Pearl is my little Scottish Terrier, purchased for me not long after I lost my soulmate dog, Rita, to a brain hemorrhage brought on by a nasty fall on the staircase leading to the second floor of my building in Kentucky. I grieved for months. So did her companion, another Scottish Terrier named Lucy, and she died three months later, in her sleep. My husband informed me that we needed to have a nice dinner out, and he proceeded to drive south from our home. I loved being in the truck with him, he was always full of interesting stories. I do have a thing for storytellers.
Two hours later, we arrived in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where we stopped at a Cracker Barrel. That's where we met a wheaten Scottish Terrier, a beauty of a puppy, although he was almost a year old. This was to be officially Dandy Jack, called affectionately "Jarhead" by my former Marine husband, TJ, who wanted to ease my heartache a bit. He was a wonderful dog, perfect actually, but he wasn't my Rita. He followed me dutifully, was easy to train and love. A couple of months later, we went on a road trip to Missouri, where I met a small Scottish Terrier, who became my Black Pearl. She was offered up to me, along with her littermate, and I saw the she was the shyer of the two, and seemed a bit sickly.
So, of course, as she was in need of a caretaker, and I was in need of a little soul to take care of, I chose her over her feistier sister. As we drove away, the first thing little Pearl did, after licking me to death and yipping off and on, was to pee on my lap. Yep. We were bonded.
Since then, my Pearl and I have been inseparable. Her first-born son is my Wiggles, whom I adore. I also have charge over two of her pups, Calypso and Violette. When my painful divorce brought me back to Florida, she rode with me in the truck, hanging out the window, ears flapping in the wind. The first time she had ever been to a beach, she threw herself into the sand with a vengeance, immersing herself in the salty sand. She chased crawfish in mountain streams, but the ocean was altogether different. How she loved the beach!
It's always Pearl with whom I have shared my heartaches, my loneliness, my solitude for the past twelve years. She has given me total loyalty and immeasurable happiness. If I had a bad day, Pearl was there, giving me those eyeballs of love, pleading with me for a walk and a talk, and somehow she knew that just her presence was enough to ease the anger, the hurt, the confusion and the frustrations of any given day. She hated that, after the first years of my being home every day, I was soon back at a full time job, leaving her looking at me out the window of my bedroom.
She has been showing her age of late. The past month has been a heartbreaking decline in her physical health and she appears to be fading. As I write this, she has had small seizures off and on during the previous day and night, and I have not left her side. She has bounced back from each seizure, slowly, but has been eating and drinking and walking, if but incredibly slow and measured. I do not see pain in her eyes, and she is comfortable, being transported outside for pees and poop, and whatever room I end up in, she tried to follow me, as she always did.
However, this morning, she cannot move. She won't eat or drink. She has labored breathing. I am giving her eyedroppers of water and milk every half hour or so, but she is going. She knows it, and is leaving me with grace and dignity, while I am in denial and can't accept her passing. I am too selfish to let her go. She is not in pain, and sleeping mostly, even when the other dogs come around and sniff at her, sometimes licking her face for a drop of milk caught in her whiskers.
I won't have her euthanized, because I don't believe in it, unless an animal is truly in pain. I have her progeny here, and they seem to know, and I have to give them love and care, even while my Pearl is resting on her pillow, near my art desk, and I will give her as much comfort as she needs. She will go in her sleep, so I stay awake as much as I can, so that I can be there when she does pass.
I just don't want her to go.
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