I don’t want to write this post.

If I write the post, it will make it real, and I’ve done a pretty good job bottling things up until now. It’s amazing how far you can repress with the help of a busy schedule and a whole lot of negative self talk.

I mean, come on, Becky. It’s not like it’s unexpected.  Labs don’t live forever –  they really don’t. Cancer, bad hips, weight related conditions… it’s not like you see them trit-rotting around at 17 years old. She was going to be 12 this August.

Besides.  She was a dog.  And unless you’ve crossed the line from repression into outright denial, putting a pet to sleep is just something you have to acknowledge.

Humans live 70 to 80 years, if we’re lucky.

Dogs and cats are not nearly so long-lived.

It’s a part of life.  It’s a normal part of life that was hardly a shock, because I saw it coming, years in advance.

And yet.

I just really, really, really don’t want to write this post.

I don’t know why it is so hard for me.  I don’t know why it hurts so much that I find myself not crying, hiding away in that small, grey hollow place of true grief.

When my cat Fuego died in my 20s, I was devastated. I took two days off of work and howled into my pillow, creeping about the house with red, puffy eyes.

When Artemis died I took off the morning, and then was back to taking work phone calls by that afternoon. It’s not because it hurt any less.  It’s because I just didn’t have time to mourn her, so I swallowed it. I swallowed my grief down deep, like a cold, empty seed.

I can’t even say it’s because I miss her so much.  I started missing her years ago. She was so strong and healthy, right up until she hit 10 years old, and then BAM.  Old age.

Everyone should get the chance to own an elderly lab at least once in their life.  They really are the world’s most perfect dog. You have all the amazing good nature of a Labrador, without any of the ability to counter surf or any of the previous exercise requirements.  It feels like using a cheat code to dog ownership.

I can’t even say that I avoided writing this post because of how much I miss her in my every day life.  That sounds awful, but I began distancing myself from her as I saw that final vet appointment creeping closer and closer. There was no sudden goodbye to this one.  It came on, one day at a time.  She stopped being able to run after a ball.  She got out of breath on long walks. She became frightened of fireworks.  She stopped wanting to walk up the stairs. Her eyes, always so soft and deep, turned shallow and flat and bright.

Her eyes were no longer the same.  The lights were on, but nobody was home. She spent more and more time sleeping, and I spent more and more time not waking her up.

I didn’t want to see what was right in front of me.

These past few months her life turned into a series of simple pleasures, and my relationship with her turned into a series of countdowns, a mathematical equation where I tried to balance my love for who she was versus the difficulty of her current life.

Trying to compute where it breaks even is impossible.

Because that’s the real hard question, isn’t it?  How long can your love for them outweigh the selfishness of where they are?

I referred back to this stupid, hateful, unbelievably useful blog post more often than I care to admit.

The Good Death

I’ve always said it, and never had trouble with it before: Better a week too early than a day too late.

I’ve never struggled with the “when” before.

This time I did.

I would text my friend “It’s time.  I have to make the appointment.” and then it would be time to actually make the call and I would chicken out.  I didn’t have the money for the in home euthanasia service she deserved – I’d have it next check.  I couldn’t do it and then send the kids right back to their dad’s, I need to give them a day or two to mourn.  I was too busy at work to be able to break down and cry for a day. The ground was too cold.  The wind was to wrong.  The Tuesday wasn’t Tuesday enough.

Last week I walked Artemis to the backyard, the sun shining on her shiny, dark coat  The vet trailed me as we walked slowly back.  She asked me “How long has her breathing sounded like that?” and for the first time, I questioned the timing.

I didn’t wait too long… I think.  I hope.

I know if I’d been a little less selfish, I would have been writing this post last winter, instead of this spring.  Maybe I should have.  Maybe it was wrong of me to wait this long.  I dunno.

Still, the weather did exactly what I wanted it to do.  It was warm, low 70s, with a picture-perfect sky. We were in that cool spot beneath the branches of the giant tree and the breeze ruffled the leaves, making that soft, slippery whispering sound that always soothes me.

