A decade since our littlest girl left us.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021;
all rights reserved.

It can't really have been a decade since our littlest girl left us . . . can it?

But I look at the calendar, and it tells me that at 10:42 PM tonight, it'll have been exactly ten years.

Her name was Dom (Domina, for her half-mask; also Dommy, Dommers, Dom-Dom, Grubster Girl, and a few others besides), and she was the biggest combination of fragile feminine girl and wild-ass tomboy you've ever seen. She was also a former bait dog, and she came to me mostly by accident after having been so badly abused that she had permanent slashes (bite marks) in the fur on her forehead and across her little nose, on top of a broken/never healed/badly infected left foreleg.

The shelter that supposedly "rescued" her said they didn't notice anything when they sent her home with the foster who ultimately transferred her to me. Didn't notice the swelling and the blood dripping from it. They played and pleaded ignorance, and I took matters in hand myself and got the infection healed. Not the break, though; that was impossible, because it had been broken at the joint when she was young, never set, healed badly, and the shelter vet had had to rebreak it and fuse the joint. It bothered her when it was cold or damp.

It also bothered her when she didn't want to do something, like go home from the dog park, or go indoors here, and then she would pull that little stunt she's pulling in the photo up there, lift it up as though it pained her so desperately, and shake it as though afflicted by essential tremor, looking pitiful enough to need a tin cup that read "alms for the poor puppy." Until she'd tip over on her ass and scramble up as though there'd never been a thing wrong. Because, of course, there mostly wasn't; she'd run full-tilt with the rest of the pack, always on the lookout for something especially gross and rotten and so, so lovely. Like the time I saw her from a distance, diving repeatedly onto the ground on top of something, and as soon as I called her name, she jumped up, looked at me defiantly, grabbed the thing up in her mouth, and ran off with it where I couldn't catch her.

A rotted snakeskin. Oh, my god, she stank to thigh heaven, and she was so pleased with herself. Now you know why that last nickname.

She was also the kind of dog who forced herself onto your lap and literally refused to accept that anyone could not possibly love her completely . . . and so, of course, everybody did. When I had to be up in Washington for five weeks in 2011, she had taken to riding on the back of the ATV while Wings tooled around here hauling horseshit and doing other work, and he was so taken with the whole thing that she stole what little was still left of his heart.

And then promptly broke it, and mine, too. When I got back in either the last couple of days of March or first couple of days of April, I forget which, everyone seemed fine. A couple of days later, I noticed that she had developed a couple of bumps on her head at the base of her ears. They looked like giant insect bites. More worrying was what materialized within the next couple of days after that. She'd been looking slightly chubby, but she was 11-1/2 by then, as near as anyone could tell (her dentition was so bad when she came to me that my vet said it looked like she was 12, but she was actually about 2-1/2, most likely; that had been 9 years previously), so we hadn't thought much of it. But chubby is one thing; looking pregnant (in a thoroughly long since spayed dog) is something else entirely.

So I took her to our vet here.

The news was grim.

She had a tumor, a massive one, and only the placement of it had kept it from showing. She had shown no signs of anything wrong, either, no loss of appetite, no pain, no fatigue, no discomfort of any sort. But in the space of a couple of days, the tumor had hit that magic growth spurt when no amount of internal organs can hide it. A sale permitted us to pay for an ultrasound, and the worst was confirmed: The cancer had spread through her entire body, and she had weeks at the very most left to be with us. It would turn out to be fewer than two weeks.

The good news was that she was not in pain, and the vet told me that given her comfort levels and lack of pain up to that point, she might have none at all. At the point when everything failed, he said, it would probably be quick. And so I took her home, and relayed the terrible news, and we wept, and then we set about making her as happy and as comfortable as possible.

She lasted about ten days. On the morning of Wednesday, the 13th, Wings gave her a marrow bone all her own, and she was so happy with it. By evening, her body had begun the laborious process of winding itself down, and she was tired and weak, but she wanted very badly to be allowed outside. I went out with her, and she began to walk, slowly, also laboriously, and it became clear that she wanted to see all her favorite places on the land, imprint them in her mind for the journey that was to come. Eventually, she was to tired to continue, so I picked her up and through a haze of tears, I carried her around to all the places where I knew she had loved to play so that she could visit each one one last time. Then we brought her back inside, into that cold tin can of an RV where we had been living for several months and would wind up spending seven years, and set her on a dog bed at our feet with her bone and Griffin, the alpha, nearby to keep watch as he was wont to do.

