A Best Friend

My friend puts a disclaimer on her blog.  For this post, here is mine:  some of this is hard to write, so hard to read and not suitable for everyone.  Parents, read first.

Everyone needs a best friend.  That someone special in this world who is with you no matter what.  When things go south, or you get in trouble, or the world just seems to not go your way, your best friend is there.  You don't have to be anyone other than you.  They accept you just as you are.  Some folks find their best friend in kindergarten, or their first day at a new school.  Some folks meet them in dance class, or on the football field.  For some reason, you are just placed together.

Wyatt's best friend was waiting for him here when he was born.  When I began working for the Tohono O'odham reservation, Charlie was out of town hunting.  Bailey was in her first time at day care.  Day one was hard enough.  Day two was 9/11/2001.  I couldn't even believe that was happening.  By that Thursday, when my boss was late on a humanitarian mission, down at the livestock complex trying to patch up a dog who had been hit by a car, I didn't know what to think.  By that afternoon, I was driving he and the dog to the vet.  The dog was a little brown mutt maybe three months old.  She didn't go shocky by the time we reached the vet.  She never even complained.  My boss was going to take her home, then to the Reservation vet the following day, and called his wife to say he was bringing her home.  His wife, several months pregnant at the time, was not having that.  Charlie was out of town and it seemed like she would be on her way back to her rightful home in a couple days, so she came home with me.

I took this dog, with two casts which needed redone daily, into the house and set her down, telling Callie Jo and Vegas that she was temporary and we needed to take care of her.  They were so good.  I sat there, in the living room floor, trying to tell Bailey Noelle that she could not get attached to the little dog, who likely had a home somewhere, picking ticks off her and explaining why I had to do it.  The little dog went to work with me the next day, but the Reservation vet was not to be in until the following week.

Before long, treatments were going along at home and Bailey thought for sure she was going to be a vet.  I tried asking folks all around if they knew where the dog belonged.  Everyone laughed at me.  There are just so many stray dogs out there.  Callie Jo was Charlie's dog, who I had begged for when we first married.  My partner in running the house, but Charlie's dog.  Vegas was Bailey's, he picked her out himself when she was almost two.  Before I knew it, the staff I worked with had named the little dog as Hopper Spark. She got medical care out there, and was growing.  I was too- I was pregnant. When Wyatt Clay was born, Callie Jo officially let Hopper have a human.  According to Hopper, Wyatt could do no wrong.  He tugged on her floppy ears, laid with her, on her, and slept alongside her.

Hopper's front leg didn't heal quite straight, but she got along fine so it was easier on her body to let her run around like that then put her through surgery that likely would not work.  It never slowed her down in chasing rabbits, or barking at cattle across the street, or anything else she wanted to do.  As Wyatt crawled, she was right beside him, as he learned to walk she was there too, he always had a soft spot to fall or someone to hold on to.  And a hand full of fur (UGH!)

Charlie was gone a lot back then, the war was going and his unit would send him off to support planes who were flying to train the pilots headed overseas.  As Wyatt got into his toddler years, he withdrew a good bit. He began stuttering at one point, and when the kids made fun of it, he stopped talking altogether.  His sister always knew what he wanted, so he got by without speaking a lot.When we finally got him to speak again, and then to read, he spoke and read to Hopper.  He would come home from school and she would meet him at the gate, they would run around and share a snack, then lie in the floor and talk about their day- the same kind of one-sided conversation a mama has with her little one about what they did today or how their day was.  They would play pretend in the back yard side by side, creating dirt bogs and picking flowers for mama, rearranging all the yard art.

If I left the house and came home without Wyatt, Hopper would go to his door of the car, then back to mine.  If he wasn't with me, she would follow me around grunting like she fund me to be an unacceptable mother, leaving my children off places.  Once he was back I was out of trouble.  Then she was back to stealing eggs, sneaking up on hens to scare them, or stealing shoes and burying them for Charlie to find.

Around here, dogs aren't merely livestock, but also members of the family who work alongside us.  They help us with guarding the children and animals, rounding up loose animals, keeping unwanted folks away.  No one reaches across our fence without permission.  Not twice anyway!  And delivery men know to wait for me to come to the gate.  While they will defend without drawing blood if they can, the one thing they bite first and ask questions later about is the kids.  While they can be a bit over the top, as a military wife, I appreciate the help.  They know I am in charge, I train them.  And I don't ignore them when they bark, there is most always a reason.

