(yes THAT dog)
RIP Jemma-dog AKA Stinkus McMinkus
August 23, 1995 - January 4, 2011
Here she was on her 11th birthday, rolling about the yard. Oh how she loved to chase that ball. Any ball. If it rolled, she would chase it.
Just last night, I was going to jam out on the whole thing and let the ex handle it but I caved. Instead of staying in the car crying like a little girl in the parking lot, I stepped up to bat and sat there with him while we put Jemma down. She is cooling her heels (literally) wrapped in a blanket in my bathroom as we speak. It's too cold to leave her outside. I am drinking a bunch and then cleaning her up, combing her messy face and brushing her like she did not let me do for weeks and getting her ready for that ham sammich that she doesn't need now, buried in the back 66. At some point last night, I thought that not only didn't I want to be with her at the end but I also didn't think I could handle her coming back again although I had her place planned out in the Pet Sematary for at least a year.
This morning, I still didn't know what I was going to do, whether I was just going to get her picked up and that was it, never see her again or even go to the vet at all. But sometimes, you just have to wait till the last moment and then AND THEN you will know what to do. So I sat and cried in the car, waited a few minutes and then walked out into the parking lot, peeked in the door, didn't see Jemma and then I just marched in there anyway. If the ex was going to do it, then I was going to have the balls to do it, too. He, in the meantime, was looking out into the parking lot at me, from that special room that they set aside for such things and went into the waiting room to get me. I was sobbing uncontrollably and everyone there just knew that was why I was there.
Everyone knows that every time you take a pet under your wing, this time will come. That's why they have a back door to that special little room that exits right out into the parking lot, so's you don't have to carry that cardboard box through the waiting room with the people with their live pets and all, mocking you while the tears and the snot run down your stricken face. The fluffy white towel, the little cardboard box to take her home in, that really sucked to tuck it into the back seat. She rode to the vets in the back seat but she rode home in my lap. The thing is that although we booked her for today days in advance, it's still hard to take it and wrap your head around it. And the last of her food JUST ran out last night. Perfectly, ironically timed.
Nothing says Jemma and Morty without a pic of her pooping. You're welcome. I said you're welcome!
Here she is looking demure. Ain't she cute?
This morning while her amd I were waiting for her ride to the vets, she was showered in cheese like it was her birthday. Twice. Two different kinds (cheddar and mozza if you really wanna know). Something I always did with cheese (ALWAYS - because it was our favorite snack), was to cut it up in little Jemma-sized chunks and then THROW it up in the air with glee and say 'it's raining...*dramatic pause*... CHEESE!!'. And she wasn't allowed to move until I said 'cheese'. She would scrabble about the kitchen to find the tasty morsels (which usually, one would land on her back or the top of her head)and wag her tail furiously the whole time. If I was a dog, I certainly would have appreciated that little ritual.
The Pet Sematary.
So, she had a good life, 15 years of fun and frolics and silly things. She used to sit on my center console in my car like a perfectly balanced dog, banking when I went around corners at a very fast rate of speed. She was a natural. I loved that stupid little dog. At the end, when they sedated her pre-injection, she just *flopped* out with legs perfectly splayed like a toy dog run over by a car or a sky diver and I tried to arrange her better so that she was more dignified before they got back to give her her shot but she would have NONE of it. So she tried to bite me. And then she tried to bite the vet when she was shaving her to give her the lethal injection. What a trouper. I hope I get to do that too when my time is you know... that time.