(If any Colorado friends and family have things to add or comments please click on the speech bubble over there–it’s not always clear where you can comment.)
I spoke of Molly’s “other” families previously but I just received a very sweet note from our neighbor Patti and I thought you would enjoy hearing her take.
Hi Bonnie,
I loved seeing your pictures of Molly and reading the post. Lotus and I have visited her grave with some of Lotus’s friends. It’s so lovely.
On some level I know it was Molly’s time to go, but I get very sad driving up to the house and not having her greet me. I keep expecting her to push the front door open and bound in. Thanks for sharing your girl. We all love her to bits.
I found a picture from her last day and some from that week. During her last week I was laying out on the couch a couple of times and Moll would jump on the couch and climb up behind me and throw a leg over me. Lotus and I cracked up. She was such a funny kid, that Molly. I guess she was saying goodbye.
Kirk wrote this poem about our dog Gina when she passed away in April two years ago. I just thought about it and how much it could be about our Molly too.
I hope you and your family are well. Big love from Bowers, Patti
Molly holding court with her friends
The Rescue.
It must be hard to be a dog and die in the spring.
It must be hard to die with the scent of so much newness filling the cool wet of your nostrils.
New rabbits to chase, new squirrels to charge, new dandelions to roll in, new meat on the spring picnic tables to quickly gulp down while eyes are diverted to fly balls.
It must be hard to be a dog and to die with the scent of new moss emerging in the pores of old forgotten tennis balls lining the muddy banks of nearby rivers.
It must be hard.
But Gina did. Gina died in the spring. And yet I know it was Gina’s way to do things hard.
She went at life hard, which I guess is a nature that pound puppies, like Gina was, receive the moment their sharp little puppy teeth clash at the cold steel grid of their pound cage.
She went at the ball hard, climbed the granites hard, rushed the waves hard, licked our faces hard, barked at strange smells in the night hard, and shepherded her human family through desert hikes hard.
The leash was never slack with Gina. She pulled it so hard and so tight it hummed like a spring cicada.
Yes, it was Gina’s nature to do things hard. And the thing she did the hardest was love us. And the one she loved the hardest was her human mother, Patricia, who first opened that cage and looked in her eyes and took her out into the world. Having witnessed that moment I can tell you that there was a knowing of each other that was born well before that moment in a sacred agreement before earth time.
Humans like to call dogs like Gina, “rescues”. While the name is appropriate, I have learned that the human understanding is the inverted truth. What Gina taught me in how hard she loved and cared for our family was that it isn’t the dog that is being rescued in such arrangements.
It must be hard to be a dog and die in the spring.
Unless you are a dog named Gina who does things hard. And then it is simply how you came in, how you lived, how you loved, and how you kept going.
Molly relaxing with kid-made snow from the rosepetals
Dear Family and Friends,
Molly has passed on, quickly and quietly during the night. She was such a happy dog, right up to the end. The most sociable dog in all of Topanga, she will be missed by 95% of those who knew her, and there were many. I say 95% because she was indeed a nuisance to some. She loved to spend her days visiting others, in fact we know of two families with children and dogs who regularly invited her into their home. We would go looking for her and find her on someone’s living room couch with kids playing all around her. The people moved out and the same story played out with the next family to live there.
She was known to bring home gifts of all kinds–from a small decorated Christmas tree to leftover animal parts from our “wilderness”. She was a real “alpha” dog and tolerated no uppityness from any other dog. Until they were appropriately respectful she was merciless in taking them down. Once they succumbed they all got along fine. She was the Queen of Webb Trail and had expanded her territory to Bowers Drive and heaven knows where else.
We were always nervous of her around the grandbabies because of that but she delighted in their presence and whenever there were children around she’d be there and always loved a party. She was extremely sensitive and was depressed for months when her partner in arms, Moe, was run over by the mailman (they used to delight in chasing after any wheeled vehicle that intruded into her territory.) Only yesterday she barked up a storm at her familiar UPS delivery guy until he gave her a cookie. She hopped down off his truck, satisfied with the gesture of obedience.
Let’s hope she’s having a great romp with Moe right now, best friends forever.
Heard from Mom that Mickey was moved to St. Margaret Hall for rehabilitation very close to home. It appears that they did not treat her very well, although I don’t really know the details. Mickey was unhappy enough, however, to convince her doctor that she would be better off at home, so she was transported there. She has a few days of stay over nursing care and then she’ll be in Mom’s good hands.
I don’t know if she’s taking calls yet but I’m sure she’d love getting a message if you want to call or email because I’m sure she needs someone to tell her to keep her chin up!
Just heard from Mom that Mickey is out of surgery, has a brand-new hip and, doctor says, “is just fine.” All very good news.
She is at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, where she’ll be for the next 3 to 5 days; after which she’ll be convalescing at a facility nearby (don’t know the name yet) for another week or so.
I spoke of Molly’s “other” families previously but I just received a very sweet note from our neighbor Patti and I thought you would enjoy hearing her take.
