Zoey. Mine.

"Hi, just wanted to call and let you know that we have a female Pug, she's not black like you wanted, she's fawn and the only one left of her litter. Just wanted to see if you'd like to come down and see her?" That's how it began, in 1999. Later that day we were in the car on our way to Puppy Barn in Cranbury, NJ where I walked into the store, marched over to a family holding her and without even meeting her yet, announced that, "I'm here to pick up my puppy", and as Jim puts it, "grabbed her out of some little girls hands". Zoey was tiny, too tiny, a runt most definitely. She had a huge forehead, gigantic googley eyes…pretty much the canine version of me. Haha. I fell in love, the second she laid on my chest, she was mine and I was hers. It was January so it took all of about 10 minutes to come to the decision that she would be my birthday present. We took her home that same day and introduced her to Pugsley, her beautiful, albeit Napoleonesque, one year old brother. He was unimpressed. He flattened her to the floor with one paw so she'd stopped moving long enough to sniff her and then he walked off. Completely unimpressed.

The day Zoey was fixed I was a nervous wreck because she was having surgery and she was so tiny and Pugs have trouble with anesthesia on account of the smushed nose. The Dr's office called me at work and left me a voicemail telling me to call them "immediately". Panicked I called them back to hear, "Well, she's fine don't worry, BUT we had to remove her female parts and an undescended pair of testicles." "Come again?" "Yea, ya know how you were concerned that her Vagina was a little weird looking?" "Um, yea and you told me to Vaseline my fingers and pull on her "lips" to close it up?" "Yea, well turns out that that's her penis poking out of there." "Ok, so basically I massaged her penis a couple times before I felt way too weird about it and stopped on my own?" A Hermaphrodite, or "Hermapholite" as Eric Cartman would say. My dog, of course. It certainly explained all the confused dogs that would come up and sniff her "Hello", walk away, tilt there heads and come back for a second whiff. They didn't know what the hell was going on. She was "special". I had to have her spayed and neutered on the off chance that she would trip and get herself pregnant. We made the decision to raise her as a girl. It was the right decision. She was the epitome of a delightfully spoiled, dainty little girl.

When Zoey was 6 months old we took her and Pugsley to a Pug Picnic organized by the Delaware Valley Pug Club. It was basically a bunch of snooty breeders looking at each others dogs, sizing them up. While Pugsley was a physically gorgeous Pug, perfect in every Pug way, there was my girl, still tiny and crazy looking with more personality then all of the other Pugs and people combined. I entered her and I in a "kissing contest" which went like this, when it was your turn you got on your knees, stuck your face in front of your pooch and the judges would determine who the most enthusiastic kisser was. Yea. We won. She went to town on me. Zoey, The Kissing Champion. I was beaming with pride, probably a little too much pride. We won a tote bag with the clubs logo screen printed on it. Some sore loser tried to get us disqualified because Zoey was only 6 months old and therefore still a puppy and "puppies always kiss a lot". "Seriously dude, you want the righteous muslin tote bag that bad?" He dropped it. People suck.

Dogs don't suck. It's no secret that I love dogs more than people. A dog hasn't learned the fine art of Bullshit. A dog hasn't learned at an early age the benefits of lying, stretching the truth or blowing smoke up someones ass to get what they want, manage a situation or elicit a certain reaction. What a dog says with it's eyes, it means with every fiber of its being. She would have followed me into a Volcano. That's no lie. She would have protested for a minute, she would have tried to "look" some sense into me, watched as I walked away, but as I started to get farther she would have panicked and ran after me. She knew I was hers, completely hers. She never took me for granted, she never used me, ok she may have played me for a cookie here and there but I was a willing enabler. (Random aside: I'm not one of those people that finds it entertaining to put a cookie on their dogs nose and command them to "Stay". What the fuck is that? It's a cookie. Dogs love to eat, they live for it. Commanding them not to do it for your amusement in the name of "training" or "discipline" is bizarre. Would you hold a plate of mac and cheese and chicken nuggets in front of your fat, hungry Toddler for your amusement? I think not. I hope not. If you do you're an asshole.)

Lest you think that I have zero perspective and I don't understand that Zoey was a dog and not a child, well, I really don't care. I do know the difference between an animal and a human child. But, don't be mistaken, the love I felt for her was the love that I equate to that relationship. That is my personal reality and experience. My love for Zoey was a deep, desperate love filled with passion and responsibility. I was her protector and her partner and yes, I was her Mommy. I did everything I could to give her the best life any dog could ever have. I know in my heart that she felt loved and she felt safe.

In the end, I did what was best for her, not for me. Her Vet promised me she would tell me when it was time, so that Zoey didn't have to suffer like her sweet brother did. So, when we discovered she had extremely aggressive Bladder Cancer and it would likely only be a matter of days before she began to feel pain, it was time. Jim and I both spent the night with her on the couch, where he had been sleeping with her for the prior 4 months. I didn't sleep at all. Just nuzzled her and listened to her breathe while I silently cried. That next morning, I sat in the grass with her for the last time so she could feel the sunshine on her skin. I have a picture of us together, me clutching her tightly to me, my face buried in her fur, my eyes swollen and red and both of us looking into the camera. I pull it up a lot. I will likely never share that photo with anyone else. It was her and I, saying "Goodbye".

Zoey's mark is upon me forever, her actual pawprints immortalized in the tattoo on the inside of my left forearm, complete with Cherry Blossoms, since her breed is of Chinese origin, and the Kanji that most closely conveys the term "Soulmate". Her mark is on my heart also. You know, when a really old tree is cut down and they can tell the age by the amount of rings in the wood? That is kind of how I visualize my heart. Deep within it, concentric circles of rings, a ring for each life that has touched mine. The thickness of each dependent upon the impact that life had on mine. Zoey's, Pugsley's and my brother, Jimmys, the thickest of them all.

I don't believe in a hereafter, so the Rainbow Bridge poem, while lovely and heartwarming, doesn't do much to comfort me. What still comforts me is that she was mine and I was hers and I took that relationship very seriously and I gave it the attention, love and respect that it deserved. I loved being Zoey's Mommy and I was damn good at it.