Maizie

 I am sitting on the floor of the basement with Maizie beside me. She's warm and is breathing slowly. She smells like herself. (Side note: I have also thought that Maizie had a unique smell. It's not dog; it's better than that. Something like grains, but wholly her. I have always loved her smell.)

Maizie has been the best girl. I vividly remember when we learned about her. I had been looking for dogs and wanted the friendliest breed: a lab/golden retriever mix. While playing Dixit in our apartment in Baltimore with friends from grad school, our friend, Meagan, said that her mom's dog was having puppies and she thought that they were lab/golden retrievers. (Another side note... we were drinking. Maybe Meagan didn't say this. Maybe this is just what I heard because it was what I wanted to hear. But, by the time that we learned that they were not lab/golden retrievers, but rather an odd mix of dachshund, catahoula hound, and lab, I was smitten with the idea and too far gone.)

Maizie was born on January 12th, 2013. She was the only girl, I believe. It was several weeks before we could go get her, but then Randal drove down to Alabama to pick up this tiny puppy. Randal is not a dog person. This was love for me, to be sure. I didn't want to tell my parents how far we went to get a dog because they would make fun of me relentlessly. Randal accidentally let it slip a few months later that while she was free, he had driven 1000 miles to pick her up and they have since made fun of me relentlessly.

She was a perfect little puppy. She had gray eyes and was a beautiful yellow lab-looking dog. She had sharp teeth and lots of energy. She was terrified of the stairs in our third-story walk-up because she once fell down them. She was adorable. She chewed everything. She whined. When my friend Stephanie watched her overnight, she said that she thought Maizie was "a little spoiled". 

She started to grow longer, like she was being stretched out, but her legs didn't grow with her. I asked Randal why and he thought that they must go through different growth spurts. Eventually, we had to admit that the growth spurt for her legs would never come and this was a funny looking dog who people would always ask, "what is she?" and when I would answers, "dachshund/lab", a look of understanding would cross their face as the age-old question, what does a lab/dachshund combination look like? was answered.

In the first year of her life, Maizie successfully destroyed the zippers on all of our sleeping bags, a braided rug that my parents had made in the 1980s, my favorite green chair, shoes, socks, underwear, a remote control, every single toy we got for her, and anything wooden she could get her teeth on. My dad had given me a beautiful wooden drying rack for my 30th birthday and it was over five years before I could set it up in the same space where Maizie would be. The chewing waned after the first year, but never actually ended. Just a couple months ago, she chewed the face off of both girls in Marian's toy frog family. (Who knows why she left the boys alone...)

I had high hopes of training the perfect dog who came and sat and stayed on command. Maizie was not that dog. When we moved to Oregon, she loved the hills behind our house. When we took her up there and let her off leash, she would not return until she was ready. It was a really "fun" game of coming closer and then running away and then coming closer and then running away. If she really believed I was going home without her, she would come to me, but I played that card too many times and she stopped falling for it. There were a lot of hikes in which I just had to sit at the top of the hill and wait until she was done so that we could go home.

To remedy this, I thought that she needed a friend to help wear her out. I asked other people for advice about getting two dogs, but I asked only people who I knew would support the idea. Stephanie went with us to look for a dog, saying that she would take the dog if it didn't work out. And thus, Juneau joined the family. Maizie immediately fell in love, and thus began a 10-year friendship of co-dependency in which Maizie loved Juneau unconditionally and Juneau loved Maizie unless there was someone else in the room who would pet her.

Maizie didn't love children though - or strangers. When people came to the house, Maizie was never aggressive, but rather, standoffish. If kids tried to pet her, she just kept backing away and then would hide until they left. Therefore, I didn't know what she would do when we had a baby. Would she allow the baby to pull her very-pullable ears? Would she lash out? 

13-weeks pregnant with Milo

I needn't have worried. 

Very pregnant with Milo

Maizie was Milo's protector from the day she met him. She would sit by his bassinet and watch out for him. If he moved to the vibrating chair, so did she she. She sat by the swing. When he moved into his room and would cry, she would sit outside his room until he stopped crying, and only then would she come downstairs to bed. When he got older and could reach for her, she still sat close to him, letting him pet her and then perhaps moving just a touch out of reach after he had pulled out her fur one too many times. 

Meeting Milo the first time

When Paige began as our nanny and Annie came over, she was, as her mother puts it, a wild child. We never had to be nervous with Maizie who would tolerate whatever came her way. And when she was done tolerating it, she would simply go to a different room. She loved her kids.

And as Marian was born and went through the same stages as Milo, Maizie treated her with the same level of love and protection as she did Milo.

Very pregnant with Marian

Maizie certainly wasn't a perfect dog on an objective scale. We could never train her out of rushing the front door and barreling people over or running out herself. (Despite countless half-hearted attempts over the last 11 years.) As she got older, she would feign deafness outside and would only come back in when she was ready. She was terrible on a regular leash and we had to use a gentle-leader very early on. She was 60 pounds of low-to-the-ground muscle and with a regular leash, she could rip your arm out of your socket. (Even with the gentle leader, she was known to have pulled at least 2 children down the street.)

She wouldn't play fetch with you, but would grab a stick and hold it in front of you and growl. And bark. It wasn't a very fun game, but it was the one that she played. She barked a lot. She didn't tolerate being outside for longer than she wanted and would bark repeatedly to be let back in. She was often underfoot. As a short dog, she was the perfect height to almost knock you over in the kitchen. Her tail wag was so strong and many wine glasses were knocked over thanks to her.

But, she had so many charming habits. She loved swimming and it was one of the best ways to wear her out. She could fetch sticks in the water for hours and would determinedly swim out to get them and swim back with progressively larger sticks in her mouth. When we rafted a river, rather than being in the boat, Maizie just swam next to our canoe the whole time. 

And she loved sticks. No stick was too big for her and you would see her practically dragging logs down the driveway at my parents'. During walks in the woods, everyone had to be warned that they would likely be clothes-lined by one of Maizie's sticks. Sometimes one wasn't enough. If she could, she would carry two at a time. A lot of time was spent watching Maizie try to fit two sticks in her mouth and then carry them all the way home. Most of the time, she succeeded.

...

Maizie was diagnosed with lymphoma nearly 3 weeks ago and it has been a rapid decline. She has lost weight and become lethargic. She can't keep food down and falls frequently. It's almost time to say goodbye.

But, it is so hard. Maizie has been with us for nearly all of Randal and my relationship. She sat with me while I did biostats in my masters program. And again while I did it in my PhD program. She knew Stephanie and loved her and stayed with her countless times. She played with Stephanie's dogs and chewed sticks and made messes in Stephanie's house. She ran away from three different dogsitters (who were our friends, watching our dogs as a favor) who then kindly refused to watch her again. She has comforted me through two pregnancies and two miscarriages, through Stephanie's loss, through the grief of leaving Oregon behind, through health scares and kids scares and job drama and PhD frustrations. And all of those days in between when I babied her or ignored her or got frustrated with her or loved on her. She was wildly consistent in her desire for popcorn and the dirty food liquid in the dishwasher and her huge love for her family.

...

Thank you, Maizie, for all that you have given me and taught me. Thank you for bringing your quirky, stubborn, beautiful self into my life. Maybe you weren't the perfect dog, but you were the perfect dog for us.