DOGS OF OUR LIVES – MIA P.I.A. (Pain In Ass)

Midnite was to have been our last dog but it wasn’t a week later when John came home and said he couldn’t stand it. We had to get another dog. He had to have someone to greet him at the door when he got home. Our marriage contract didn’t call for me to greet him on all fours wagging my behind so, I got busy right away looking for the perfect dog on the internet. It had to be black lab or black lab and something else.

A litter of huge proportions was available for view and choosing in Bellingham. We made the trip and the first dog that came over and sat on John’s shoe was the one he chose. Again, bureaucracy didn’t allow us to take her home that day and someone actually made a trip to view our house and yard, plus she had to be spayed and chipped.

A couple weeks later, we retraced our steps to Bellingham and picked up the little black dog…supposedly half Rottweiler and half black lab. The way she looked when she grew up supported this theory. All the way home, she sat on my lap beneath a towel because the sun was hot and beating directly down into the car.

John named her Mia after the soccer player and I added the P.I.A., mainly because she refused to learn to stay out of my garden beds for the longest time. At the place Mia and her family were fostered, the entire back of the yard was bushes, so she thought she had to have brush tickle her bottom in order to go. It took some time to convince her she didn’t need to get into my flowerbeds in order to go potty. Of course, whenever she thought she could get away with it, she still liked those bushes on her bottom.

Mia turned out to be the smartest dog we ever had. When new people moved in behind us, they had a dog named Lucy. They would call to ask if Mia could have a play date. After a few times, when the phone rang at a particular time in the afternoon, Mia would race to the kitchen and sit looking expectantly at the phone. When the answering machine picked up, if it was Lucy’s owner on the phone, Mia was out the door and at the back gate before the message was finished. If it was a hang-up or someone else, you could see her dejection as her ears flopped, her head drooped and she more or less slunk back to wherever she’d been before the phone rang.

John couldn’t resist buying Mia toys whether it was at a garage sale or the pet store. Over the years, she ended up with a HUGE basket of toys. But, she knew the names of her toys. To quote from an email AJ sent the day after Mia’s demise, “Another one [what he would miss] was asking her to retrieve one of her toys. Be it Buffy the Bison or Cow’ee the Cow or whatever you or Dad named them. The names always seemed too end with a Y or an E. Off she would go & findy whatever’ee you said’ee & bring it to you.  Mia was pretty smart.”

When people came to the door, Mia sounded like the most vicious dog in the world. If it was a stranger, I’d stand with my legs together and the door open only a bit while she barked and growled. Little did those strangers know that if I opened the door all the way, she’d have been wagging her tail and licking their hands by the time she made it on to the porch. The UPS driver took to having a cookie for her if she was out front and if not, the cookie was left on the package. The mailman also took to having a cookie for her. It made him laugh to give her the mail and have her run up the driveway with it (she got another cookie once it was in the house). There wasn’t anyone who went through the neighborhood that Mia didn’t make into a friend.

Mia was really John’s dog even though I had high hopes on the ride home that she’d like me best. She went everywhere with him and eventually I refused to ride in his car because the blue seats were actually black and the windshield and door window were covered with Mia nose prints. What a forlorn doggie she was when John left and didn’t take her along. I took her on walks, though and she really liked those as well although I swear she couldn’t possibly have needed to poop for days after a walk.

When it came to Christmas or birthdays (John chose July 4^th for Mia’s), she was another dog that loved to open those packages. Family and friends began to bring her wrapped gifts because they enjoyed her enthusiasm so much. To quote AJ again, “Having her open a gift was fun to watch.  She was delicate at first with the initial tear but half way through she was ripping & tearing that dang box open.  Be it her gift or one of ours.”

She also thought that breakfast, dinner or snack time was also her time to eat, and it didn’t mean eating dog food in a bowl.  No matter what John ate, Mia always got at least one bite…he even took to bringing Mia her own McDonald’s cheeseburgers and ice cream. Of course, she might have lived longer on a decent diet, but John’s still going strong, so who knows.

It took a couple of years for Mia’s health to decline. The vet worked with us and we ordered special medications to help with her arthritis and bladder problem. When she became incontinent, we found there are doggie diapers you can buy. So, we began to diaper her, mostly at night (if we paid attention during the day, she always let us know when she needed out), and she didn’t seem to mind. It was difficult to keep the diaper on her because she was a large dog, so I manufactured a link from the diaper to her collar that helped her keep it up. And, instead of buying spendy doggie liners, we found women’s menstrual pads worked just as well, if not better.

Neither John nor I wanted to face the fact Mia’s time was growing short, but eventually the vet said he and the surgeon he’d had look at the x-ray believed one of her vertebrae was compromised with cancer. We made the sad choice a couple of weeks later when getting up became painful for Mia to put her under the apple tree.

Our vet said he would come to our house to put her down after his Saturday clinic. All morning, Mia laid on a thick towel , drank as much water as she wanted and ate all the treats offered her by her big brothers AJ and Thor (who came to dig her resting place); and of course by John and I.  Mia was loved and petted and hugged all morning by one of her family. When the vet arrived Mia greeted him like an old friend; and surrounded by love, familiar hands on her body, a full tummy and bladder, Mia left us.

AJ’s email still makes me tear up 15 months later:  “Mia was in good spirits on Saturday I believe. She made it out to the dining room & just hung out. You could tell by her bright eyes, tail wagging, head bobbing & a lick of your hand or face that she was interested in what we were all doing. She still wanted to please everyone as was her job, which she took very seriously. I was grateful to see that as was everyone else I hope.

“ As with all Karlberg pets Mia had her own character & quirks that provided all of us with joy, happiness & laughter.  Her rightful place under the apple tree with the others is a great ending for a great doggy doodle as Dad would say.”