Sometime before 10 PM, I saw her convulse, and I knew that it had ruptured, as I had been warned it might. I also knew that, at that hour, and in the snowy weather that year, there would be no one able or willing to come and help, that I had to do this myself. And so I got down on the floor and held her on my lap and in my arms, and I felt every twitch and tremor as her body went through all the processes of turning off the switches and turning out the lights. It took about an hour; her vision went early on, and that frightened her, and so I had to make sure that she could feel me and hear me and know that she was safe. I talked to her for forty or fifty minutes, unceasing, and slowly she relaxed, and eventually . . . stopped. Everything . . . stopped.

10:42 PM.

And it was bitterly cold outside, ice and blowing snow, and we would not be able to bury her until the next morning, so we wrapped her up carefully in a soft pink blanket that matched her favorite girly pink dog sweater and pink biker-girl-style studded collar. And we laid her to rest the following day.

And we wept.

To this day, Wings still talks about how she would ride with him on the ATV, this little scaredy-dog who was also a little tough girl, a gangster girl, one who lived entirely up to her pit bull and rat terrier ancestors. She loved to fake being "dumb," but besides being street smart, she understood everything; she just liked to be everyone's baby.

Of that group of dogs, she was the first to go, and the pack felt it intensely. We'd already lost two others in our years together, but we felt it, too. And we still feel her spirit every now and then, this happy, grinning little girl who had everyone wrapped around her little paw. And tonight, five hours early because it's too late and dark and far too cold at 10:42 PM, I took her her cedar and tobacco and water, as we always do for all of ours. Very little smoke, though; the winds have been at gale force most of the day. But she has what she needs, and mostly that's memory, knowing that she still has our hearts.

We love you, Dom. There's always space for you on the ATV, in our hearts, and everywhere else, too.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.             

Nine Years.

Photo copyright Wings, 2020; all rights reserved.

It's been nine years tonight. Technically, not until 10:42 PM, and actually, I think that was before they moved up DST so drastically, so even that's probably not right. But because of the lateness (and the bitter cold right now, too), I took care of her resting place, take her cedar and tobacco and water, before we came in for the evening.

Dom was another accidental dog, like her sister. And she owned us all, thoroughly. She had been used as a bait dog before she came to me, and she had the slash marks on her forehead to prove it. Also a broken left front ankle that had been left untreated; the rescue vet (again, before she found me) rebroke it, fused it, and allowed it to get badly enough infected that, a few days after coming to me, it was swollen and bleeding again. They feigned ignorance. 

I took care of it. As always.

It wasn't too long before it didn't really cause her much pain, but it had been broken for so long before any attempt at mending it was made that it had withered; no muscle tone, no ability to hold her full weight, although eventually she would be able to put some weight on it again, enough to run full-out with her sibs, enough to do the doggy version of a handstand when she wanted to follow her brother's lead and mark turf on a lamppost, and couldn't figure out any other way to hike the necessary parts high enough. She was a grubby little thing who loved both eating and rolling in the deadest things you could find, and she was also a little princess who preened in her rhinestone-studded pink collar and pink glamour-girl sweater.

And she worked it all for all it was worth.

When, in the early months of 2011, I had to leave for about five weeks, she and the others stayed behind to keep Wings company. We had no clue anything was wrong; she was her usual hyperactive self, and she wrapped Wings that much more tightly around her paw by deigning to ride on the back of the ATV with him.

And a few days after I got back, she developed what looked like insect bites on her head, around her ears. Nothing worked on them, and then suddenly she developed a grossly-distended stomach. At the vet, someone inadvertently referred to the adorable "little pregnant dog," not realizing what we had already figured out and the ultrasound would confirm. In the space of a week, she went from appearing utterly healthy to being visibly riddled with tumors, which told us they'd been growing for some time . . . probably since the point, two summers prior, when we'd used that stupid topical treatment on them all.

Dommy was the first to go.

On this night nine years ago, it became obvious around ten o'clock, a little before, that the time was here. It was too late to call anyone. And so I sat on the cold floor of that toxic tin can and I held in her my arms and on my lap, and let her slip away a little over forty minutes, safe in my arms. And I wept the whole time.

She was the first to be laid to rest in the spot most of them now share, a long, wide strip of beautifully shaded land beneath the big blue spruce, with wild sunflowers and Guatemalan sage and wild raspberries. And, of course, the space she still occupies in the hole in our hearts.

We love you, Dommers. You're with us, every day.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

How is it eight years already?

Photo copyright Wings, 2019;
all rights reserved.

How is it eight years already? Eight years tonight since we lost the first of my pack (first of the pack I brought to what would become our larger one, that it). First to be lost, not first member: Dom was actually the third to join the pack, the little grubster princess.

