A Letter from Dog Heaven

Dear Vocal,

Sitting up here in Doggie Heaven, I’ve been keeping an eye on Mom down there on earth for a lot of years. I see that you guys at Vocal want her to write about an exciting adventure we had together. Well, I feel awfully bad about that because, you know, I think Mom’s a really good writer, but I was sort of the “fraidy cat”(whoops- “fraidy dog”) type. As a Golden Retriever, I was of course loyal, loveable, and friendly, but I was also kind of afraid of stuff, so she doesn’t have any grand adventures to write about. No hiking up mountains, water skiing, motorcycle riding, or surfing stories. Sorry. I’ll bet you’re going to get lots of stories about amazing dogs traveling the world with their human parents, but Mom doesn’t have any of those about us.

Just because I was a “fraidy dog” is no reason for Mom to be left out of this Challenge, so here’s what I’m thinking. If you don’t mind, I’m going to help her out and tell you about some of the best times we had together, even if they weren’t worthy of Olympic Gold Medals or anything. They’re mostly about how our times together demonstrated our love for each other if that’s okay with you.

Although I was almost 15 years old when I got called to cross the Rainbow Bridge, I still remember the night Mom and Dad brought me home from the breeder. (Don’t be harsh on them. They didn’t know much about Rescues back then.) I was so sad and lonely. I missed my dog Mom and my siblings. I cried and cried. But Mom knew what to do. She wrapped little 7-week-old me in a blanket, held me in her arms close to her chest, and rocked me in the same rocking chair she used 12 years earlier for her human baby. Feeling her warmth and the steady beat of her heart soothed and calmed my little puppy spirit. I relaxed and fell asleep knowing that I would always be loved and cared for. It was a pretty nice feeling I have to tell you.

The closest I ever got to traveling was when part of our backyard fence blew down in a storm, and I walked out of the yard. Geez, it was a big world out there. I was scared to death that I would never see Mom and Dad again. Luckily, I followed the “home scent” around the side of the house and found the front door. I stood patiently waiting until Mom came bounding out of the house, yelling ‘Brandy, Brandy, Brandy” so loud I was sure every dog named Brandy within 5 miles would be running to my house. I have to admit it was pretty funny when she saw me standing at the front door. She sure was relieved. Me too.

But there was so much to be afraid of. Every night around 9 PM, I got a case of the Zoomies. For those of you who don’t know what Zoomies are, they are when dogs, especially young puppies like I was, have a burst of energy so strong, they have to Zoom, Zoom, Zoom around the house to expend it. So on my first Zoomie, I ran into Mom and Dad’s bedroom, jumped on their bed, and got the Bejeezus scared out of me when I saw another dog staring back at me, barking its head off. I didn’t know where it came from, what it had in store for me, or how to escape what in my young mind, was my certain demise. Mom and Dad came into the bedroom and couldn’t stop laughing. Well, let me tell you, I didn’t appreciate that one bit. It wasn’t funny, and I was very frightened. Okay, so after a few days of this, I learned one of the first lessons of puppyhood – MIRRORS. That scary dog was ME. Who knew? How about that? Weird, huh?

Because I had an older dog sibling in my new home, I learned the “potty training” ropes pretty quickly by just following Pepper out into the yard and doing what she did. For that reason, I didn’t have to sleep in a crate. I slept on the floor alongside Pepper, next to Mom and Dad’s bed.

But I adored my human sibling, Joel, and I wanted to sleep with him. He was 12, the perfect age for roughhousing and playing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Golden Retriever, so I love everyone, but Joel was special to me. I thought it would be SUPER to sleep cuddled up in his bed with him, after a day of rolling around on the floor and running in the yard together.

The first night I made that decision all on my own, I followed him into his room, jumped on his bed, and got a shock worse than the mirror thing. The mattress was moving under my feet so much that I couldn’t keep my balance. I tried to stand frozen in fear, but the bed wouldn’t let me. It jostled me around so that I kept falling down. I was terrified. It took Mom, Dad, and Joel to get me down from that bed. How was a puppy like me supposed to know about a water bed? Well, now I knew, and from that day forward, as much as I loved Joel, I slept on Mom and Dad’s stationary bed. Beds aren’t supposed to wiggle and throw you off of them, you know. We would have made room on the bed for Pepper, too, but she preferred the carpeted floor.

