… However, it was all that we got.
The ever present tragedy of having a pet is that their lives are shorter than ours. The years of fun, play and adventure will come to a close sometime. And it will hurt like a bastard when it does.
On the last day of November, 2024, we said goodbye to our wonderful dog of 14+ years: Valkyrie. We knew the day would come, of course. Frankly, we got so much more than we expected. We had an entire “bonus summer” due to a dire prognosis in the spring of this year. We were told “days to weeks” in March. No one said a thing about months. No one said a thing about “she’ll see the 2024 Eclipse.” Nor did they say “you’ll end up taking her to the Gulf of Mexico this summer.” The veterinarians were giving their best guess, of course, but she greatly exceeded our expectations. I recall a day not long after she was given a short time to live that she grabbed her treat and ran across the house to her bed to eat it. “That dog has never run inside” was my remark. And it’s also when I started to get some hope that she’d be around for a while longer. However, I’m getting ahead myself. The story of our 14 year companion, road trippin’ doggo is what I want to tell, and it usually helps to start at the beginning.
Foundinafield
“Oh, she’s so beautiful! What breed is she?” is a question we regularly got when out and about with our Val. About 5 years ago, I began responding with “Foundinafield.” It sounds halfway legit, as far as dog breeds go, and completely sums up how she came into our lives. I literally found her, in a field.
But that’s too much of a simplification. I actually found her sisters in a field, and then Valkyrie came along. It was the summer of 2010 and I was working for my late friend Ken, designing and building automation equipment at Ken’s business partner’s “barn” in western Lowell, Arkansas. It was a great place for me to be at that time, as I was working on my mechanical engineering degree during the school year, and our arrangement allowed me to earn money and get experience when the needs of college didn’t suck up all my time.
The barn itself was not of the animal care variety, due to the fairly high tech work we were doing inside, but the location was very agricultural. Hay lots all around, pastures down the road, a short trip down a dirt road to the creek. Hay was being grown on the fields around the barn, and one day, two puppies appeared out of the tall grass, looking at me rather expectantly. I was living with my (then) girlfriend (now wife) and we discussed the idea of bringing a dog into the house to join the two cats. We came to the conclusion that two was going to be too much, so we should try to find their homes.
I truly do understand how a couple of puppies end up in a field out in the agri areas, but I have often been a sucker for hoping for the best in humanity, so I put a post on Craigslist to see if anyone in the area had lost a couple of puppies. I had been feeding them to keep them from starving any more than they had already, and I knew, but wouldn’t admit, that they were probably going to come home with me. However, one day when I wasn’t there, someone came by to pick up the puppies and take them home. When I learned about it, I was feeling good about a job well done. I opened the back overhead door to get some air flowing in the shop, and what should appear but… Another. Freaking. Puppy. And this poor thing was so pitiful. She was obviously the runt of the litter, and the other two had been keeping her from the food.
The first two had been hard to resist, but we succeeded. We couldn’t resist this one. From the moment she stepped out of the weeds, she was going home with us. The ticks, however, were not. One Sunday in September, 2010, AJ and I went to the shop to get the dog, get her clean, and get her home. It took a solid hour of picking to remove all the ticks from this poor dog. She had them in her ears, on her belly, and between her toes. A trip to the vet for shots, a microchip and an exam told us that she was about 6 months old. We did all the normal things to care for a new puppy, and began our life with this cute ball of… stuffy murder?
Slayer of Stuffies, Extractor of Squeakers
This dog was surgical in her removal of toy squeakers. We had given her a strong name, Valkyrie, because she had honestly been pitiful and needed all the help she could get. She took some parts of her namesake very seriously. I think stuffy toys must be a great enemy to battle in Valhalla, because she was vicious! A new toy would be destroyed in minutes, normally, or within an hour if advertised as “heavy duty”. If the toy squeaked, then that squeaker would be removed and gnawed into tiny pieces. We also learned the hard lesson that anything on the floor is in her world, and if we left it there, we were dumb. Many a shirt, slipper and blanket was damaged. We bought Nylabones. We sprayed bitter-apple (the cats loved it!) She mostly grew out of it, eventually, but there were regular expressions of “Valkyrie, did you have to eat that?!” Her later-in-life attraction to used tissues was particularly disagreeable. Those teeth and that chewing had a lasting influence on our lives. At least, on our house.
On the subject of names, we had chosen Valkyrie together. It was AJ’s suggestion, while I was thinking of “Minerva” at the time, but she brought me around. Not long after bringing Val home, we walked down the street to my parents house and introduced our little Valkyrie to my father. His greeting is etched in my memory: He bends down, rubs her head and says “Oh, are you a little 6 cylinder motorcycle?”