The kids were in the house, waiting to say goodbye until after it was over.  You can be there, but only if you can avoid sobbing.  Artemis hates it when we cry. Remember how she sometimes leaves the room?  She deserves to not have us be sad or worry about us, in that moment. They agreed to be inside.

The weather was warm, and Artemis was happy.

She was not relaxed, because I had made 3 pounds of bacon earlier that day, and then mixed the leftover spoonfuls of bacon grease in with dried cat food, and was feeding it to her a little at a time.

Cat food: The forbidden treat.

Her eyes were frantically bright with her greed as she finished the bowl.  She resented the vet messing with her hind leg, and swiveled her hindquarters away away from her in irritation as the vet put in the sedative. Artemis laid her head on my shoulder as the needle went in, which almost broke me, because how do you replace the weight of that head that has leaned against you for almost a decade?  How do you savor it enough to make it last forever, when it’s the last time?

But Artemis hated crying, so I sobbed once, and then stuffed it down, hard. I’ve found if you blow out a short, sudden, hard breath, you can usually make your voice stay steady despite tears.

Good dog. Such a good, strong, steady friend.  Best dog ever.  Best dog.  Such a good, good girl.

Artemis heard none of it – she was too intent on being hand fed bacon-grease-cat-food. I had her lay down, which she obeyed, as she always did, and continued to feed her.

She stayed awake long enough to lick the bowl and snuffle the last scrap. She huffed the ground in front of her, and tilted forward to fall asleep, snoring on the soft grass.

Such a good, good girl.  Such a good dog, yes you are.

When the final shot went in, there was no fanfare, no final exhalation.  One moment she was softly snoring, my hand on her fur, the next moment she was gone.

I hate that moment, when the that true, true friend that was with you through all those memories and beautiful, hard years is just… gone.

She was good. She was strong. She was kind.

She had a wonderful life, with one family. She lived on a farm, and roamed the house at will, and ate an entire pillowcase full of Halloween candy, wrappers and all, EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

There really aren’t many regrets I have for her. My only regret was that I should have made that final vet appointment a few months earlier… except that the day was so perfect, and her passing so beautifully peaceful, that it’s hard to actually regret it.

And yet.

I am so utterly sad to have to write this post.

I am so sad that I am almost angry about it.  I resent it. I resent that dogs live such a short time. I don’t want to say goodbye to my friend. I don’t want to stop making memories with her. I don’t want to be strong in front of my kids, so that I drag them unnecessarily into my own grief.

Mostly, I just miss her.

She slept in my room for nearly 12 years. She got me through lonely years of staying at home with the children, hard years of marriage and my divorce. She was my steady friend.

I got her because when I was looking for a dog,  DragonMonkey was 3 and Squid was 1. They needed a trustworthy dog who could put up with their  out of control antics.

The boys are in high school and junior high now.

And the twins?  The twins are four years younger than her.  They don’t ever remember a moment with out her. They grew up hanging on to fur, while she patiently let them. They laughed as the boys careened behind her, tying her collar to a wagon then throwing the ball, giggling as they rocketed down hills doing “summer sledding”.

I had all that, and now I just have a stupid paw print on a stupid foam pad, waiting for a picture insert I can’t bring myself to order.

I also have a card from the vet hospital that’s sitting in my car, unopened, because I know it’s going to say something like “For your loss” or something about rainbow bridge, and the card will be cream, or blue, with swirly font, and it just irritates me that I have to read something like that.

I’m annoyed I can’t quit talking to her, even when she’s not here. When I let the dogs out in the morning and  I say “Good girl, Artemis” without thinking, or a long kiss and “Artemis, ‘mere,” with no response, I feel my breath hitch as I realize what I just did. You shouldn’t be able to surprise yourself into sadness.  It’s like tickling yourself, but so much worse.

