These words are written on a magnet that clings to my refrigerator:
Lhasa Apso
regal loyal calm deliberate
mannerly tough strong-willed
bossy jealous keen watchdog
“When a Lhasa looks in a mirror
it sees a lion.”
During the night of January 17, Honey, my 14-1/2 year old best friend, a Lhasa Apso, was uncharacteristically restless. She wouldn’t stay in bed, kept walking to the edge and staring at the floor. I lifted her down, and she walked around the house randomly, listing to the right all the while. She eventually tired and I was able to put her back on the bed, where she slept, but for only for a while. After about an hour, she was up again and looking as though she might tilt over onto the floor. So, I helped her down again and she repeated her earlier behavior twice more during the night.
I was in the throes of a severe case of bronchitis and not sleeping well anyway, so I was awake with her. Honey ate her breakfast of chicken and green beans and went outside to do her business. When she didn’t come right back, I went out and found her struggling to negotiate the two steps up to the deck. I helped her up, brought her inside and put her on her favorite sofa and her leopard throw. As soon as my vet’s office opened, I called and made an appointment for later in the day, after Gretchen got home from work. I really felt too bad to drive. Honey ate lunch, went outside and got herself back in the house unassisted. She slept most of the rest of the afternoon.
When we arrived at Dr. Brennan McGoldrick’s office, an older gentleman was retrieving his two large dogs from the groomer. Honey, in typical Lhasa Apso fashion, began growling and trying to climb out of my arms to protect me from them. (They were just sitting there smiling.) It was all I could do to keep her on the bench with me. As sick as she was, she displayed one of the cardinal attributes of her breed.
We saw his assistant first, then Dr. McGoldrick came in the room. Honey had been walking around in clockwise circles since his assistant put her on the floor when we arrived. Brennan McGoldrick is one of the most kind and understanding young men I know. In his quiet voice, he gently asked a few questions and immediately knew the problem. He explained to us that Honey’s behavior was characteristic of a brain tumor, probably in the frontal lobe. We had noticed her slowing down over the previous weeks but never thought it was due to anything other than her advanced age.
What to do? More than anything in the world, I wanted her to be spared any unnecessary pain. She was confused, but as far as we knew, she hadn’t suffered a seizure, which would in all likelihood happen sooner or later. The thought of her suffering fell over me like a blanket of despair. I tearfully asked the inevitable question. What should I do? Dr. McGoldrick suggested a round of steroids, explaining that if she were going to get relief, it would happen quickly. In his sweetest of ways, he suggested if she weren’t better in a couple of days, it would be time for her to cross over to the other side.
And she rallied like the champions from whom she was descended. After only two doses of prednisone, her tail was once more up over her back and she was easily getting down from the deck and back up. Clever as she was, she began climbing up at the end of the deck, where a layer of brick make the first step easier. She stopped walking in circles, and we even took a brief walk. She ate three times a day and slept well, waking a couple of times every night to go outside. The steroids stimulated her appetite and her thirst, thus the nighttime trips outside.
Honey wasn’t supposed to be my dog. In 2003, Clint’s knee replacement got infected and had to be taken out, which resulted in months of pain and a carpet-bombing of potent antibiotics followed by another operation to put in a new prosthesis. He was recovering slowly at our house on Dunbar Creek. He was listless and not interested in the things he usually enjoyed, and I decided a puppy would give him a focus outside himself, a reason to get out of bed and care for another living being. We already had one dog, an adult Boxer named Belle, but she wasn’t a one-person dog. She loved us all with equal abandon. Lhasa Apsos tend to be one-person dogs, and I hoped our new puppy would attach itself to Clint.
So, granddaughter Sarah and I told him we were going to Savannah for the night to see Addie, another granddaughter. Instead, with the Addie’s family in on the secret, we drove eight hours up Interstate 95 to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where I had located a reputable Lhasa Apso breeder. In the early years of our marriage, Clint and I had two Lhasas, and I knew how much he loved the spunky little breed. Sarah and I spent the night in a less than grand hotel near the interstate and next morning drove out into the country to find the breeder. We did it the old fashioned way: with a map and by the seats of our pants. There was no GPS on our cell phones in 2003. Just as important, if there had been, there was no service in rural of North Carolina.
I don’t remember how many puppies there were on the sunken dining room floor of the breeder’s house. I do remember them milling around and falling over one another in that way puppies do. They were energetic and seemed healthy and strong. Sarah was determined I shouldn’t choose the puppy, insistent that if I did, it would bond with me instead of Poppy, Clint’s granddaddy name. So, she sat on the step and waited patiently until a honey-hued little girl nosed up to her, climbed into her lap and reached up to cover her face with kisses. In no time, we were on the way home.
Honey and Belle, 2003
We found Poppy propped up in bed with Belle at his side, reading and looking rested. After confessing we had been, not to Savannah, but to North Carolina, we presented him with the furry ball of love whose name would become Honey because of her color. She climbed all over him and Belle, too, who seemed a little taken aback but accepting of the attention. The smile on Clint’s face was confirmation to me we had done the right thing. He hadn’t looked so happy in months.
In the days and weeks that followed, Honey proved herself to be plucky and smart and fearless, jumping off our high bed and negotiating the steep steps up to our front door. Twice, seeing something down in the back yard, she leapt between the pickets of the deck down the nearly ten foot drop to the grass. She held her own with Belle, who was, for the most part, very gentle with her. The two of them raced up and down the hall with one toy or another. Belle never outgrew playing with her toys, but Honey would abandon such frivolous behavior as she grew into adulthood.
