I Wish I Believed in Doggie Heaven

When I say that I wish I believed in doggie heaven, I am not being sarcastic. I am not being ironic.

For the moment, I am not being my usual smartass. I promise to re-assume that role momentarily.

But I really do wish I did. Believe in doggie-heaven, that is. I envy people who believe that all dogs go to heaven. When they lose their beloved little canine pals, they believe that those little pals get to spend eternity romping joyfully in some sun-drenched meadow in Elysium. 

That's so consoling. And I do so envy them. Because that consolation is so needed. There is no heartbreak like the loss of a beloved pet. It's just like the loss of a child, and there's no getting around it.

I don't know to what extent my ex-wife believes in doggie heaven. Probably she doesn't. But she has always been a huge dog-lover, and when we lost our "little girl," our miniature schnauzer Alexandra, in 2008, and I was crying "like a fire in the sun" as Bob Dylan put it, Valerie consoled with me with the very image I just mentioned, that Alexandra was at that moment romping in some sun-drenched meadow. Healthy again, strong again, able to see and run and bark again, as she had not been shortly before her death at age 16. In fact toward the end of her life Alexandra couldn't even handle steps: when we put the pups outside, she had to be carried.

Belief is such a balm. I envy people who have it.

I'm thinking about such things right now because I know one thing is true: if there were such a thing as doggie heaven, no one would deserve to be there right now more than my friend Callie, who died last month.

I never did take a picture of Callie,
but this little character could have been
her twin. She looked just like this.

Callie was a light-brown chihuahua. She was tiny. So tiny I could pick her up with one hand. Like Alexandra, she was old. Maybe 16 when she passed away. But her death still came as a shock to me because of its timing. I departed on July 30 of this year for Tbilisi, Georgia, where I am currently serving as an English teacher. I couldn't take Callie with me, so I left her with my sister. I knew she would be well taken care of at my sister's, cuddled, loved, given treats and made to feel like family, just as I had tried to make her feel in the one year that she and I got to spend together.

I arrived in Tbilisi on Aug. 2nd. One week later my sister informed me in an e-mail that Callie had died peacefully in her sleep.

Okay, she was 16. In dog-years that's 112, or so I've always been told. But to die so soon after I'd left the country? Did she die because she was pining for me? Did she die because I had stuffed her full of cookies and cupcakes while she was alive, unaware that she may have been diabetic? These questions tortured me. And yes, I cried.

Carla consoled me. "She had run her course," she said. "She never had much TLC until you came along. You did fine by your little doggie friend."

I tried. But somehow when your little doggie friend dies six days after you leave the country, and after you've tried your best to set her up with a good home, you feel responsible.

For the year that we got to spend together, Callie was my best friend in the world. In fact I was often made to feel that she was my only friend in the world.

I hope Callie didn't die because she missed me. I knew that my sister, and my niece Alicia, would make her feel part of a family. That's why I left her there. Carla had four other little dogs and two cats, so I figured Callie would have good nap-taking company. And in fact perhaps a day or two before Callie died, Carla did send me a photo of Callie curled up in nap-mode with Golden Boy, the big, friendly orange cat. He was twice her size.

Callie deserved to have a family. Before I came along, she didn't have much in that direction. Not that John and Mayra Hansgen, my landlord and landlady for the year I lived in California, were mean to her or anything. No, they treated her fine. It's just that they both had jobs and were most of the time not home, and Callie's only companion on their patio most of the time was Negra, another aged chihuahua, who was as mean and nasty as Callie was sweet.

Callie had been a stray. John and Mayra's daughter had picked her up and brought her home. That's really all I knew. The daughter gave Callie TLC when she was around, but she was only around about once a week. The rest of the time Callie was alone with Negra, something I wouldn't wish on anybody.

Then, in the summer of 2010, I came along. I had just come back out to California from the east coast, and was renting a room from John and Mayra. I paid little attention to any of the dogs at first. John and Mayra had four of them: Brandy and Koko were big dogs; they stayed mostly along one side of the house. Callie and Negra were the little ones; they stayed on the patio.

I was unaware of the doggie-politics of the household until one day when I happened to come out the back door and saw Callie lying on her back on the pavement, one paw scrunched up to her face, Negra standing over her. My first thought was that Negra was bullying Callie and that Callie had assumed the "submissive posture." I intervened. "Negra! You leave Callie alone, you little bastard!" I chased Negra away and scooped Callie up. Callie was terrified. I tucked her underneath my T-shirt and took her into my room. With her little head poking out of my collar, I sat in my computer chair and rocked her quietly until she calmed down.

As it turned out, Negra had not been bullying Callie after all. Callie was epileptic, and she had been having a little seizure.

But the experience bonded us, Callie and me. After that Callie decided that I was her very best friend. Whenever I would come back from driving my taxicab, early or late, if Callie were awake or should happen to awaken, as soon as I came through the patio gate she would climb out of her doggie-bed and here would come this tiny figure, trotting across the patio after me. Callie followed me wherever I went.

