Life Without Dog

She's always by my side here.

My intention was to write about the last few weeks we had with our dog Jaclyn before we had to put her down. I've tried, I have a post mostly written. And I just can't finish it. Maybe I will someday and post it. I don't know yet. I just know that like in life, I need to start moving forward here on my blog just as I have been doing in my daily life.

And let me tell you, that has not been an easy process. Even almost 5 months later, there are days when the loss is as fresh as the morning dew.

The initial depression was almost crippling. I had no choice but to continue to get out of bed, out of the sleeper berth back then, and go to work. Sleeping was harder than usual. Breathing was harder than usual. Trying to write was harder than usual, especially given that one of my secondary characters is a dog. Okay, an angelic being in canine form, but still.

I even messaged my doctor asking about how long I should wait before I should be concerned about the depression. She told me not to be, really. That there is no set time limit to grieving and to grieve for my dog just as I would a human being. Which for me, is remembering her and talking about her.

Which honestly is easier in the privacy of my own home, because there are people out there who would be like 'get over it, it's just a dog'. But, she was MY dog. In so many ways, she was the center of my world. I had to get up because she had to be walked. Even out on the road, I walked her more than Mr. Janney. I had to budget in the price of her food, her bed, her toys. I had to be mindful of her water dish, her food dish, her bathroom needs, cleaning up after her if I didn't catch those bathroom needs in time. She was never very good at actually asking to go outside. Probably because I often just took her outside to go every so often, which was easier at home than on the road. But where ever, if she was asking to go out - her need was great and one of us had better be taking her out...NOW!!

You can see one of the things I have done to help myself remember her in the photo at the top of the post. I've set up a little area on my desk for her remains, a few of her toys, a picture I rotate out every so often from the photo album I've started putting together for her. I have a bazillion photos in digital form, and have started having them printed off a few at a time. I'll sit at my laptop with Google Photos open and flip through the album to see which ones I haven't gotten yet. It no longer hurts as much as it did in the beginning, and has become almost a joyful project. I'll look at some of the pictures and laugh aloud at the funny memory connected to it.

I almost retold the stories from my previous post! I'm glad I looked back and discovered this or you would have read about the time she was honking the rig horn again! Instead, I scrolled through Google Photos to find another story to tell.

It's not a long story, but the photo above shows a time when she was frantically pawing at the bottom of our hutch. I sat in my recliner, watching in amusement and wondering what she was doing. No doubt I even asked her. I don't know why I didn't get down and look, perhaps I was afraid it was a mouse she was after. But no, when Mr. Janney looked at a later time, it turned out her tennis ball had been lost underneath it! We hadn't been playing at the time, so I'm not sure how it got under there.

My photo album project has expanded to include photos of humans too. I put them in a separate album though. A recent picnic my family held inspired me to make sure I label my photos too. Who's in them and the like. I had asked my sister to find some older photos of our mother since the picnic was in her honor, celebrating her 75th birthday early and honoring what would have been her 50th wedding anniversary. Well, since she's never remarried I guess it IS her 50th wedding anniversary regardless of dad passing on back in 1995. Any way, the end result of my request was that entire photo albums were brought! And one of the remarks someone made that day was how not all the pictures were labeled, older black and white photos especially. I was so inspired by this that I went through an entire album I'd already put together of my wedding reception picnic and labeled the backsides of every single picture. That was a late night well spent!

It has also expanded to hanging photos I've taken around the house. I ordered this canvas print of Mt. Shasta without really knowing where I was going to hang it. We recently rearranged our bedroom due to a new bed and I found the spot to hang it. It looks a little lonely, but I'm not sure if I'm going to print off more of my mountain range pictures to hang around it or do random photos from out on the road.

It's just not enough for me to have the photos only on my phone anymore. I have this need to have more visible reminders of happier times. The photo of Mt Shasta in California was taken on a very windy day back in March from the rest area where I had decided to park to wait it out. It was so windy, that when I walked Jaclyn the force of the wind surprised her so much she staggered, and when walking back to the rig after doing her business those adorable ears of hers where blown straight back - I'm afraid if her ears had been any wider, she'd have take off! Even pictures she's not in include memories of her.

Alright, this post has gone on long enough. I have other things I need to get done today, though I promise to post again sooner rather than later. Until next time, stay safe and be well.

The Unplanned Pet

This is my 3rd 4th attempt to write about the loss of my pet. Part One: The unplanned pet.

Do you believe in love at first sight? I do. I've never experienced it with a human, but I have experienced it with pets. I could list them all off for you, but that's maybe for another time. This little series is going to be about my previous dog, Jaclyn.

The tale that never slowed down

11 years ago this summer, my husband (who was still a boyfriend then) and I were at  friend's new place. I don't remember all the details of who else was there that day aside from her brother and  his family, just mostly remember that the kids were all racing around with dogs and at least one new puppy.

This puppy, an adorable little girl with a brown patch over her left eye (among other places), happened to draw near to me and I picked her up. She was this tiny little thing and I cradled her in one arm like a baby.

We looked at each other, and fell in love. Of course, puppies love everyone. But something in my heart caught and I gave Mr. Janney a look that was quite clearly pleading. It drew some teasing from our friends. But she was a new puppy to the family and not available for taking home. I put her down so she could resume her play with the kids and that was that.