It was really tough losing Remington so suddenly at Christmas.  She was my best worker, at only five years old.  We have had a really rough Spring following that, with the viscous bullying of Bailey coming to a head with some adults who we had thought we could trust trying to really tear her apart.  Around county fair time, Hopper and I started having allergy issues.  I tried the homeopathic stuff first, since she already had valley fever and was on an aspirin regimen for the front leg.  But I wasn't getting anywhere, so Wyatt said that he would help me get her to the vet as soon as he got out of school.  (She was an amazing escape artist when it came to the vet, but would be very good if Wyatt was there) The last Friday of school, her right eye was really red near the tear duct.  The kids helped me look, because she could look that way from rolling her eyes at me if she didn't want to eat dog food, too.  They agreed that it was different, but it was Friday, so we agreed that first thing in the week, after the holiday Monday I would call the vet.

Monday night, around three am, Hopper had a seizure.  I called the vet when they opened, and they worked her in for an emergency appointment.  I wanted her to see her regular vet, as I was so upset about the stress on Remi when she had gone in to the all night emergency vet, and the regular one had all the records on her previous health issues.  Dr Porter asked about the seizure and looked hard at the eye.  She agreed with me that we needed to look at a valley fever flareup, and wanted a full blood panel but wanted to sedate her and look at her tonsils and see if she could do a needle aspirate of the eye.  Since we were an emergency work in, they wouldn't get to her right away, so they let us sit with her in the side of the lobby until they were ready for her.  Wyatt cuddled her, and while the other dogs wanted Wyatt's attention, they respected Hopper and that she was lying there not quite like the others.  We got Hopper home in time for me to dash off to work, with instructions for the kids.  The vet had put her back on the fluconazole for the valley fever, as it couldn't hurt, and gave her pred to get her started as an anti-inflammatory an help her body start to fight whatever it was while we waited on blood work.  Dr Porter was worried though, she had begun to bleed from her nose and the eye was not just an infection or anything simple- she needed to see the blood work to see what was next.

Waiting for the blood work was like a roller coaster.  Her titers were up, but the weekend docs who looked at the results were trying to see what the differences were with the original infections she had had, but the staff needed to dig more paper out since some numbers were missing from going paperless. But then, the valley fever would not be the cause.  After another seizure, I spoke with the vet again.  She said that a CT Scan was the only way to conclusively determine what was going on in the eye, but with another seizure, and more blood from the nose, and the the improvements in the eye already reversing, she felt that regardless of what it was, it was moving fast and we likely didn't have much time. I asked about keeping her comfortable for what she had left, and the vet told me we might only have a week left, but she could get some pain meds together.  She began them on Wednesday, but the seizures were happening more.  

Wednesday an Thursday, Hopper wanted to play outside, like usual with her brother, so we just always took turns going everywhere with her. My mother in law came to sit with she and Wyatt on Thursday so I could take Bailey to town for a workshop.  I got home and she was having another seizure.  It wasn't fair to let Hopper hurt so much.  Wyatt understood that.  But then that night, she vocalized to me when she would not eat.  I thought she might be complaining of pain for the first time in her eleven years.  Then she stole my chore shoe from next to the back door and showed me.  I laughed.  So in the morning,  I called the vet.  They made her an appointment for four.  I called my in laws to see if Wyatt could come over for the afternoon.  

We loaded everything in the car, and made Hopper a spot in the back seat.  As we drove in to town,   Hopper sat up and looked around, giving Wyatt attention and looking at Bailey.  She tried to eat the treat Wyatt had for her, but really just gummed it and move it around the seat.  We got to the library where the workshop was, and Bailey took a minute to say good bye to Hopper.  She opened the back hatch to grab her bag and the computer, and Hopper cocked her head at Bailey over the back seat.  Bailey choked back the tears and smiled at her as she said goodbye one more time.  We drove to my in-laws, and Wyatt said goodbye to his best friend one last time, then go out of the car with a deep breath.  I knew Jon would keep him busy.

 I drove to the vet, and carried her in.  I stood her at the desk while I signed us in, but instead of trying to escape she was ready to walk down the hall.  I scooped her up and sat her on the bench, trying to love on her calmly.  The techs who had been so nice the week before came to pet her and comfort us.  Then the one asked the other to carry her.  They were going to put in an IV, then settle us in a room until the doctor came in.  The girl at the desk set me in a room so I wouldn't have to pretend to be okay when other patients came in.  A couple minutes later, they came to get me.  She had given everything she had to looking okay with the kids, and her body had gone into a seizure when they took her back.  

I know in my heart that Hopper Spark had eleven great years with us, and that she worked hard and cared very deeply for her boy- for all of us.  I know she is with her sisters, Callie Jo and Remington, playing up above without having to hurt anymore.  But we miss her, nonetheless.  I am a better person for having had her in my life, and Wyatt was so fortunate to have her for a best friend.  Her hit and run kisses, her paws hanging over the edge of the retaining wall watching us do chores, her goofy but defiant looks as she stole things in plain view of us be it for attention or just because, her claiming of all the beds stacked together like a queen- all hallmarks of who she was, who she remains in our hearts forever.  Love you, girl!