Mostly I’m just sad.  I’m sad I’m sitting here at my desk, typing on my computer, writing this stupid post that I just really, really, really don’t want to write, and there’s no scratchy-soft fur at my toes. There’s no solid presence there. And it SUCKS.

So, yeah.

I used to joke that I was going to write Artemis “Bad Dog” Bean on her tombstone, because she used to counter surf and eat EVERYTHING.  The sheer quantity of food she could manage to shove inside her was absolutely mind boggling.

She once ate two large pizzas.

She once dove headfirst into a bag of dog food and ate 17 POUNDS.

She once ate 19 fresh chicken eggs off the counter.  That was actually preferable to the time she ate SIXTEEN BOILED EGGS.

You really haven’t smelled dog farts until you’ve lived in the house with a dog that has eaten sixteen boiled eggs.

You never actually saw the evidence – you would just turn around and notice that Artemis now resembled a beach ball with legs poking out of it, and then try to find what was missing.

I remember the time she kept breaking into the pumpkin garden and eating enter pumpkins.  I couldn’t figure it out – no food was missing, no trash was missing, the dog food tote was still full… and yet Artemis could hardly walk and her farts were peeling the paint off the walls.

It was a complete mystery till she started pooping out elephant-sized turds with pumpkin seeds in them.

Every year – EVERY SINGLE YEAR – one of the kids would leave their bag of Halloween candy down and she would eat it.

Not some of the chocolate, not some of the candies: the whole dang thing, 100% of the candies, wrapper and all. In case you’re curious, most wrappers just look weird, but 3 Musketeers Wrappers really do sparkle in a dog turd.

I’m sure chocolate is poisonous to some dogs, but it sure wasn’t to Artemis.

I’m deeply convinced that my method of refusing to feed her till she pooped normal again was the only thing that kept her from dying/needing surgery after all her food escapades.

She was wonderful and 100% trustworthy with all the animals.  She completely ignored the horses – Reverie tried to chase her one time, but Artemis continued snuffling the grass.  Reverie’s angry charge came to a screeching halt. She unpinned her ears, and snuffled her once as Artemis continued to nose around the grass.  Artemis’ lack of response confused Reverie so much that she never chased her again.

She smiled more than any dog I knew, and learned at a young age that I couldn’t resist the backwards head tilt.

She was a powerhouse of a dog who could sniff out a ball in any circumstances and out charge any dog after a ball. It wasn’t even that she was faster, I think she just wanted it more than they did.  I think she only failed to find a ball twice.

She used to wag her tail so hard while she looked for the ball that twice she actually sprained it, and for weeks afterwards her tail hung flaccid behind her.  It looked weird, and made us laugh.

I absolutely could NOT keep the kids off of her.  Every time I entered a room, she’d be laying down in front of them, basically encouraging them to ride her.  I used to chide her for it.  How was I supposed to teach my horde of children dog manners when she basically was unteaching them every time my back was turned?

She was perfectly obedient, except for occasionally wandering off and the counter surfing (which was solvable by making sure all food was put away at night.)

I do mean PERFECTLY obedient.  She had a perfect recall, 100% of the time.  She heeled off leash.  She knew “leave it” and “go potty” and “find it” and “go” and “come” and “go get it” and “load up” and “go to bed” and “gentle”.

She knew them 100% of the time, regardless of who said them.

She never growled at another dog.  She preferred playing with little dogs to big dogs, and would lay down to gently wrestle with them, with just her giant block head.

She was beautiful.

She raised my babies with me, with her amazing patience and her love for small things. She was a source of strength when I was lonely, or life was hard, with how she would creep up beside me and press against my leg, or my foot, or lay her head in my lap.

It’s hard to feel truly desolate, when you have that gentle well of love looking up at you, burying her roots in your soul, tethering you to the here and now.

She was so good, through and through.

And she is so missed.

Artemis Good Dog Bean
August 2012 – May 2024

Oops. I just found this unpublished post in my drafts. I think I wrote it in February or March of 2021? It makes me so much more grateful for my barn.

