By now, after many years of writing this column, I think I’ve established that I’m perfectly capable of falling in love with other people’s pets – even if I’ve never met them! Indeed, the proliferation of pets on Facebook means I have a never-ending supply of critters to follow: Skeeter (a duck), Pringles (a goose), Mighty Mouse (a cat), and Endo The Blind (a horse), to name just a few. But the one I’ve enjoyed the most is a rescued Shepherd named Wheelie.
Unlike many of the other animals, who have their own Facebook pages, Wheelie resided strictly within the page of his owner. Bill posted photos of Wheelie almost daily, photos of Wheelie with his favorite toy, Wheelie on a beach, Wheelie sleeping in his leather chair, Wheelie walking in the woods, Wheelie riding in the car to go get a Frosty Paws ice cream treat. And every single picture made me fall in love all over again. Why? Because I could see in his expression how much he loved and trusted Bill.
When Bill saw him at the shelter, Wheelie was sitting at the back of his kennel, staring down at the floor, whilst all the other dogs jockeyed for Bill’s attention. As Bill put it, “He was completely shut down, and it broke my heart.” Evidently, Wheelie had suffered from very serious abuse: some teeth were broken, while others were missing altogether. He was hand-shy, and his reaction to a perceived threat was to bypass threatening behavior, and go straight to attacking. His vet’s staff deemed Wheelie ‘unsafe,’ and urged Bill to return him to the shelter, but Bill felt that with a lot of time, patience and love, Wheelie could become a Very Good Dog Indeed.
As is frequently the case with abused dogs, Wheelie didn’t really know how to play with toys. He enjoyed chasing a ball, and later discovered that he liked squeaky plush toys, like the T-Rex I often saw in photos. Unlike my own rescue mutt, Munster, who saw it as a challenge to remove the squeak from any toy as quickly as possible, Wheelie preferred to carry his around, rather than shred them.
As is also fairly frequent, it’s tough to determine who saved who. Although I don’t know the details, Bill has told me that he was at an extremely low point in his life, around the time he found Wheelie. And, happily for them both, they helped each other heal. Animals are pretty miraculous that way.
Bill doesn’t really post a lot of information about himself on his Facebook page. He usually lets a weird photo of something like Godzilla drinking a cup of tea speak for him, and he captions them, current mood. The pictures of Wheelie had captions as well, such as, tuckered out, ready for bed, mr. Saturday night, always curious. And many more.
My favorite posts were during American football season. Bill is a big fan of the Chicago Bears, and every time they played a game, he would put a Bears sweatshirt on Wheelie, and caption the photo with some silly put-down nickname of the other team: ‘Wheelie sez – Mighty Bear 33, Stinky DC Commodes 19,’ or ‘Wheelie sez Bear 37, Hello Kitties 26.’ Even if you never followed the game, Wheelie’s updates were always good for a laugh.
In January of 2022, Bill mentioned that Wheelie had been diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. He had been having episodes – scary ones – in which he would collapse for some unknown reason. Epilepsy was suspected, until a canine cardiologist made the diagnosis, and Wheelie was started on multiple medications for the issue. It was made clear to Bill that Wheelie did not have a long time to live, though. I’ve had to deal with that sort of diagnosis myself.
I once cared for an elderly cat who had terminal liver disease. The vet and his staff felt certain that Macavity only had two or three months to live; he was that sick. I put my all into giving him round-the-clock attention: I administered daily sub-cutaneous fluids, prepared special treats for him when he didn’t want to eat, faithfully noted any and every variance in his daily life, and conveyed to his vet every single change I saw. But I never told Macavity that he was supposed to be dying.
That may sound silly, but think about it: if you don’t know that you’re dying, you’re very probably going to keep plugging along, even if you feel sick. If you know your days are numbered, and you feel crappy every day, chances are that, at some point, you’re going to resign yourself to your fate and slow down, if not give up altogether. So I treated Macavity as though he just had a chronic illness, not a terminal one. And he kept going, outlasting the vet’s prediction by nine or ten months.
I sent Bill a message, when he posted Wheelie’s diagnosis on Facebook, detailing what I’ve just told you about Macavity, and I urged him not to tell Wheelie that he was dying. Given what I know about Bill, I’m sure that he would never have done so, but I wanted to reinforce that idea, the one where if you act like everything is o.k., your pet is going to take his cues from you. And, indeed, while Wheelie’s vet predicted 6 – 9 months, emphasis on the lower end of that, Wheelie kept going for just under a year, something that I consider to be a huge accomplishment for Bill and Wheelie both.
In late December of ‘22, Bill posted the notice of Wheelie’s death. I knew how hard the death would hit him because every once in a while, a person gets extra-lucky and ends up with that one pet who stands out just a bit more than all the others that you’ve loved. They’re all much-loved pets, but there always seems to be a once-in-a-lifetime love affair, and I know that for Bill, Wheelie was that love affair. They started out in bad places in their lives, and they conquered those bad times together, making their relationship that much more sacred and special. Every day for them was a joy and an adventure to be savored (ice cream afficianado, morning stroll) and I envied them that. I’ve had a couple of my own sacred pet love affairs, and I’ve lost them, as well. The physical space can always be remedied by a new pet, but that giant hole in Bill’s heart that Wheelie left behind remains, I suspect, painfully large and empty. It’s the price we pay for giving everything of ourselves to an animal in need. It’s the price we pay for knowing that we’ll outlive our pet, and choosing to love them anyway. Until next time…