The most ridiculous part was that, though she slinked around like she did when she knew she'd done something wrong, I don't remember her ever having even a hint of indigestion over the thing. The damn dog was made of steel. She had essentially claimed the trampoline as her backyard throne some time before this day, and perhaps this was her way of saying that purple was not, in fact, her color, and she'd been thinking of redecorating.
Biscuit was always a fan of many varied outdoor activities, from mail-box-walk-following to sprinkler-jumping, (insert any item from nature)-eating, stick-scavenging and smell-seeking, but trampoline sitting was undoubtedly her favorite, up until the day the springs gave way and the whole thing came crashing down -- the lack of a protective cover, no doubt the culprit.
Sometimes in the summer I would sit outside with a glass of ice water or Kool-Aid and spit out ice cubes for her to catch (her absolute favorite treat) and she'd take them up onto the trampoline and munch away happily. It is a memory I am now straining with every muscle of my brain and heart to implant indelibly, as Biscuit took her final leave from us yesterday, almost 14 years old.
For many years I wondered how I would react in this moment, when I got the news that the Most Incredible Dog In The World, Biscuit, had gone to chase (and catch, dammit!) squirrels in the doggy hereafter. I knew I would be devastated. I knew I would cry. But I don't think then I would've anticipated what I know now -- a sense of desperation, an urgency in trying to recall exactly and freeze in my memory the precise way it felt to nuzzle her nose, to feel the bob of her head when you patted it, to scratch her bum until she got so excited she started ramming her whole body into the side of the sofa with glee. I am desperate to save those memories, as strong as they are now, because I don't ever want to forget a detail of the ways she made our lives so much richer.
We got Biscuit when I was in the fifth grade -- I was two months shy of my 11th birthday. She was weened from her mom early because of circumstances I can't exactly recall now, but she came home with us a very tiny pup, earlier than they usually like to let them away from the litter. Her first romp through our backyard must have felt like being dropped into a never-ending oasis of leaves and grass to chew, sticks to find and random gifts from nature to eat and burp up later in the face of an unsuspecting family member. The day we brought her home, she cowered from our back fence, afraid of our neighbor's dog -- a little Scotty, no bigger than a house cat. We told her just to wait, because pretty soon she'd be able to eat him for breakfast and still ask the waiter to see a dessert menu.
Even in her old age, her face seeming to elongate, her muzzle increasingly covered with white and gray, we called her puppy. Mostly because she never really stopped being one. She ran and slid across our wood floors when she heard the ice maker rumbling in the kitchen every day during happy hour. She jumped and bounded, stalked prey in the yard and played catch with her squeaky toys, even if she had to toss the damn thing into the air herself.
Last night when contemplating the best way to eulogize the Most Incredible Dog In The World, the word noble immediately came to mind, and I think it's quite apt. It encompasses so much -- her loyalty, her unconditional love, her friendship, so true that even with arthritis making it next to impossible, she would painstakingly climb the steps to follow me to my bedroom when I came home to visit.
Noble. It makes me think of the time she got out of the back fence and we found her waiting on the front steps to be let in the house. The way she obeyed my dad as the Alpha male more than any of the rest of us, but probably loved him most, too -- every morning after breakfast she would wait by his chair to be invited to jump up and get loved on, happily squealing and squeaking the entire time. The way she tried to protect us, though it was always against the horrors and dangers of the UPS man or our next door neighbors. The way she'd run out in the yard and get her hackles up barking at unwanted intruders, but when someone got out the vacuum she'd hide in the corner until the torture was finished.
Although I was certainly sentient for plenty of years before she came to 6305 Constance, I hardly remember life without Biscuit. She was our loyal companion, our friend, our sister. She was, undoubtedly, the Most Incredible Dog In The World.
So here's to my hairy, four-legged sister. May the doggy afterlife be full of ice cubes for crunching, snow days for playing, trampolines for sitting, squirrels for chasing, butts for sniffing and yards for digging up. And may your bum never, NEVER have to go unscratched.
cheers,
elizabeth
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