******************************

The coyotes are loud tonight.

January was their real mating season, and they were crazy loud then, but tonight they’re especially noisy. I can hear them yowling and yipping on the back mountain. I used to find it beautiful to listen to, but now I’ve got the goats.

I don’t have quite enough land to warrant the way my neighbors would hate me if I got a livestock guardian dog, but I’ve got enough to worry about wildlife creeping onto our property.

We have the goats area fenced, but let’s be real- all it would do is stop the coyotes from dragging off one of the goats after they killed one. So, on nights like tonight, I sleep with my ears pricked and my boots ready by the door.

Sometime right before midnight, the coyotes break out in a chorus loud enough I can not only make out the individuals, but I swear I can hear the breaths they take in between each high-pitched call. I bolt out of bed and shove my legs in some jeans and my feet into cold boots. One quick swipe of the flashlight I keep by the coffee pot, and I’m out the door.

It sounds like they’re right outside my window, but I actually think they’re on the lower half of my property. Still, it’s way, way too close. I turn on my flashlight flash it over the hill and the yowling stops at once, except for one half-grown pup whose quavery call turns into a whine in the silence.

You can almost hear them waiting in the now-quiet, poised for flight but not yet gone. The air has a tense feel, although Reverie is still laying down, so it’s possible that’s just my imagination. Still, maybe it’s a sixth sense but I swear I can still feel the coyotes on our property.

Artemis is by my side, growling. Our backyard is fenced, and there’s a good three hundred feet beyond the gate before the land slopes down, so even if my gut is right, the pack is not nearly as close as they feel.

“Good girl,” I say, and she pricks her ears up at me, pleased. She growls again, and gives a deep, deep bark.

“Good girl,” I say again. She wags her tail twice, hard, so very pleased with herself. She stands beside me, hackles raised, and growls again. I feel like a scene from an Old Western. It’s just me and my trusty dog, standing guard beneath the full moon against a pack of varmints. I encourage Artemis again, and she takes a few bounces forward, barking deep and loud.

In the silence afterwards, I swear I can hear the coyotes mumble a cuss word and flee. We’re still in the backyard, so I know there’s no chance of her running off and actually coming into contact with a coyote, so I encourage her again. “Good girl. You tell ’em”

She barks deeply again, still growling, and she’s so very pleased to have this job. I’m proud of her, too. “Good girl. You go get ’em.” Her body stiffens, and she stares at me with electric tension. “That’s right. GO GET EM ARTEMIS!”

And she’s off, running full tilt, every line of her movement tense with explosive eagerness as she leaps forward and…..

Frantically searches the bushes for her ball. She’s determined to uncover it, convinced there’s a ball hiding in the foilage. She’s completely ignoring me now.

Oh thaaaaat’s right. “Go get it” in Lab-Speak means find your ball.

There is no more trusty sidekick. There is no more helpful growling. There is no more defending the homestead. There is only the invisible ball she is certain she’s going to sniff out, if only she can circle the tree and crash through the underbrush, one more time.

From further away, near the treeline, I hear the lone yip of that half grown coyote.

I swear it sounds like laughter.

There comes a time post-divorce when you heal enough to get a vague sense of curiosity.  They say there are plenty of fish in the sea. What do they look like? What kind are they? Is it as bad as they say?

I’m not sure what it says about me that I returned to dating for the same exact same  reason I crane my neck to look at roadkill, but I’m sure it says something.

Internet dating has always worked for me. After all, I don’t drink, I go to bed around 8:30 pm, and my weekdays are filled with work and kids, and my weekends are filled with, “Man, I don’t think I can let this farm chore be postponed even a second longer, I guess I better do it today.” Where else am I supposed to meet people, other than the internet?

Internet dating is also a pretty decent choice for someone with my social skills. I’m decent at carrying out a conversation when I have a keyboard under my fingers. I’m not so great at the real-life small talk thing.

