First, the Sad and Bad News

Callie as a baby in NYC

Last week we went on vacation (more on that in another post) and our black lab Callie stayed with her usual second-owner, Bart, the dogwalker and friend extraordinaire.

Callie, for those of you who haven't met her, is a less-destructive version of the yellow lab in the book and movie "Marley & Me." She's crazy, mischievous, full of energy, an incessant attention-hog and a food thief like no other doggie food thief you have ever met or will ever meet. Seriously. If you have food, have something that once contained food, have something that could be food, have something that has the word food on it... she goes for it. And she is crafty at getting food, too. She especially loves cheese and pizza crusts. She has always been full of life and love. As recently as a few weeks ago, someone who met her for the first time thought she was still a puppy! But, actually, she's 8.5yo.

And she is dying.

Not the kind of dying that we all eventually experience. She's sick. Really sick. She was her usual Callie self until just over two months ago. that's when she  developed a limp. The doctor thought it was early arthritis or muscle strain from Callie being, well, Callie. She was fine with some anti-inflammatory medication for most of the last two months. But the limp returned about two weeks ago and we made an appointment for x-rays for this week (post-vacation) but Bart and his wife Marsha saw Callie getting much worse the first two days we were away and didn't think the appointment could wait.

 On Tuesday, our beloved Callie was diagnosed with osteosarcoma... It's a pretty aggressive case and our options are limited with trade-offs for aggressive treatment being not much additional life time and probably at a lower quality of life. Amputation of her front leg, where the cancer is currently concentrated, and weeks of chemo might add 6-12 months to her life but we are not convinced it would be a quality life. Usually when this cancer is found, it has already metastasized so amputation alone might add 4 months, at most, before the cancer is found in the lungs and elsewhere. We have decided to treat the pain until it isn't manageable and then let her go. The vet says she has maybe 4 to 8 weeks.

Callie at about 10 or 12 weeks old in NYC

Unfortunately, the kids were in the car (and I was driving) when we got the news. You know it's not good when the Scottsman (Bart) on the other end of the phone is choked up before he even tells you the news is bad. I pulled over in the middle of nowhere Florida and listened, cried, cried more and then cried some more when the vet called with details... and then had to answer my son's questions about our beloved four-legged furry family member. First up: Is Callie going to die?

To understand how much Callie means to me, particularly, you have to go back a few years. I've almost always had a dog throughout my life. There was Ralph, the dachshund who arrived around the same time I did. There was Boo-Boo, a dachshund/chihuahua mix we adopted when she was 3 and who was with us until I was in 9th grade. Then there was Bear, a black lab we got the year after Boo-Boo died. She was killed by a car when I was away my freshman year of college. Nobody told me until I got home for Christmas. And that's when Buddy came along. I went to the shelter and this little bundle of lab and retriever mix was being viewed by another family when he came over and started tugging on my shoelace. It was love.

Callie in 2006

By the time I moved to NYC in May 2000, my dog Buddy had been with me for five years, three years in college and two years post college. He was not a dog who would tolerate the city and I did what I thought was best and gave him to a farmer who was very fond of him. For three long years, I petted every dog I saw on the street, stopped at every mobile adoption event and wished I could have a dog again. Finally, a few months before I got married, my now-husband and I started our dog search. He'd never had a pet and insisted on a purebred lab, not a rescue or shelter mix. He was concerned about temperament. I'm anti-puppy-mill and insisted on a reputable breeder. The thing is, not many of them are keen on giving labradors to people who live in high rise buildings in NYC. Six breeders, five pleading letters and one kick-ass "please give me a puppy" essay later, someone said yes.

Callie was our first child and the real test of whether my husband could care for another creature. One week after we returned from our honeymoon, we rented a car and drove five hours to Ipswich, Massachusetts to fetch our little Callie. She was as precious as her photos and the first thing she did was grab my entire wrist with her little puppy mouth. The breeder, who owned Callie's mom Mac and Callie's grandma Scotch, said "She's mouthy like her mom... good luck with that."

And so our adventures began. In her first year, Callie rode in the Pet Taxi to the vet at least a dozen times... She ate an entire section of the NY Times one day. Apparently the ink in the Arts section doesn't agree with puppy tummies. Then she had all sorts of little sicknesses... until we learned she had allergies, switched her to (expensive) prescription food and she was cured of these vet trips. She owned the walkway along the Hudson River near the Intrepid -- a few blocks from our apartment. She romped in the dog parks and would beg to keep going even walking all the way from 43rd St. to the dog park across from Chelsea Piers. She splayed out when she layed down, like a frog. We called her frog dog, crazy Callie, curious Callie... She had a friend in the building next door named Rio, a 110-lb very large nearly-white labrador who she'd romp around with indoors and out. She had another buddy, Rufus, a giant Newfoundland who lived in the same building and who towered over her but loved her nonetheless.

She hated Florida when we moved there -- not enough dog friends to play with, except at the (for-pay) dog park where she could swim faster to the stick or ball than any other dog, even if that dog had a big head start. She stole food at every turn and not even tabasco sauce on the counter could dissuade her from thieving.

Callie watching the kids trick-or-treat Halloween 2008

Our adventures with Callie continued. She became the constant watcher and loving companion to our son (here's a cute video of them together when our son was 11 months old) and later our daughter. She waited patiently for her slice of what was once the undivided attention she used get pre-kids. She moved back to NYC (and was very happy about that) where she quickly made friends again. She ate rat poison, sliced open her paw when Lila was 10 days old (poor Bart had to bear both of these burdens and the recent diagnosis), she swam in the Hudson River under the George Washington Bridge (where my son wants to spread some of her ashes when she passes since it was a place she loved so much), she was known all over the neighborhood. She stole more food, especially pizza crusts and bread. She always, always seemed smarter than the average dog and always, always was ready to play, fetch a ball, give a kiss, get petted, and behave as if she were a puppy. She never met a person who did not become an instant friend and rarely met a dog who didn't do the same. She is starting to go grey, but people still thought she was a puppy and given her puppy-antics I rarely corrected folks. She is always, always, always happy to see me -- to see all of us.

Callie loved snow. She had already been limping when I took this but the medicine was helping and she was her old self.

Callie has the kind of doggie spirit and lovable eyes that make it so easy to forgive the food-thieving and the jumping up every time you came to the door. She had the look of long life and we expected her to be one of those dogs you hear about who live to be 14 years-old. To know that she will not be a part of our lives very soon is devastating. Lots of tears have been shed and many more will be, I'm sure.

When I emailed the news to a woman who stayed at our apartment several times when we were away -- her daughter lived in our neighborhood and she and her husband watched Callie in exchange for a free place to stay to visit their grandkids -- what she wrote back summed up the impact Callie has on people. This woman was with Callie maybe 20 days over a four-year period.

She wrote: "I am so very, very sad for Callie, your family, Bart, and all of us who love Callie so much.  
She is more than special.  She gathered us ALL together around her.  She is a dear, dear friend of mine."

Life isn't fair. And death isn't either.