Some people have unplanned pregnancies. I did not. What I ended I having was an unplanned pet.

I'm not sure exactly how long after this meeting it happened. It's been over a decade and details fade with time. Some details anyway. Mr. Janney and I were working at different places, on different shifts. I came home one night after work, in the wee hours of the morning, to find a puppy in a crate! It wasn't just any puppy, but the aforementioned puppy I had already fallen in love with.

There was a note from my husband, telling me when she'd been walked and fed last. I was surprised, to say the least. To this day I'm still not 100% certain how it happened. A case of Mr. Janney being in the right place at the right time I guess. The family had decided to rehome the puppy and he was there at the time of the discussion and said we'd take her.

Thus the adventure began. And adventure it was as you can witness in the photo of her jumping a child-gate in the photo posted just below. This was in April of 2011 so she was almost a year old.

Gate jumping at my mother's

Naming her took us a little time. I'm not sure what name she had with her previous family, but either we didn't like it or we didn't think it fit her. I made a random comment how the spot covering her eye made her look like a pirate and I wished we could name her Jack after Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Had Mr. Janney not spoken about the issue with a co-worker and friend named Jacqueline, our dog most likely would have ended up with the unimaginative name of Spot. Or Bessie, because her markings also reminded me of dairy cows. Something sparked in my husband during that conversation and he realized we could name our dog a feminine version of the name Jack. I probably changed the spelling the way I did to more accurately represent the Jack part and how it should be pronounced. Which apparently gave some relatives problems and she was often called Jackie by them...which was no small amount of confusion since our friend also went by the same nickname. I often had to ask them to specify which "Jackie" they were referring to!

Her: "You were gone for sooooo long!!!!!"
Me: "I was only out in the yard for like, ten minutes."

I often wondered over the ten years we had her, if naming her after an eccentric pirate had been the right thing to do. She often wound up in some interesting predicaments. In the early years, we confined her to a crate when we weren't home. And we came home to this sight more than once when she was young.

If you look behind the crate, you can see a brown ottoman. Which is what we kept her cage on for a short time when she was a puppy. I think I was having back pain at the time and Mr. Janney's motivation for keeping her up there was to limit bending over too far. Needless to say, this arrangement did not last long after this incident. She was always a bundle of an enormous amount of energy, probably the Beagle and the Boxer in her blood. She deserved more than the small yard we have at the trailer court. There were times we took her up to my in-laws property and let her run around. A bath was always needed afterward because she inevitably found mud. Although - she was just as good at finding mud in our small yard the few times we tied her out.

2012

She was a happy dog, clean or dirty. I'm not even sure where she found the mud this day, but she certainly enjoyed herself! She didn't enjoy the bath that followed, but then she never did enjoy baths. She preferred getting wet on her own terms, I have videos of her tromping around in a stream up to my in-laws. She was certainly enjoying the freedom that day. If I decide to post the videos to YouTube, I'll be sure to share them.

Look at that smile!

Jaclyn also loved snow. The fruitcake! That was a trait she shared with my husband and not me. The deeper the snow was, the happier she was. I was never able to get her to play 'catch' with snowballs like I did with another dog Little Bear. Different dogs, different games. Jaclyn just loved plowing through the snow.

She loved playing fetch, tug of war, and chasing a laser light. She learned all the simple commands, sit and shake paws were her two best. She had a little trouble with 'stay' because she had 'ants in her pants' and had a hard time sitting still. She was learning how to sit with a treat on her nose, I never made her wait too long.

Taken just before the horn blowing incident
I wonder if she was planning it even then?
She looks like she was planning something!

Jaclyn just wanted to be where we were. When we made the transition just over 2 years ago from factory jobs to trucking, we always planned on taking her with us on the truck. I think she made the transition to over the road travel better than I did! She didn't like being left in the truck alone, which we had to do sometimes like when we showered or ate at a restaurant. There was one time when we were at one of our terminals early on when we were in showering and one of our cellphones rang. It was the Safety Department letting us know that Jaclyn was blowing the horn of our truck and 'Is she okay? She's not too hot?' "No, we left the truck running with the air on and she's just upset because we left her alone. We're in the shower right now and we'll be out shortly." We didn't drag our feet, but we were literally ready to step into the shower when the call came. Neither of us felt it was necessary to stop what we were doing to go tie her up. Needless to say, they called us twice more before we were done. After that, we had to tie her up when we both left the truck. As funny as we found it, we couldn't risk her doing that somewhere else.

Waiting for Mr. Janney's attention
His legs are to the right
The legs to the left are Mom Janney's

We had to put Jaclyn down at the beginning of this month, and it's still feels odd to be speaking of her in the past tense. It's salt to the wound. It's a twisting of the knife stabbed in our hearts. I know eventually we will adjust to life without her, but it's not just yet. Mr. Janney has said that she was more my dog than his, because I did the bulk of the caretaking and playing, but he follows it up with - 'She was always there. Whenever I looked down to the end of the bunk, there she was.' We did have different relationships with her, but we both bonded with her. Because now she's not there when we look, and we both miss her.

I have to stop now. I'll write more about her another time. Currently Mr. Janney and I are sitting in a motel room in Toledo waiting out the weekend for our rig to be fixed. "We know what's wrong with your truck, but we don't have the part right now." Trucking life!

Wordless Wednesday 08-22-2018

Mom - quit taking my pic and take me outside...