Turns out I was incorrect a month ago when I wrote that my dog, Lucy, hadn’t yet reached the final stages of her heart disease. She died on Wednesday, July 5, around 8:30am.
It so happened that she was scheduled to get her annual leptospirosis vaccination later that day. But in the morning she began coughing and panting heavily, so I called the vet and was advised, in light of Lucy’s cardiac condition, to take her to the emergency animal hospital. While I was ordering a Lyft, Lucy collapsed on the living room rug.
My husband, Frank, and I rushed her to the pet ER, but she didn’t make it. Frank, who was holding her, thinks she drew her last breath in the Lyft. When we got to the animal hospital, the doctors couldn’t find a heartbeat. She was wrapped in her Chicago Cubs blanket. She was 13.
Lucy came into our lives as an indirect result of my parents’ divorce. While going through that ordeal (which commenced shortly after I turned 30), my mom decided she wasn’t up to caring for the puppy she had acquired for herself. Frank volunteered us as adoptive parents.
I didn’t think we were ready for the responsibility, but I can’t say no to puppy-dog eyes (Frank’s), and so the transfer was made. At first Lucy was a tiny puff of a thing—holding her, I’d think she felt as light, soft, and boneless as a dust bunny.
When she arrived, she was already well on her way to being crate-trained, but she promptly cured herself of that with like 5 minutes of whimpering one night, discovering the weak willpower of her humans and establishing quickly and definitively that we were forever in her thrall.
From then on, she slept in the bed with us—and, more often than not, on us. I ultimately became convinced my first impression was wrong and that instead of a dust bunny Lucy was some kind of poodle/throw blanket mix.
The only part of the crate we saved was the raggedy cloth squeaky toy inside. Squeaky toys were one of her main interests, right up there with food of any kind, belly rubs, and the wastebasket in the bathroom.
She was cuddly and she was funny. It was an irresistible combo.
In a writing seminar I attended several years ago, one of the exercises involved putting into words an example of a movement or gesture we had witnessed in everyday life. I chose to describe the way Lucy greeted me when I returned home after an absence of any length.
As she trotted toward me, her tail would wag with such excitement that it would make her entire behind wriggle back and forth, so her front half would be moving forward while her back half was moving from side to side. Like so many things Lucy did, this little welcome-home dance made me laugh and made me feel loved in more or less equal measure.
In that erroneous post of a few weeks back, I wrote that the relatively short life span of dogs is one of the very few design flaws of the species. But a lesson Lucy taught me was that although life is fleeting, love is always worthwhile.
And one thing’s for sure: I love Lucy.
Indirect Objects 
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