Fast
Valkyrie was a dog that loved to run. And boy could she. We’d take her to the dog park and her favorite thing was to try and get all the other dogs to chase her, and she’d outpace the others with barely a pant. This was great to watch in the dogpark. Not so much at home, in the back yard, when we needed her to come in because we were going to be late for work/class. That dog loved to be off-leash and wasn’t interested in anyone putting her back on until she was ready. If we were in a rush or feeling forgetful and let her our without a lead it usually ended in tears of frustration. The game she really loved to play was the “oh, I’ll lay here and let you almost touch me” game.
Other joyful backyard games included “Minelayer”, “Garden Thief”, and “Ankle-Breaker”. Ankle-breaker was a joyful exploration in how many holes she could dig. We once named a beer “Muddy Dog Stout” after her antics, and it was well deserved. “Garden Thief” was a test of how many nightshades a dog can eat without getting sick. The dainty way she stuck her head through the garden fence to gently pluck bell peppers and tomatoes was cute, but the after effects were not. “Minelayer”? You don’t need me to tell you about that one.
One memorable example of her great speed was the race between a small bunny and our Val. The bunny didn’t win that race, even though Val had the entire yard to cross. A rabbit scream is a frightful thing, and I’m not sure the Easter Bunny ever visited Valkyrie again.
The only thing that could slow our Val down was the thing that slowed everyone down: snow. She absolutely loved to frolic in the snow. The deeper, the better. She would galumpf across the backyard with snow so deep in places that all we could see were ears and a tail.
We gave our Valkyrie the best puppy education we could get at Petsmart. The training didn’t help with her absolute willfulness, and she didn’t always have the hang of loose-leash walking, but “Leave it!”, “Sit” and “Down” were always solid commands. On a visit to friends in Colorado she was taught “Shake” which was then fudged into “High-Five”, which exhausts her bag of tricks.
Adventure Dog
I can’t help but admit that we had a well traveled dog.
I also have to admit that “had” has been very hard to type so far. I keep using “have”, which we don’t, and I have to correct it, which causes tears. This isn’t easy to write.
On the subject of travel. She’s been a road tripper since the beginning. Camping, hiking too. Even a spot of kayaking (which wasn’t really pleasant for anyone involved.) Our Val took multiple trips to Colorado, a few trips to Iowa. Even one to Wisconsin. Plus all our trips around the Ozarks and Arkansas. She was a great road tripper, owing mostly to an aversion to peeing places she doesn’t know well. She loved having the windows down on the way and finding new places to dig while her puppy-parents were distracted with setting up camp.
Other Animals
Our silly little Valkyrie rarely barked. So rare, in fact, that we were always surprised when it happened. For the first 8 years of her life, it seems to be that she had a 1 bark a month allotment. Usually a big “woof!” would make us all stop and wait for the big dog that must be at the back door to do it again, but it never came. She sometimes looked sheepish when she let that big bark out.
The noise she preferred was the “grumble.” Many people mistook this noise as a growl and became wary, but once we explained that it was just her normal happy noise, life would move on. It’s hard to describe a grumble. It could be classified as a cross between a growl and a purr. We only ever heard her growl once, at our house near Monte Ne. It was at night and we never saw what caused her to growl, but if her rare bark was surprising, her growl was downright terrifying.
She came into a house with two established cats and was there when we added our third feline. Everyone mostly got a long, but the 3rd addition, Magdalena, often took advantage of Valkyrie’s mild manner. We would often find various cats cuddling with Valkyrie, even grooming her. Val would occasionally get a swat across the snout for getting too fresh, but rarely did any blood come from it.
The Beer Kitchen
I previously mentioned Valkyrie’s lasting effect on our house, right? Well, it was a fateful day in early summer 2011 that we found the answer of “Can a dog chew up a linoleum floor?” was a resounding “Yes!” We’re still not sure about the how, because she started in the middle of a section, not on a seam. She managed to chew up a 2 square foot section which started in motion a DIY avalanche. It just so happened that good old LPI was struggling and didn’t need anyone to work there any more, so I had plenty of free time and no money to hire a contractor.
If you’ve done a home project, you probably know the words to this song. It’s the “If this, then might as well that” song. Sing it with me if you know the words.