Hi. Want to talk about horses? How about dairy goats? They once did a study and found that the scent women find most attractive is Good and Plenty mixed with cucumbers. Weird, huh? What’s red and bad for your teeth? A brick hahahaha. I’m thirsty. Do you like true crime documentaries? Hey, where are you going?

As I began to research I was amused to discover that OkCupid was still around. I briefly considered reviving my old profile from back in 2003/2004, but there was something depressing about that, so I decided to choose another site.

Only… only, it’s not like it was back in the early 2000s, where you chose from OkCupid (where the young folk went), or PlentyofFish (where the Christian folk went) or eHarmony (where the “I actually wanna get married” people went). Now?

Dude.  DUDE. There are SO MANY DATING SITES.

SO.

MANY.

OPTIONS.

Oh, sure, OkCupid, eHarmony, and PlentyofFish are still around, but so are a bazillion different others, and they all have their own private little niche.

What is it about people and creating niches, anyways?

Figuring out dating apps is a bit like trying to learn how to read those old ads for horses, back when you used to have a strict character limit. You guys remember the ones I’m talking about –  16hh OTTB chsnt H/J Gld…You had to know what you were looking for and understand the lingo before you could even start looking.

Who would have thought there would be such a steep learning curve for love?  And yet there was. You had to know what you wanted out of a relationship before you could even figure out how best to present yourself, and you had to create an account and figure out how best to market yourself before you could even look at who else was out there.

Did you want long-term commitment/marriage? You should probably choose eHarmony.  Everyone knows what Tinder is for, although I was surprised to discover that it has actually become a fairly popular dating site, not just an… errr, fairly popular “dating” site. Where you interested in speed-dating? Try Hinge.  Did you want more security as a woman? Try Bumble. How about long-term dating? Match. And so on, and so on. Each site had their own quirk.

Also, they all want you to swipe right if you like someone, which pretty much everyone knows and understands….

Except for my brain.

Every single time it mattered I ended up overthinking it too hard, and then panicked and swiped the wrong direction.

Oh, lordy, it’s a nazi axe murderer who is looking for a third in their open thruple, and that third needs to be diaper kink-friendly….  NOPE. Nope, nope, nope.  Not for me. I need to not swipe right. Don’t swipe right, Becky.  Left.  Swipe left. I definitely need to swipe left.Left, left, left…..

And then, like a horror film, my finger would slowly descend to left hand side of the cell phone screen, and swipe.

Do you know what happens when you put your fat, useless finger on the left-hand side of the screen and swipe?

Yeah, that’s right.  YOU SWIPE RIGHT.

The same thing happened with people I was legitimately interested in.

Hi, I’m the sexiest man alive, and I’m currently in the market for a single woman in her 40s with ADHD and a bunch of kids.  I breed Morgans and Andalusians and own properties all over the world. I’m looking to find someone to drink coffee, read books, pray, volunteer at soup kitchens, and admire beautiful horses.  If it develops into something more, that’d be great.  If it doesn’t, maybe I could just pay you to travel the world and ride my horses in exotic destinations….

And every single time I’d panic and swipe the wrong way, and “YOU MISSED A MATCH” would flash across the screen.

I suppose this is how it all starts.  One moment you’re young and hip and good with technology, and then the next thing you know, you’re talking about “the Google” and responding to Nigerian prince scams.

Technically speaking, if you swipe the wrong way it’s not a total loss.  Most of those places offer monthly memberships for a premium price, so you can go back through missed matches….But I hated the idea of it. It felt like a tax on me being stupid.

Plus, I wasn’t even sure I was ready to go on a date. The idea of dating had me lingering somewhere between nervous and nauseous. It felt too weird, and too soon. Mostly, I was just kind of playing around with the idea. Window shopping available men became my new evening hobby. I’d curl up on the couch after the kids were in bed, listen to the rain outside, and flip back and forth between a dating app and Zillow, happily browsing other people’s personal lives and personal homes.

