One Last Day

Growing up, I had a human brother and a canine sister. Our parents picked out a Shih Tzu puppy for us, as a means to learn responsibility, when I was only five.

I remember the day Nellie joined our home. It is perhaps my first vivid memory. After immediately bonding with her through an exchange of belly rubs and excited squeals, a thought struck me. Worriedly, I rushed over to my parents, tugging at them with a question.

"How long will Nellie live?" I asked, naive and afraid.

Wanting to set realistic expectations, while also not further frightening their child, my parents came up with a well-rounded number that would seem enormous to my young brain.

"Fifteen years," They told me. Though it could've only been a guess at the time, that number always stuck with me as the amount of time I was guaranteed with my new sister.

We grew up together, Nellie, my brother, and I. There was no alpha. We played, learned and fought just as siblings do. I taught Nellie how to fetch. She taught me how to respect a dog's space, with gentle but firm snarls that still ring in my head.

By the time Nellie was in her old age – a fourteen-year-old, grey-haired crone who slept and ate and did not much else – I had gone off to college. Our relationship had stayed more or less the same, despite the many changes in our lives. I came home late, after parties, and Nellie would sleep next to the door, shooting me a dirty look as I had missed my curfew. I brought countless friends home, and all of them knew Nellie as my sister. She treated them with the same casual indifference one might expect from a teenaged sister – unless she needed something from them, of course. She was brilliant for manipulating us all into feeding her.

Nellie had slowed down considerably during my college years. It was clear to us, though we never dared to say it, that her final chapter was coming soon. I remember long, silent dinners where the entire family watched her saunter over to her bowl, frail with age, only to give up on her food after one bite. No one said a word, but collectively we all worried as we, too, lost our appetites.

My college schedule was forgiving, and I would often get afternoons to do with as I pleased. As luck would have it, I was without classes or plans on the afternoon of Nellie's fifteenth birthday. This was a sentimental milestone, in my mind, because Nellie had lived as long as my parents had promised, all that time ago.

I intended to spend the day providing cuddles on the couch, perhaps a few treats to spoil her, and if she would allow, to take a nap together. Her body wouldn't allow for much else. She was slowly losing her sight and no longer enjoyed the many games we came up with over the years.

When I settled in for some quality time on the couch, I realized our poor dog stank. She had gotten into something – or possibly gotten sick – and she seemed to eminate a pervasive scent of garbage.

"Bath time," I told her. We marched into the bathroom and I deposited her in the tub. Nellie was never afraid of baths. In fact she quite enjoyed them. And the same was true on her fifteenth birthday. Her tail wagged, slight at first, and then as I shampood and massaged her she seemed to completely let loose.

It was as though I was washing away whatever decay had built up during the past few years. Her bout with cancer, her ailing vision, and her aching bones were all washed down the drain with the shampoo and dirt. The dog that I pulled out of the tub that afternoon leapt from my grasp before I could dry her, and bolted out into our home as a renewed animal.

Nellie sprinted through the kitchen, possessed by the "zoomies". No one in our family had witnessed this for a good three years. She was fast, too, for when I tried to join in I could not catch her. It became an impossible game of tag, one which I was happy to lose. She zig-zagged all throughout the house, ripping underneath furniture she had long avoided for fear of a collision, but now navigated deftly like a young pup.

She grabbed toys and tossed them in the air haphazardly, losing interest and then tossing the next. She dried herself off on the carpet, which I promised not to tell Mom. She built up an appetite, graciously accepted a treat from me, then went straight back to running. She was panting all throughout, but her elderly lungs hung in there and provided her the steam to keep going. I even had enough time to grab my camera and capture some of this unbelievable moment. The video I caught was fifteen minutes long, and that was only a portion of the full display she put on.

It was as though Nellie was reliving her entire puppyhood all over again, in a single afternoon.

When she finally tired, the rest of our afternoon wound up looking exactly as I had planned. We snuggled up together and watched TV. Often times this could be a chore with her – she liked her space – but on this occassion she was content. She knew we were celebrating something; I could see that she understood this was a special occassion. And she carried about it as though it wasn't just a celebration for her. Nellie was giving back to us.

The full family spent time together that night, a rarity in our grown-up and busy lives. Nellie was allowed her own slice of cake (with dog-friendly ingredients, of course) and a seat at the table. We have family photos from that night where we swear it looks as though someone photoshopped in a different dog, one ten years younger. Her face is more alive and full of joy in those photos than any others around the last years of her life.

Sadly, this magical day had an expiry – it was just one day. The next morning, the clock had run out on our Cinderella moment, and Nellie was struggling again with her ailments. It devastated us all when she passed the point of no return less than two weeks later, and we had to say goodbye to our little sister.

Looking back now, it was miraculous what she was able to do on that last birthday. She found an energy and exuberance that she hadn't possessed in years. But she also fulfilled my parents' promise; a furry family member that made it to fifteen years.

There's no better way to remember Nellie than by what she gave us on that one last day.