If we’re doing the floor, we might as well do the walls…
If we’re doing the walls, we might as well do the ceiling…
If we’re doing all that, we might as well add cabinets…
Our little chewer set in motion the Beer Inspired Kitchen Remodel of 2011. We learned how to tile. We learned to hate wallpaper. We reaffirmed our disgust at popcorn ceiling. We added cabinets. We tiled the cabinet surfaces. We tiled backsplashes. We built a bar counter. Added outlets. Improved the lighting. On and on, and all by ourselves. I even managed to knock the north wall of the house slightly off the foundation as I was replacing a rotten sill plate, a bonus item found when trying to fix a bonus drywall area that was found when trying to replace the sliding door with a French door. Even better, I was able to fix it! Again, if you’ve done a project at home, this probably sounds very familiar.
“Beer Inspired?” you might ask? We were (are) maintaining a minor obsession with brewing and drinking craft beer, so the colors were chosen to invoke dark beers, light heads, cream ales and other beer colorways.
Life
Our prim lady was a constant in our life. Always ready to go outside for a frolic or to be a reliable bed warmer. She had a tendency to curl up so tight that she more resembled a cannon ball on the bed. She was always proper and would often sit on the carpet with her front paws crossed in lady-like fashion. Another of her habits was to force herself under the legs of a person sitting on the couch, and if their legs were crossed, she had to nose into the opening. This became known as having a “puppy-shaped growth.”
In 2014, our Valkyrie was the Maid of Honor at our wedding, a job she took very seriously. She was even trying to lead our dance!
That year we also bought our house near Monte Ne, and so she got to learn to love living in the woods. By this point in time, we had worked on our “Come” and “Inside” commands to the point that she could be let off-leash. The only times she really took off was trying to chase down deer. Luckily for her, she never caught one. The one time she got close, a doe was protecting her fawn and not running from the dog. One grazing hoof strike likely cured Valkyrie of her tendency to chase deer. The ticks were a problem, again, and she wasn’t a fan of going downstairs, but otherwise, she seemed to like life out in the woods.
She was always a shallow water dog. Never one to try to swim, and she was comically bad at it when necessary. Shallow water was always her jam. She’d like to lay in creeks, streams and on shores, whether we had intended her to be wet in the car or not.
Changes
In 2017 we welcomed our tiny human home, and Valkyrie was just as sweet and accepting as she ever was, with the addition of being unsure about this loud, stinky and curious creature that was crawling all over her territory. As a first time (only time) child raiser, I seriously have to wonder how people get by having a toddler without a dog. So long as we fed the kid stuff that was safe for the dog, our floors stayed relatively clean! My one serious bit of parenting advice is that you have a well established dog in your house before you get to having kiddos. If you do it the other way around (baby then puppy) well, I feel sorry for you.
There were many quiet years as we all grew older. There were fewer road trips, but still many local adventures. Friends and family would visit and love on our dog, and she’d return it in spades.
It was in the beginning of 2020 that Valkyrie showed us her first sign of slowing down. A torn ACL slows just about anyone down, and it honestly hadn’t been anything different from the norm. I was walking up the driveway to check the mail, and she was doing her normal zoomies after me. But when she got to the top of the drive, she had a limp. That limp worsened over the course of a few days, so we took her to see her vet. The diagnosis was good in that it could be fixed, but we were warned that it would likely happen to the other leg soon. We chose the option that would give her continued activity and got her put back together.
She was a great friend, and wonderful company. I miss her greatly, and if you’d like to know her story up to here, I understand. The next bit is tough, and I’m writing it more for me than you. There are some wonderful things in it, but we all know the end already.
The End?
In the fall of 2023, Valkyrie was walking with me to check the mail. As we made it up the driveway she stumbled a few times, then fell over. She was panting hard and she was conscious, but unable to get up under her own power. I was thinking that I was watching my dog die. The first dog that I had ever been responsible for. My dog.
I picked her up and started carrying her back to the house, and about halfway there, she was wiggling enough to indicate that she wanted down. I set her down and she was able to walk inside on her own. A trip to the vet revealed nothing, so we were directed to wait and see, and capture a video if we can the next time it happens.
Moving forward in time to early spring of 2024, she collapses again, this time with AJ. Her thoughts were the same as mine: “Oh no, is she dying?” Another trip to the vet, with the addition of some incontinence things we had noticed lately, and they decide to get x-rays of her chest. That’s where they find a great deal of fluid on her lungs. And at that point, the vet can do nothing more, so they send us to a more capable emergency vet in Springdale.