Actually, internet dating and shopping for a house isn’t a bad comparison. When you first start looking for a house your list of needs is a mile long. I want a 2500 square foot single story ranch home with 3 bathrooms and 5 bedrooms, on 15 acres, under $200,000, with a barn and indoor arena and an in ground pool…

After a couple of months of looking at homes, and seeing the actual market availability, your needs become a little more…. reasonable.  “I’d like a house, with a bathroom, and it would be nice if the roof didn’t leak.”

I remember the first night I started looking through different profiles.  There was a person in a town about an hour away from me, and he had horrible serial killer eyes….except, I suppose, not really? If he really had serial killer eyes they’d probably be soft, and sweet, and approachable. After all, everyone knows that serial killers don’t actually look like serial killers…

I digress. How about this: he had the kind of eyes that looked like what you’d would imagine serial killer eyes to look like.  They were flat, and hard, and I’m pretty convinced that he was born without eyelids and had never blinked once in his entire life.  Every single vein in his body was sticking about 2 inches out of skin, like his blood was straining to escape his body.  He glared. Angrily. Plus, his neck was literally 100% the exact same size as his head.

I screenshot him and sent him to my friend.  “I should swipe right on him.  He looks friendly.”

“Oh, yeah, you definitely aren’t going to die going on that date.”

We both laughed, and I continued on.

But you know what?  A month or so later, the app became annoyed at how picky I was and started to recycle some of my old rejects through. CreepyEyes popped back up, and this time I briefly hesitated.  “Huh.  Not for me, but not so bad” was my thought, as I swiped him left… or rather, put my finger to the right, so I could swipe left, which resulted in us being paired, and me frantically trying to unmatch him.

And then a month later, when he came by again, I actually considered swiping right on purpose. “Oh, sure, he looks like he’d kill me… but you know, I don’t see too many red flags, aside from the fact I’d probably die….”

On the other hand, for all that I’m joking about other people’s profiles, do you have any idea how hard it is to write one of those things? It’s awkward as all get out, trying to brag on yourself without actually, you know, bragging on yourself.  It’s stressful creating a sales ad for your entire personality, asking people to pick you without seeming too needy.

In the end, like I always do, I decided to just go for blunt honesty.

I figured that was about as straightforward as I could get, and it seemed to work pretty well. Also, I was surprised at how easy the whole process was. There was no sudden onslaught of photos of male genitalia.  There were no inappropriate requests, beyond the one guy who said hello and then wanted me to drive an hour into the woods (out of cell phone reception) so he could cook me dinner. I’m sure he had nothing but the best of intentions, and while I do enjoy a nice homecooked meal, I’m sure you are all shocked to hear I didn’t take him up on his offer.  Gas is expensive, after all, and a single mom must be frugal.

Eventually, I decided to go out on my first date.

One year today.

I have zero regrets about saying goodbye Caspian. Zero. It was time. I did right by him.

And so long as I don’t think about it, it doesn’t actually bother me all that much. My days are full and I’m too busy to dwell on anything, much less things I’d rather not think about. Reverie fills my heart and she keeps me on my toes enough that there’s no time to miss him.

But danged if it isn’t still pretty raw, when I stop moving long enough to remember him and how very good he was.

I miss his canter. I miss his steadiness. I miss his kind eyes, and how very beautiful he was.

It feels like forever ago, and also no time at all.

Thanks, cell phone WordPress app.

I said “SAVE AS DRAFT” on that blog post I was working on.

I did not click on the “QUICK!  UPLOAD EVERY SINGLE DRAFT BECKY HAS EVER WRITTEN, AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, ONE RIGHT AFTER ANOTHER.” button.

And yet, that’s still what you did. I’m not sure how many you managed to upload before I figured out that the solution was to uninstall the app from my phone.  12?  13?  14?

I’d contact your app developers and let them know about this horrible new glitch, but I’m scared you’d take the opportunity to start uploading every single cell phone photo in my “Trash” album out of revenge.

Yay, technology.