When she played the part of “Chowsie” in the Main Stage production of Gypsy several years ago at Spokane Civic Theatre, her “dressing room” was a tiny crate on a chair in the Green Room, where her fellow cast members—human actors, crew, musicians, and their families—could stop by for visits. The crate’s flip top was left open so she could sit comfortably to be petted.
I left her on a chair in the crate with the top open one night while I went to the women’s dressing room down the hall. When I came back, I ran into a cast member who handed her to me. She had left the carrier, hopped to the floor, headed out the door of the Green Room and immediately made her way up the stairs to the first floor of the theater and then . . . directly onto the stage, where she was intercepted by several cast members who knew she shouldn’t be there without me, of course.
I like to think that’s the way she went to doggy heaven last week.
I imagine her arriving “on stage” to be applauded by her friends and family who are there in the audience, greeting each one with a happy bounce, a good sniff all over, and a lick if they’re human.
She’ll be the star of the show as she should be, as she was in life.
Not a diva, not spoiled, not a brat—but she was half-terrier, so . . .
She had opinions. She expressed those opinions politely, usually—unless you were a ferret (they chased her around the room) or a cat (who batted at her with a paw) or a big dog (who licked her). Then you got told off with a snarky half-terrier snarl showing lots of pearly whites. She never bit.
She wasn’t fearful. She had boundaries and she—quietly—wasn’t going to let you cross them.
When I first spotted her across four lanes of traffic on a busy street not far from home, she came when I called her. Me, a total stranger surrounded by vehicles, including that big truck whose driver so kindly stopped when I got out to try to save her. I stood sideways, I knelt down, I called happily and, between those running cars she came straight to me. She let me pick her up and drive with her tucked under one arm. She did not struggle. She let me save her. She weighed about five pounds.
We’ll never know how old she was. The best guess by the veterinarians when I first took her in? A year and a half to two years old. I’ve gotten a happy birthday greeting from the clinic yearly since and, I must admit, I lost track after the first decade of how old we were speculating she was. Based on a greeting from the clinic several years ago, I was truly surprised that it seemed she’d reached 18. She was a member of our family for a long, long time—my oldest and my smallest dog.
We’ll never know why she left where she came from. There’s no question that she’s a combination of a powderpuff Chinese crested and a Yorkshire terrier. There’s no way to know how that combination of two breeds came together, although we’ve often guessed that she might have been the result of a backyard breeding of two purebreds with the plan of creating a designer dog. That is possible.
We’ll never know why no one claimed her, when she was listed at all three shelters in our area for weeks after I found her. I used to wonder what would happen if anyone came forward to claim her, after I’d had her vaccinated, spayed, microchipped, and licensed. I couldn’t guess if she’d gotten away from wherever she was living by accident, through an open door or an unlatched gate, and I certainly couldn’t know if she’d been trying to make her way back there or was heading in the opposite direction.
I think my experience with her, from that first moment in the busy street and throughout the rest of her life, tells me clearly: she was not afraid of people, adults or children, men or women. She may have been neglected, even if only slightly, but I don’t believe she’d been abused. She may not have been valued, certainly, but she might not have known that. She may not have had the wide variety of positive experiences we’d like all dogs to have from birth through adolescence. But she was willing.
Ready, willing, and able.
I’d trained a dog once to be Toto and although he was wonderful, he weighed 20 pounds, so carrying him under one arm while dancing in a production number was not an easy task for a teenage Dorothy. I’d dreamed of having a dog who looked the part but who was small enough to be more portable on stage and cooperative enough to stay comfortably in a basket while being passed back and forth. By the time that she was in double digits age-wise, my little street rescue got her big break.
She was perfect as Toto—with children, two separate casts, and live performances with loud audiences.
Later in her life, with the Toto experience under her collar, she was offered the “Chowsie” part, on the Main Stage, working primarily with adults, while a real orchestra played right under the stage. She learned to love it, that stage, which is why I imagine that’s where she’d be in doggy heaven . . . waiting for her curtain call, then going out for an order of fries from the celestial canine version of Carl’s Jr. with the entire cast and crew and an audience full of friends and family, still applauding her.
She was perfect as Chowsie, too. People in the audience were quite sure she wasn’t real. She must be stuffed, they said. Why would they think that, I asked? “She never barked,” was the usual response! That’s true—she didn’t! She screeched her baby eagle scream of excitement from about a mile before we reached the theatre ahead of every performance, but once we walked through that stage door, she was silent. She shook with excitement (I could feel her heart rate increase), but she never shook with fear.
She was “home” in that theater and “with family” during the performance. She was safe. She knew it. Her experience told her that nothing bad happened there and, even if something not-great happened by accident, like me pulling her fur when I brushed her, she knew darn well nothing really bad happened there, ever. Onstage, the cast could pass her from actor to actor, hold her upside down, yell lines really loudly at her rear end, and she enjoyed every minute. She was getting laughs!
As she aged, losing hearing, losing sight, losing many physical abilities, I adjusted as best I could. She adjusted to my adjustments, I will say, often so quickly that when I’d make changes I could see right away that what I’d tried was going to work. It wasn’t a matter of training, per se; it was a matter of offering her a simple set-up that would trigger her to perform an action automatically. I realized that, for her, being carried outside, then put on the ground was a cue to potty, so I transferred that sequence to being carried to our screened back porch, then put on potty pads there. She eliminated as soon as her paws hit the pads. That saved us both many months of ice and snow outside.
In the end, I could not adjust enough to assure she had the quality of life she deserved. I could not keep her clean. I trimmed her tangled fur, I wiped her eyes, I trimmed her nails. Her sensitive skin could not tolerate bathing when more than once a week was needed. She broke out under a diaper. She continued to eat with great enthusiasm, as she had all her life. I soaked her kibble for her hydration and to make it easy on her few teeth. We got the “what comes out” down to healthy solids.
It was not enough. I feel I let her down, but what was wrong with her could not be fixed. She was old. I could not make her younger. She did not get worse, in fact. It was that she could never get better. It was not what she deserved. I took a very long time to make the decision—months, maybe far too long. I think what finally caused me to pick up the phone and call our veterinary clinic was the realization that not all animals “tell you when it’s time” as I think we’d all like to believe. It’s not true.
She wasn’t giving up.
She never gave up.
She stretched forward on the table as the technician held a hunk of juicy tube meat right in front of her mouth, she reached farther forward and got a gummy hold on that very excellent treat.
She was still chewing as the shot took effect.
She raced up those stairs to the main stage . . .
She was still chewing as the applause began.
There’s a big hole in our family right now from the little dog who left us last week.
I know we’ll never be as good at adjusting as that little terrier turned out to be.
She was a dog who saved herself and who lived a good, long, and interesting life.