Animals are so great. They love you without guile, without agenda and without expectation. They expect nothing in return. They just love you because they love you. So unlike people. Callie decided that the thing she wanted most in this world was just to be with me. If I were there, she was there. How many times did I accidentally kick her because she was tiny and, when I came into the room, I didn't see that she was getting right under my feet? How many times did I accidentally whack her with the patio gate when I opened it upon returning from my taxi, not realizing that, having heard my approach, she was standing right there at the gate waiting for me to come in?

These mishaps broke my heart every time they happened.. And I would always pick Callie up, stroke her little head and apologize over and over. And she always forgave me immediately.

As I said, so unlike people.

Mayra didn't want Callie in the house because she knew that Callie, and Negra too, would piddle on the carpets if they were let inside. I defied Mayra, to hell with her. The carpet in my room had been ruined with pet stains before I even moved in. What the hell? I would let Callie in, but keep my door closed so she wouldn't venture out into the hallway. But every now and then I might go down the hall into the kitchen for something and forget to close my door. Sure enough, a moment later I would turn around and there would be Callie, standing in the kitchen door just looking at me with those big brown eyes, as if to say, "Are you still here, Daddy? Did you leave me?"

"No, I'm right here, Sugar Plum," I would assure her, then scoop her up and take her back into my room. I'd put her on the bed (she was too little to hop down) where she would make a little nest for herself among the pillows and curl up for a nap.

Sometimes Callie was very insistent about wanting to be picked up. I'd be sitting at my computer doing something, and I would feel her tiny front paws on my leg. I'd look down and she'd be looking up at me, again with those big brown eyes to which I could not possibly say no. "Pick me up!" Those eyes demanded. "I want to sit in your lap!"

I always did. And she would stretch out on my lap and go to sleep. But those naps were always short because I was forever having to stand up for something. This inconvenienced Callie, but again, she was very forgiving. She always came back.

But Callie's very favorite place was next to me in bed. And I don't mean on top of the quilt. She liked to burrow down under the covers and curl up right next to my skin. I usually did not let her do this; I was afraid she would burrow down there and, in her sleep, piddle on the sheets, forcing me to strip the bed and wash everything the next morning. It happened a few times. No, usually when she began to "burrow," I would scrunch the covers up tight so she couldn't get under them. After a few moments she would get the message and go make herself a nest among the pillows.  If she couldn't be right next to me, being a foot or two away was the next best thing.

But sometimes I would let her burrow, and she was never happier than when she was curled up in a little ball, right against my back, happily and peacefully asleep next to her best pal, me.

Callie often didn't get enough to eat because Negra was such a bully. Negra would hog all the food, and if Callie tried to come up and get some, Negra would snap at her and chase her off. I noticed this, as did John and Mayra. Callie was often fed separately from Negra. We would put her up on the patio table where Negra couldn't get at her and let her have her share of the food. John often gave the doggies chicken as a treat, and made sure Callie got her share. I would also give her treats, a diced-up frankfurter perhaps, or a cookie or a cupcake. I often stopped at Albertson's while driving my cab in order to make sure that when I came home I would have something in the way of a treat that I could crumble up for Callie in a little bowl.

When I was preparing to leave for this overseas teaching job, I agonized about what might happen to Callie. In a perfect world, I would have taken her with me, but pets weren't allowed. I did not want to leave her at the Hansgen's. It wasn't that John and Mayra were mean to her, of course not. But Negra was mean to her, and John and Mayra were, for much of the day, not home. I wanted Callie to be some place where she might get at least some of the love and affection I had tried to lavish on her during the year she and I got to spend together. I spoke to John, and he readily agreed that, if I could find a place where Callie might get more TLC (and less Negra) than she was getting at his house, well, that was okay with him. So I took Callie, and John, who had bonded thoroughly with my cat Humboldt, whom I had brought along when I moved in, well, he got to keep Humboldt. We did a swap, Callie for Humboldt. And I think Callie and Humboldt both did well.

I would like to think that Callie was happy during the one week of life that remained to her after I left the United States. My guess was that she would maybe pine for me for a day or two, then get used to being at Carla's and settle in with her new family. There wasn't much time for that, as it turned out. But I do hope that when she breathed her last on that Saturday night after I flew away, she was having a sweet dream about ... oh, maybe romping in a sun-drenched meadow somewhere, healthy, strong, able to bark again.

For the time being, Callie rests in my sister's backyard alongside Honey, my nephew Joey's dog who died three years ago. They both sleep beneath a beautiful, blooming yellow forsythia, a cutting from a tree which belonged to my late father, and which he gave my sister about a year before he died. So one corner of the yard is a memorial both to my father and to beloved doggie-friends. My father loved dogs. Peace be upon them, all three, and also upon those people I envy so, who believe that all dogs go to heaven.