A story about my fears wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t tell you about the big, giant, scary box in the kitchen. One day, after I had been out for a ride with Dad, I came home to find a huge, tall, black box in the kitchen. It was in the space that used to have the refrigerator. I knew what a refrigerator was. It’s where they kept the cheese, one of my favorite snacks. But that refrigerator was gone, and this giant black monster was in its place. I was so frightened I wouldn’t go into the kitchen. This thing was dark and foreboding. I thought arms were going to sprout out of it, grab me, and whisk me away into a land of torture and pain. When I say I refused to go into the kitchen, I am not kidding one bit. Which was kind of a problem since that’s where my food and water bowls were. I was ready to starve to death before I would set one paw over that kitchen threshold. Mom had to bring my bowls into the living room, so I would eat and drink.

After about a week, when the black monster did not come to life and attack me, I finally warily ventured into the kitchen. I was relieved to discover that they kept the cheese in that box too.

Oh, hey, I just remembered a story I can share with you about a travel adventure. Sort of. When I was about 7 years old, my best buddy human sibling Joel, left the house one day and didn’t come back. I was devastated. You know I loved Mom and Dad immensely, but Joel was my play buddy. Even as he grew up, he still played with me all the time. How could he leave? Where could he have gone? How could he have left me?

I was pretty smart, but when he and Mom and Dad were talking about “college” and renting a house “off campus”, I didn’t get what it meant. Until Joel wasn’t there. Then I figured out that whatever they were talking about meant that he wasn’t going to live with me anymore. I went into a kind of depression I guess you could say. I sat at the window most days and looked for him. I wasn’t sure if he was ever coming back.

Well, anyway, one day Mom got the idea that a trip to visit Joel would cheer me up. It was only an hour's drive and I loved car rides. It didn’t go as she planned. When I got out of the car and saw Joel, I was so excited. I ran into his waiting arms. But the house he lived in wasn’t our house. It was different. I was confused and frightened. I didn’t know where I was supposed to go; I didn’t know which room was which; I didn’t like it. I know they went to a lot of trouble to make me happy, but I was so stressed out that all I did was pace and cry. An hour later, with everyone’s nerves frazzled, Mom decided to call it quits and take me home.

After that trip, I wasn’t as depressed anymore. I knew that Joel was nearby, and he did come home on weekends (two days at the end of the week) to play with me. Mom said he came home to “grocery shop” in her freezer, whatever that meant, but I didn’t care. I was thrilled that at least he came home sometime, and I didn’t have to travel anywhere to see him.

Sure, I was too frightened of everything to be one of those wonder dog surfers, mountain climbers, skiers, or motorcycle riders, but I made up for it in the amount of love I was able to give my family, especially Mom. One time, I found Mom sitting on the couch crying because she had just gotten the news that a friend had cancer. I gently placed my paws on her lap and licked the tears from her face. I guess it was what she needed because she gave me a big embracing hug.

Whenever any one of my family was sick, I stayed with them on their bed, guarding them with my life.

As does happen with all of us, dogs and humans alike, we age. Along with age comes some miserable aches and pains in places in our bodies we didn’t know we had. It was no different with me. By the time I was 12, my arthritis was so bad that it was difficult for me to navigate stairs. It hurt my hips to put pressure on them to get up from one step to the other. The bottom step on the deck stairs that led from the yard to the kitchen was an especially high one. Dad built an extra step in between the first and second one so it would be easier for me to get up that first high one.

It was a couple of years after Dad built the step that I knew my time was coming to an end. I was experiencing pain in one of my legs that was different from arthritis. It was pretty bad. When Mom and Dad took me to the vet, they got the crushing news – bone cancer. I had never seen them cry the way they did when they took me home for the last time.

When they chose me out of a litter of 8, I could not have imagined what a wonderful life I was going to have. I was surrounded by love for almost 15 years. That’s a long time for a dog. Maybe I lived that long because I wasn’t the daredevil adventurous type who could have gotten herself killed skydiving. Who knows?

The next day, Mom and Dad drove me to the vet. Dad was literally sobbing. He refused to get out of the car. Through her tears, Mom said that she wanted to make sure that hers was the last face I saw, filled with love, when I crossed the Rainbow Bridge. The techs came to the car and carried me in on a stretcher. It was my time. I knew it, and I was so grateful that Mom was there holding my paw as I saw the Rainbow Bridge up ahead. Wrapped in her love like a warm blanket, I crossed over.

I’ve been here ever since, more than 20 years, along with Mom and Dad’s other dogs, Honey, Pepper, and Casey, watching over Mom. She’s awfully lonely since Dad went to Human Heaven 6 years ago, and Joel lives someplace far away called California. She fills her time writing stories, but she was stumped on this Challenge, because she couldn’t figure out how to write an adventurous story about a dog who was afraid of everything. I hope you don’t mind that I helped her out with this one. That’s what you do when you love someone forever.

With Sincere Golden Retriever Love,

Brandy