“I’ve always loved you without words.
So many things you’ve never heard. …”
-- Morten Harket, “I’m the One”
She knew from the beginning I had a soft spot for her, because she had, well, an adorable little white spot on her back.
Yes, she tricked me from the beginning with that spot – and the fact that she went potty with purpose and showmanship. We expect a lot from a puppy – mainly, to be adorable and not pee on our carpet.
Sadie came into my life with the whimper of a puppy, and she had my heart from the beginning. Her little white spot eventually disappeared into her tri-colored coat, and, despite her initial potty expertise, it took a few weeks before she was properly potty trained.
It didn’t matter. She knew she had me from Day One. She loved me, and I loved her. Every day for more than 12 years.
It wasn’t always easy. Oh, she was a mean little puppy -- independent and defiant. When she was a wee thing, she growled and squirmed and refused to be a good dog.
I remember thinking, as she groused and twisted in my arms, she would never be a good dog.
She chewed everything, and nothing was safe from the clutches of her sharp little puppy teeth, which is how she got a broken leg early in life. Just weeks after she was adopted from the animal shelter, she was perched on our bed, being queen of the world at 8 pounds, when she decided to latch on to Amy’s gown, as Amy was getting out of bed.
I still see it, in the slow motion that memories seem to appear, as Sadie flew through the air, her mouth still clamped temporarily to Amy’s gown, and off the bed and ... into the wall. Smack.
She looked like Tarzan – if the Lord of the Jungle looked like a fat little ball of fur – leaping from Amy's gown and into that wall.
Whimper!
Sadie immediately curled up and went to sleep -- the body’s mechanism, we later learned huddled up at the Emergency Pet Clinic, when dealing with pain. She had broken her back right leg. It would heal, and she’d be a normal dog.
I, on the other hand, had the indignity of walking a puppy wearing a bright pink cast (later replaced with a yellow one) as she continued to learn all about potty training.
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| Puppy Sadie in her cast (the yellow one!). |
Despite the Tarzan incident, Sadie continued to have a spot on our bed for most of her life. As she grew from puppy to full-size, 60-pound pooch, there was less and less room, but the three of us managed. Well, Amy went to the left, and I went to the right. Sadie pushed her way into the middle, atop the blankets and comforter, and remained there for the night.
I had to be careful not to stir too early. If I did, I was forced to take her for a walk. While I slept, she slept. When I awoke, Sadie reminded me I had duties to perform for her. Like I said, she knew who ruled the manor.
I was responsible for Sadie -- that is, I leashed her up and took her out for bathroom breaks, I fed her, bathed her. Amy and I shared the duty of spoiling her.
For 11 years, while we lived in Erwin, I worked only a few blocks away, so Sadie and I had a lunch date every day. She’d be waiting in her favorite living room chair (a once-beautiful, floral print that eventually had to be discarded because there was more fur on it than upholstery). She’d stretch, plop out of the chair and meet me with a wag of the tail.
When Amy arrived home, every day, it was a spectacle. Sadie knew the sound of Amy’s Mustang. Upon hearing the roar of the engine, Sadie would leap up, run to the door and anxiously await the reward of a few pats on the head and the loving sound declaration of “Good Dog!” When we moved to Louisiana, Sadie rode the whole way in the back seat and never once com- plained. She loved her new house and the fenced courtyard where she could watch passersby and cattle egrets.
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| My girls -- Amy and Sadie in Erwin, Tennessee. |
In Erwin and in Louisiana, things were always the same -- wherever Amy and I were, Sadie was there, too. Gone were her independent puppy days. They were replaced with an irrepressible need to curl up on top of me or Amy on the couch, never leaving our sides for a single moment.
I have more than one photo of me and Sadie fast asleep on the couch, letting the world go by, both of us content, just letting sleeping dogs lie, if you will.
Sadie grew fat over the years -- a friend of my father-in-law once said she looked more like a ground hog than a dog -- probably from the bites she had tossed to her as Amy and I finished a meal. Sadie slimmed down a little in her last few years, thanks to some help from Dr. Ric Jablonski at the Roan Mountain Animal Hospital.
She didn’t really do any tricks. She wasn’t interested in frolicking outside and playing fetch. She was just a little shadow for me and for Amy. Where we went, Sadie went. From one room to another, she’d follow. From one state to another, she followed.
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| Sadie and I often took afternoon naps, nose to nose. |
And then on a spring day, May 2, 2012, after 12 years of being this man’s best friend, everything changed.
Sadie needed me, her “Daddy,” to help her one last time. She needed Amy, her “Momma,” to be selfless. And I helped, and Amy was selfless. And Sadie was gone.
And I’ve never been quite the same since.
“I’ve always loved you without words, So many things you’ve never heard, I need a license for living; I’ve got my papers in heaven, You cannot take what I cannot give.” -- Morten Harket, “I’m the One”
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| Letting the day go by with my best friend. |
It was only a few minutes before 3 p.m. on May 2, 2012, and I wished the clock would stop ticking. But in that moment, when time refused to stand still and my heart was breaking, something mysterious, maybe magical, happened.
