so it’s entirely appropriate that Tasha was named for Tasha Yar from Star Trek, but that’s just the name she came with. Her foster mom even said that she was named for the Trek character, so maybe it was fate. Maybe she was supposed to come into our lives after all.
Tasha (Tasha Yar, Tash, Tash-A-Roo, or just plain Roo-Roo) quickly became a dominant force in our lives. She wasn’t quite as large, clever, or crazy as Kaylee, but she was always incredibly stubborn. If she wanted something, she would let you know with an incredibly piercing bark, and she wouldn’t stop until she got what she wanted.
Like many Labs and Lab-mixes, she was obsessed with food. I’ve read that something like a quarter of Labs have a defective gene that makes them compulsive eaters, and I’m certain she had it (I’ve also sometimes jokingly suggested that I have it too). Even at the very end, when she was in some distress, she perked right up for a liver treat. Well, more than one liver treat. Quite a few, as a matter of fact.
She and Kaylee had their difficulties, on occasion. Tasha absolutely adored Kaylee, while Kaylee tolerated Tasha. They had very different playing styles, and Tasha was always deeply jealous of any attention paid to Kaylee — if she wasn’t getting as much or more, she’d get so worked up that she couldn’t settle down until I left the room. And yet, Tash learned a lot from Kaylee. She picked up Kaylee’s signature head down/fixed eyes stalking style, normally a Border Collie trait, and sometimes exaggerated it to the point where she’d practically be crawling as she tried to approach an interesting dog outside.
Kaylee is nominally “my” dog, but she’s always been my parents’ dog, really, and she’s always slept in their room. Tasha, on the other hand, spent her first year or so sleeping on my bed. That eventually ended because I had a bad case of pneumonia that required sleeping in an odd position, so Tasha had to sleep with my parents. Still, over the years, she has occasionally come back. Last night, her final night on this earth, was spent cuddled in my arms.
I suppose I have to get to the hard part, now. I’d really rather not. Tasha hadn’t shown any signs of difficulty or discomfort — she was her normal energetic, loud, stubborn, very affectionate self. Right up until around 8 o’clock tonight, just ten hours ago. That’s when she started getting uncomfortable. She’d just had a heartworm pill yesterday, so we all thought that was the issue, and it would pass. It wasn’t until after midnight that I began to suspect something was wrong. At first I thought it was bloat — god, I wish it had been. We got to the emergency vet, way out in Vanier, at 3, and she was gone by 4:15. It was an easy decision, but it was also the hardest decision in the world.
My father is something of a stoic, but he’s deeply broken up inside. My mother is a wreck. As for me, I’m handling it the way I handle most things — by writing. I take some comfort that Tasha died on Samhain, with a strong aurora overhead (it was obscured by clouds, but it was there). Maybe she’s gone to join the Cŵn Annwn, of the Wild Hunt. She could give them a run for their money.
I’ve been reading about British prehistory lately, and one thing that strikes me is how quickly time can fly by. Historians write so glibly about ages that lasted a thousand years, or brief transitional periods of a few centuries. It makes all of modernity seem so fleeting. Our lifetimes, and those of our parents and grandparents, barely even register. Pay attention to the ones you love, because they can vanish in an instant — blink and you’ll miss them.
After my Caramel died, and my life went off the tracks, I found some comfort in a poem by Hobhouse and Byron. Since then, I’ve often recommended it to others who were in the same boat, and I’ll leave it here now :
Near this Spot
are deposited the Remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferosity,
and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.
This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
if inscribed over human Ashes,
is but a just tribute to the Memory of
Boatswain, a Dog
who was born in Newfoundland May 1803
and died at Newstead November 18th 1808.[4]
When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth,
Unknown to Glory but upheld by Birth,
The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below.
When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen
Not what he was, but what he should have been.
But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his Masters own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonour’d falls, unnotic’d all his worth,
Deny’d in heaven the Soul he held on earth.
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.
Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debas’d by slavery, or corrupt by power,
Who knows thee well, must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy tongue hypocrisy, thy heart deceit,
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye! who behold perchance this simple urn,
Pass on, it honours none you wish to mourn.
To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one — and here he lies.