Clint began to feel stronger, more like himself, and was soon back on the golf course. I was elated that he was out and active, but that meant the care of both dogs fell to me and the inevitable happened. Honey bonded with me. As it happened, Belle and Clint got closer, and we took them both on daily walks around the neighborhood.
It would be over a year before Honey reached her adult weight of 14 pounds, but from the very beginning, she was a Lhasa to her core, fiercely loyal to me and protective of our home. She quickly established herself as the alpha dog in the house and as my protector. I never went to the bathroom alone after she came into my life. Even at that young age, she steadfastly placed herself between Clint and me in the the bed. (When she was grown, she even treated him to a little growl if he turned over suddenly in the bed.) As she grew to adulthood, her honey-toned coat faded to white and she became a great beauty. Ever vigilant, she monitored the front windows and was a perfect partner for Belle, who would have greeted Satan at the door with kisses. Like most Lhasas, Honey had little use for other dogs except the one in her own pack. On walks, she thought she could take down a Great Dane, but when she occasionally had to go to day care, with me out of sight, she aloofly separated herself from the other dogs and slept alone all day.
Honey went just about everywhere with me. A good traveler, she frequently went with me Savannah to attend Rosemary Daniel’s monthly Zona Rosa writer’s workshops, and she became well known to the members of the group. I have lovely sketches Charlotte Harrell made of the two of us at some of those meetings.
When Clint was in his last days, Belle stationed herself at his side most of the time, but Honey was with me every step of the day, following me from room to room, lying beside me when I joined Clint in the bed. After Clint passed away, it would be my dogs who comforted me in the way only they can do—silently, lovingly and without questions or demands. In the spring of 2013, when Belle got too tired to live, it was Honey who comforted me.
Parrish and I relocated back to Saint Simons a few months later, and after a year on a rented flat, we found this sweet house with it’s safely fenced yard. Honey quickly established herself as the boss of Meadows Drive and monitored all activity on the street from her perch on the back of the sofa in the living room. When not on patrol there, she was on guard at the front door, eyes keen on the yard and street through the glass door. She announced, in typical Lhasa Apso fashion, every vehicle and pedestrian who passed our way. On walks, when we encountered my neighbor Tony Baker and his late pup, Mollie B, who was about the same size as Honey, the two of them practically ripped their leashes in two in an attempt to protect their people. I’m pretty sure Mollie had some Lhasa in her family tree.
After Parrish’s tragic death in January, 2015, Honey was my comfort, my unfailing companion and confidant. She never once asked me how I was doing, never asked if there were anything she could do. She didn’t bring me plants to remind me Parrish was dead. She was here, present with me in the middle of my pain. And as I emerged from it months later, she was waiting to welcome me back to the world.
She was my bed buddy and my alarm clock, waking me with kisses on the nose when she was ready to go out and then come inside to eat breakfast. I cooked for her most of her life. She liked all kinds of ground meats, and she really loved peas and carrots and green beans. It’s hard to put my finger on when she began to slow down. It came on gradually. Her hearing had been failing for about a year, but she could see well enough to go to walk with confidence. Our walks gradually became slower, though, and eventually became shorter. She went with me to the November Zona Rosa meeting, but that was the last time we went on the road.
Nearly three weeks to the day after our visit to Dr. McGoldrick, Honey noticeably got weaker during the day. The next morning, she wouldn’t eat or go outside. I tearfully called her doctor and told him it was her time. I spent the day with her as she slept. At one point, she napped on my lap, but for most of the day, she lay on her sofa and slept. In the middle of the afternoon, I gave her a sedative. Gretchen came home early from work. When Brennan arrived a little after 5:00, Honey was drowsy and didn’t seem to know he was here. He gave her an injection in her rump, and I stroked and loved her while she quietly became unconscious. Then he shaved her little foreleg and injected her with the medicine that helped her over The Rainbow Bridge. I didn’t know I could be so heartbroken. My heart was in a million pieces as Brennan and his assistant waited patiently for me to say my good-byes. Then he wrapped her in a little blanket and took her away. Honey was there for me through most of the major tragedies in my life and losing her made me feel so terribly, terribly alone. I won’t try to explain how I felt, how I still feel. If you’re a dog lover, you know. If you’re not, you will never understand.
A week later I went to the office to retrieve Honey’s ashes, which were in a beautifully carved wooden box. And there was a plaster print of her paw in the canvas tote bag with the box. I sat in my car for what seemed like forever, trying to compose myself. I finally stopped crying and felt safe to drive. The first thing I did when I got home was place her paw print next to Belle’s in the den. That night I took the little brown box to bed with me, and it’s still there. It will be right where it is until I’m ready to move it. There are moments, like this one, when my heart feels as though it will shatter. I long for her to nudge me for a treat or remind me it’s mealtime. My bed is lonely and cold without her.
Despite the pain of losing Honey, I will always have a dog; I can’t conceive of life without a furry best friend. So no one should be surprised I have located a reputable Brussels Griffon breeder and will be getting a girl puppy in the next couple of weeks. Knowing I could never replace Honey, I opted for another breed, and at my age, a pocketbook dog is just what I need.
Honey, February 6, 2018
