Techie
In the fall of 1994, while I was still a sophomore in college, Feech and I brought home a tiny little sable-colored unit of fuzz, a little brown ball who failed to completely fill even a half of the already-small apple box we chose for her first bed. Techie was an orange sable Pomeranian puppy but did not appear particularly orange at this point. She didn't have the breed's characteristic ruff, and was actually little more than a more-or-less uniform ball of brown fluff with tiny little black eyes and a little black nose. I had only just turned twenty and was coming off a summer that was indistinguishable from my high school ones: living at home, working at a grocery store nearby my hometown, things like that. I could vote but not drink and for all practical purposes I was not actually an adult at this point. I had been introduced to Poms through Diku MUDding, of all places (one of the possible "pets" for your character was a Pomeranian puppy) and after a little research, I rapidly became smitten with the fluffy little Spitzy things. To a large extent to humor my whims, Feech chose a Pom as the new apartment dog. I moved in shortly thereafter.
I had a lot of dreams and plans at age twenty, very few of which have come to pass. The fact that I eventually did marry Feech is probably the one thing about my future that I got right. The rest of it, all the things I was going to do and be, have more or less fallen by the wayside. I had no idea I could write. I had the vague impression that maybe I could act. I was going to be a famous researcher and/or a vocal coach. Shaenon, currently #5 on my list of "Most Important Humans", was still seven years away from functionally existing. My life is nigh-on unrecognizable to the one featured in the Plan.
Through it all, though, there was Techie, a.k.a. Betty's Poms Pyrotechnics. Never cobby like a proper Pom, she was nonetheless, I thought, extremely adorable and well-formed. She was also a little spitfire -- her incendiary name turned out to be particularly apt. Tearing skirts out from under the Christmas tree, growling at cameras we used to take pictures at her, inexplicably barking her head off whenever you pointed a pen at her, Techie was an adorable little handful, and remained so her entire life.
Now I am a thirty-something writer and civil servant. By grace of God I am married and by grace of God and the bank I own a home and seventy-some acres of land in south central Wisconsin. I co-produce a webcomic. I can't say there was no such thing as a webcomic when Techie was born, but to give you some sense of scope, Techie came into the world a bit after the one-year anniversary of "Doctor Fun", while I was still MUDding from dumb terminals and attempting to type URLs into the command line of my university UNIX shell and wondering why it wasn't working for me. Through all this time, there was Techie.
She was with us through four different homes in two different states and about forty thousand changes of life. And today I had my hand on her flank as the vet quite peacefully stopped her heart for good, and all I could say was that it was a relief to not see her shaking anymore.
It's dark out now. There are sparklers left over from July Fourth sitting here on the table. I'm going to close this now, put the Labradors away, and light one off in her honor. It seems like the right thing to do.
Requiescat in pace, little firework.
I had a lot of dreams and plans at age twenty, very few of which have come to pass. The fact that I eventually did marry Feech is probably the one thing about my future that I got right. The rest of it, all the things I was going to do and be, have more or less fallen by the wayside. I had no idea I could write. I had the vague impression that maybe I could act. I was going to be a famous researcher and/or a vocal coach. Shaenon, currently #5 on my list of "Most Important Humans", was still seven years away from functionally existing. My life is nigh-on unrecognizable to the one featured in the Plan.
Through it all, though, there was Techie, a.k.a. Betty's Poms Pyrotechnics. Never cobby like a proper Pom, she was nonetheless, I thought, extremely adorable and well-formed. She was also a little spitfire -- her incendiary name turned out to be particularly apt. Tearing skirts out from under the Christmas tree, growling at cameras we used to take pictures at her, inexplicably barking her head off whenever you pointed a pen at her, Techie was an adorable little handful, and remained so her entire life.
Now I am a thirty-something writer and civil servant. By grace of God I am married and by grace of God and the bank I own a home and seventy-some acres of land in south central Wisconsin. I co-produce a webcomic. I can't say there was no such thing as a webcomic when Techie was born, but to give you some sense of scope, Techie came into the world a bit after the one-year anniversary of "Doctor Fun", while I was still MUDding from dumb terminals and attempting to type URLs into the command line of my university UNIX shell and wondering why it wasn't working for me. Through all this time, there was Techie.
She was with us through four different homes in two different states and about forty thousand changes of life. And today I had my hand on her flank as the vet quite peacefully stopped her heart for good, and all I could say was that it was a relief to not see her shaking anymore.
It's dark out now. There are sparklers left over from July Fourth sitting here on the table. I'm going to close this now, put the Labradors away, and light one off in her honor. It seems like the right thing to do.
Requiescat in pace, little firework.