The actual time isn't until 10:42 PM, but by then, these days, anyway, I'm already in bed, not fit for movement of any sort. To that end, I've already taken the cedar and tobacco and water out to where she rests beneath a heart stone; Wings found that for her when we buried her to next morning way back in 2011. She was the sort of pup who would always be a pup, no matter how old she got, and at that time, we calculated her age at roughly eleven, eleven and a half. Like the others, she developed cancer, fast-moving and untreatable by the time it manifested, a scant couple of weeks after I returned home, having had to be out of town for five weeks. 

The paw was a thing; that lift in the photo was characteristic. By the time this was taken, about four and half months before we lost her, it had become equal parts injury, habit, and attempt to work it. Her leg had been broken and left unset for too long before she came to me, presumably an injury resulting from what were evidently her early days as a bait dog. The rescue shelter where she landed rebroke the leg and fused it — and promptly let it get infected. That got fixed immediately when she wound up with me, but it was far too late for the leg. And it did tire easily, even hurt at times, but she also used it to guilt-trip the humans in her life whenever she didn't want to do something.

And with that face, it was hard to resist her, although I mostly managed. Wings doted on her; while I was away those five weeks, he taught her to ride on the back of the ATV, and she kept him company while he worked. He misses her as much as I do, and eight years has not diminished that for either of us.

I am grateful, though, that she was able to live here, to have acres on which to run, a full pack with whom to play. Humans to keep as her pets. For as hard as her life began, up until the last day, she had a beautiful life of it once she came to me, one made even better for her here.

We love you, Dommers. You're never out of our hearts. 



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Seven years, and Dom still owns our hearts.

Photo copyright Wings, 2018; all rights reserved.

Seven years.

It doesn't seem possible.

I couldn't find either of the photos I wanted to use of her: In one, she's wrapped up in one of my old fleece shirts, warm on the floor of Wings's studio; in the other, she's sitting at the edge of the deck just before the old house got pulled out of here, exploiting that lame paw as she always did when she didn't want to do something. It was permanently damaged it, probably during the period she was used as a bait dog, and then further exacerbated by a rescue entity's failure to care for it properly. Once I got the infection gone, it never stopped her.

She only had a half-mask, but it gave her her name, for domino: Domina, in her case, a nod to the feminine and also to the other Latin translation in which it's used as the female analogue to "Master." Because she was the boss, in so many ways — not of her pack, true, but she ran her humans ragged as her personal servant. Of course, it was too heavy a name for a little tomboy who loved to fake being the fragile flower, so it got shortened immediately to Dommy, Dom, Dommers, DomDom. Also Grubster Girl, since she never met something disgusting to roll in that she didn't like, and Little Monster, because she was completely bullheaded.

She owned Wings, and she sealed that deal when I was up in Washington, hopping up onto the back of the ATV and riding with him. What we didn't know then was that she was already not only sick, but irrevocably so; in fact, she had only weeks to live. I returned at the very end of March; by 10:42 PM on the night of April 14, 2011, she was gone. Roughly 11.5, 12 years old, and at the vet, they thought she was pregnant; that's how drastically the tumor(s) had expanded her midsection. All in the space of a couple of weeks. We had no warning, and no time.

She left this world from my lap, on the floor of that damned RV, freezing cold and rattling in the wind. I kept her warm and safe, and held while her first her motor control failed, then her vision, and last of all, her breath. I baptized her spirit with my tears; they fell unceasing and unchecked the whole time. It took about forty minutes overall.

She was the first to rest in the plot where the her siblings now are. We couldn't bury her until the next day; it was too dark, too cold, the ground too hard. Every once in a while, she comes back to see me in a dream, and I know she's happy. She's still fierce, but she's always happy, that little doggy grin on her face.

Later on, when the wind dies down, I'll go outside and take her some cedar, and some tobacco, and some water. And I'll remind her that, like her siblings, she's never out of our hearts.

We love you, little DomDom girl.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

It's been six years tonight. Dom.

Photo copyright Wings, 2017; all rights reserved.

Her name was Dommy, for her little half-domino mask. Also Dom, Doms, Dom-Doms, Dommers, Little Dom-Dom Girl. I learned eventually that in Japanese, the same-sounding word meant "dumb." She was not, as these things go, always the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that was more a common sense issue than a smarts issue. 

She was another of my rescues, one with a damaged left paw that she learned to work as effectively as a Dickens child with a tin cup. We called her "The Little Match Girl" sometimes, because she'd run flat-out on it when she damn well wanted to, then fall back onto her haunches, lift it, and make it tremble pitiably when she didn't want to do something. Like, say, go home from the park. Or when she wanted to be carried, just because she was a little princess that way.