At that point, the emergency vet, using an ultrasound to figure out how to tap her lung and relieve the fluid, well, they find fluid on her heart. This is likely what was missed months before. The emergency vet is willing to tap her heart as well, and then we’ll see how she fares. When Valkyrie’s heart doesn’t fill up immediately with fluid, they send her home with the timeline of “days to weeks”.
A lot of grieving happened then, because we were expecting her to go at any moment. I had in-home end-of-life services on the hook. It was doom and gloom in our house, and I was extremely torn up about it. We invited friends and family to come get a last visit in. People brought treats, hugs and pettins. We were told to “entice her to eat” so that dog began to get cheesy scrambled eggs twice a day.
There came a point when I brought her inside from doing her business, and I gave her the normal dental chew she always gets first thing in the morning. She took that treat and ran across the house to her bed to eat it.
That dog never ran in the house.
It was then that I began to wonder if we had more time than expected.
Bonus Time
One of the things about palliative care of a pet is that your life doesn’t end while theirs is. We started the summer with a dog on her last legs, and the last available campsite in Arkansas to see the 2024 Total Eclipse. We weren’t about to leave Valkyrie home alone while we were camping. I wouldn’t have been able to put that on our pet-sitter, not in a million years. So, OK, we’re taking the dog with. In my mind I keep hearing “I hope she doesn’t die while we’re camping.”
She did not die that trip. She wasn’t as active as she had been in the past, but she was able to go for walks with up around the campground. She even found the strength to do some digging, much to my chagrin.
And you know what? She didn’t die on the next trip either. The family had purchased a new house in town and had moved in and our dog was overjoyed to have a grass yard again, but we needed a vacation. A solid, relaxing vacation, preferably on a beach somewhere. So that’s what we did. A beach house on Dauphin Island, Alabama was where we decided to go, and again, we weren’t going to leave our Valkyrie home.
This ended up being the best decision ever, and makes me wonder why we had never taken her to a beach before. Valkyrie loved the beach. Hot sand not so much, but down on the shore? She was all about it.
The rest of our summer went well. Valkyrie got to meet a new pet-sitter during a short family trip, and did great in that regard. She found some spots in the new yard that she enjoyed digging in, and she went on some walks around the neighborhood. We were settling in and, honestly, not thinking too much about the dire prognosis she had received months ago.
The end.
The details don’t matter here. We had been waiting for Valkyrie to give us some signs and at 6:30 AM on Saturday, November 30th, 2024, she gave us all the signs at once. We made her comfortable on her bed and ensured that everyone was up and able to give her at least one last petting. An in-home vet was called to help us. The whole family was in attendance as we said goodbye, and that has to have been one of the hardest decisions to make.
By the time the vet got to our home, she was able to sit up, and even walk a little bit. We worked to keep her in bed and comfortable, in case the movement caused another attack/episode. Valkyrie sitting up when the vet arrived made it so much harder. I wanted to hope that maybe we were wrong, and she had more time. I of course didn’t want to let go. Frankly, I still don’t, and I write this through a haze of tears. I know that it was her time to go, and we were able to make it easier for her, but I’ll be damned if I’m actually OK with it. I won’t be OK for a long time.
Goodbye
We asked my father if he’d allow us to bury her on his land, out in the Ozark woods, the kind of woods where she spent so much time. It’s a place that her spirit can chase deer and squirrels all day long. It’s a place we can go visit when we’re missing her.
I can’t thank my father enough for letting us bury her there, and for helping me dig her grave. Digging a hole in the Ozarks is a fools errand, and one of the most miserable things that you can do with your time. A friend once moved here from Eastern North Carolina and asked me for a shovel to plant his new mailbox. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll also get you the post-hole digger and a rockbar.” I then had to explain the need and use of a rockbar to my skeptical brother, who is now a believer. All this about digging holes to say: It was good to have something to throw myself against. Hard work to distract me from the gaping, Valkyrie shaped hole that just opened up in my heart.
Our son went through this with bravery and compassion. He’s never known a world without Valkyrie. He suggested things to help us memorialize our dear sweet girl. We’ll make and decorate a stone to place where she rests. He wanted to send her some treats for the afterlife, like what he’s learned about in Ancient Egyptian rituals, so she has some of her favorite treats and a sprinkling of shredded cheese to snack on. I think she’ll like that just fine.
Silly Names
We’re a house of silly names for things, and have been since before Val came into our lives, so I’d like to end this with a list of some of the things we called her.
- Valkyrie
- Val
- Poochiehound
- Captain Underfoot
- Grumbledog
- Cat-Dog
- Puppy-Shaped-Growth
- Furry Cannonball
- Personal Heating Unit
- Doggo