“You wanna go out, baby?” I asked, opening the French doors to the backyard to let Sadie hop into the bright south Louisiana sun for the very last time.
When Amy and I moved from Tennessee to Louisiana, Sadie may have been the happiest of all in our little family of three. Sadie no longer had to be led around on a leash. Our new house had a beautiful little courtyard in the back with curved brick walls and wrought-iron fencing. Sadie loved to romp and play there.
So many times, sitting in that courtyard, I watched Sadie marvel at the world going by – a bicyclist, a jogger, a cattle egret across the way looking for insects in the morning sun. Sadie would stick her head through the fence and wag her tail at passersby.
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| Sadie in her courtyard in Lafayette, Louisiana. |
How strange, I thought. We had no flowers in the courtyard, certainly nothing to attract butterflies. The only creatures our courtyard ever seemed to attract were frogs and wasps.
Yet there it was, a little yellow butterfly floating and flitting along, staying right with Sadie every step she made. But the clock ticked on, and it was almost 3 o’clock. It was time to leave the courtyard – and Sadie’s tiny new friend – behind.
Dr. Scott Broussard was scheduled to arrive with his “Waggin’ Train” mobile veterinary unit. Back inside the house, though, 3 o’clock came and went. Maybe Dr. Broussard had an emergency, I thought, and he won’t make our appointment. I stared out the window for his “Waggin’ Train,” and, finally, Dr. Broussard’s white van pulled in front of the house.
I walked out onto the front porch, and Dr. Broussard extended his hand. I tried to say, “Hello.” I tried to say, “Thank you for coming.” But I couldn’t. I could say only one thing.
“This is the worst day of my life,” I said as I pushed opened the door, and there was Sadie, wagging her tail and ready, as always, to welcome visitors to our home.
After her introduction, Sadie slipped quietly underneath my desk and sat down on her haunches. She hadn’t looked that small since she was a puppy some 12 years ago. She just sat and watched. Her heavy, labored breaths seemed to have disappeared, and she seemed just perfect, sitting properly, sweetly.
“She’s doing so good right now,” I told Dr. Broussard. “She was so sick yesterday, and now she seems so happy. Maybe we’re rushing this."
I wanted Sadie to stay little, underneath my desk, and wag her tail when visitors came to the house. I wanted Dr. Broussard to go away.
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| Underneath my desk at our home in Lafayette, La. |
Across the room, Amy looked at me. “What should we do?” she asked.
I looked at Amy, and I looked at Sadie. And I looked back at Amy, and I nodded. We loved her too much to let her suffer. When the seizures came as the pain overwhelmed her little body, Sadie wouldn’t understand.
I didn’t want to take life from her, but I knew I couldn’t take what Sadie, torn apart inside from liver cancer, could no longer give.
Dr. Broussard told us it would be quick and that my sweet little dog would simply go to sleep. I went to the bedroom and retrieved Sadie’s bed, where she always slept while we were away at work, and when I plopped it down in the living room, Sadie jumped in it.
It broke my heart. There in her safe spot, where she dozed away afternoons, would be where she would depart this life.
Dr. Broussard went outside and told us to spend a few more moments with Sadie. I stroked Sadie and kissed her head. Amy told her how much we’d always loved her.
“You’ve been,” Amy assured her, “the best dog ever."
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| A "selfie" I took a few days before we knew Sadie was ill. |
We had arranged a pet mortuary to retrieve Sadie’s body to have her cremated and returned to us in a small wooden box. To make it as easy as possible, the mortuary staff had arrived shortly after Dr. Broussard. Staff members wrapped Sadie up in her little bed and took her away.
And there Amy and I stood in our open doorway and watched as the little silver pickup truck sent by the mortuary pulled down to the end of the cul-de-sac. As the truck drove back past the house, Amy grabbed me with a force I had never felt in all the years I’ve known her.
“Make them bring her back!” she cried and fell into my arms.
But Sadie was gone. Our house was silent; our hearts broken. I took Amy by the hand and stepped outside. The sun was shining and a spring breeze was blowing.
We crossed the street and headed over to the walking path that surrounded the neighborhood lake. We hadn’t made it very far when directly in front of us fluttered a little yellow butterfly – it looked just like the one from the courtyard that had fluttered and flitted around Sadie. Was it?
Up and up into the sky it went, and as it did, our eyes followed and there, in the same direction where that silver pickup truck was taking Sadie away, a rainbow had formed.
“It’s the Rainbow Bridge,” Amy said. “It’s Sadie’s Rainbow Bridge."
Many people know about the Rainbow Bridge, and while no one knows who wrote the famous poem, the words are, nonetheless, comforting and full of hope: “Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge. When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. ... The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind. ... But the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. ... You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart. Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together."
When I think of Sadie, I am often overcome with sadness still. It’s a heartache that never leaves me.
But sometimes I let myself believe in a little bit of magic, and I smile and think of a little yellow butterfly that led Sadie to Rainbow Bridge. I’ve never seen that little butterfly again, but I think I will when I touch the sky and cross the bridge on a happy reunion day.