She was small, and she was fierce, and she was a bundle of nearly-pure love, one who always wanted to be on our laps or trying to boot us out of the bed. And she left us at 10:42 PM on this night, now six years gone. Like Lilith, she developed tumors. In her case, by the time they were evident, it was already far too late. I brought her home from the vet and we made her comfortable and she had another three or four days, max. That last evening, she wanted to go out, but she was too weak to walk on her own, so I carried her around to her favorite places on the land, including the space under the deck, at that point no longer attached to a house. It was only months after the house was pulled out from under us. She left us in my arms and on my lap, as I sat cross-legged on the cold kitchen floor and held her and wept. At the appointed time tonight, even though it will be late, I'll take her cedar and tobacco.

She was the first one laid to rest where her siblings are. This has been a hard week, with extra visits for anniversaries: Lilith four days ago, Dommy tonight, Griffin coming up on Sunday. They were my sole family for so long, and they were everything to me. To Wings, too, and this one wormed her way deep into his heart, learning how to ride on the back of the ATV with him (at a sedate pace, of course). That charmed him so completely that he still brings it up to this day. That night, I half-dreamed her walking toward the spirit world, picking her way gingerly, allowing for her little limp, through and around desert scrub beneath a bright blue sky. The morning just after, in our way, one's spirit arrives, we awakened to something that almost never happens here: an early morning storm, the raindrops as loud and resonant on the tin roof as any powwow drum, the wind howling so loud and long through the gap-riddled windows and door and seams of this thing that it sounded for all the world like our singers. I turned to Wings and said, "They're singing and dancing for her, welcoming her home."

There will be no rain tonight, and probably no wind, but once in a great while, her spirit still visits in dreams. In them, she's entirely healthy and always a little black and white bundle of pure happiness. And I'll weep more of the tears I've been shedding all week, as I will for two more days at least, and yet, what I see now is her from one of the dreams: circling around and around at top speed to lie down in a comfortable spot, multicolored eyes bright and with that grin on her face that, in a dog, is joy in its purest form. As mind's-eye images go, it's hard to get much better than that.

We love you, Dom.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Three Years

Photo copyright Wings, 2011; all rights reserved.

Monday was the actual day. Between the killer pace of prepping for the show and having lost Lilith four days previously, I was in no shape to post anything.

But April 14, 2011, was the night this little girl left us. It was too late to do anything then, so we laid Dom to rest the next morning. Lilith is now resting between Dom and Major.

This was another little being with a heart to match any human warrior. She survived horrors (as a bait dog, among other things) before finding her way to me. That raised paw? That's because it was broken in puppyhood, and her [alleged] humans couldn't be bothered to fix it. By 2.5, when she came to me, the shelter/rescue had had to rebreak it and pin it, and they screwed it up so badly that it had to be fused. Bleeding and infection followed; I took care of fixing that on my own.

Pit bull/rat terrier, as nearly as we could tell. Liked to play scaredy-dog, but really had a hell of a lot of heart and strength. And once she wormed her way into your heart (and your lap), you couldn't remove her, even surgically, if you tried.

We found out she was sick roughly two weeks before she left us. It was the same thing that took Lilith's life: pyrethrin toxicity, leading to tumors throughout her body. Lilith first showed sign of having developed it two months after we lost Dom, and the first death scare with her was on June 17th of that same year. She hung nearly three more years, but Dom's little body couldn't hold out that long.

I still feel her sometimes; we both do. A few days ago, a sudden image of Lilith flashed into my mind's eye, wholly unbidden: She was walking alone, westward, down a road that I'd never seen before, when suddenly she saw someone she recognized. She broke into a run, that big doggy grin on her face, and I could see that she was running like she used to — healthy, tumors gone, gray gone, her coat back to full black and white. And I knew she'd just seen Dom, and they were running to greet each other.

Dom

Image copyright Wings, 2011; all rights reserved.

10:42 PM. Thursday, April 14, 2011.

One year ago tonight, our little girl walked on. I held her in my lap; it took just over 40 minutes.

Someday, I'll write about who she was: a funny and fierce little tomboy girly girl who stole our hearts and then broke them when she left too soon. My fault; pyrethrin toxicity from her anti-flea/tick medication, and I didn't know until long after it was too late.

Now she rests by the garden, encircled by stones, with a heart-shaped rock to mark her place. Wings and I both bring her cedar and sage and lavender periodically, and I talk to her daily.

We love you, Dommy.