Big furry goofball
Such a love . . . until you weren't.
Missing you, Sprinkles.
This post grew out of a comment thread I was having with 
I've always handled death well, so for much of my life, I was always the one designated with visiting people in the hospital, going to funerals and, later, putting down animals who were clearly not going to recover; or, more correctly, taking them to the vet, and remaining with them throughout the process. In most cases, holding them in my arms.
Not a fun job, but in that case, I want them to be accompanied by someone who loves them; not just handed over to a technician, no matter how nice and caring they may be. The last thing I want is for one of my beloved companions to leave this world afraid, rather than in the arms of someone they love and trust, who loves them just as much.
The one exception was our dog Sprinkles, who suddenly and unexpectedly bit me in the face during a trip to the West Coast, resulting in seventeen stitches.
I was very lucky. It could easily have been much, much worse.
Because it happened in California, he legally had to be turned over to Animal Control for ten days, so that they could assess him and make certain that he did not have rabies. We already knew that he didn't.
Marek and I discussed staying until he was released and taking him home, but as it was the sixth in a series of escalating biting incidents, each more damaging than the last, I made the decision to have him put down.
It was one of the hardest things I have ever done, which, even though I still think I made the right decision, I still regret. And it was even harder on Marek, even though he had told me from the start that he'd support whatever decision I made, and did so.
Sprinkles was a gorgeous and very loving mix of Newfoundland and (we think) border collie, eighty-five pounds of solid muscle, and all I could think of was, what if it had been someone's child, rather than me? How could I live with myself?
Sprinkles came into my life through a circuitous set of circumstances. The short version is that my friend Lynne, who started the meditation group I've been part of since 1998, had a sister named Joan, who also became one of my closest friends. Sprinkles was one of her three dogs.
The Christmas after my marriage broke up, Joan invited me to spend Christmas with them and their family, and I took her up on her invitation. At one point, when I was sitting on the floor petting Sprinkles, her son Jon jokingly asked me, "You want a Newfoundland?" To which I responded, not as jokingly, "Well, actually . . . yes. In fact I do."
And so I started taking Sprinkles for walks. First around their neighborhood, and then later, to our area parks. And I discovered that Sprinkles had been terrified of cars since he was a puppy - because of the violence of his reaction, and the depth of his terror, Joan thought that he might have been thrown from a moving car, as when she got him at three months of age, he had a serious shoulder injury, and was "more afraid of cars than any cat."
And yet, the first time I asked Sprinkles to get into my van, he did so willingly, and he was fine throughout. He was, in face, an ace traveler, happy and calm, and completely joyful to be taken along for the ride. He loved everyone, they loved him, and he made friends everywhere he went.
In the end, Joan and Ted knew I was going to adopt Sprinkles months before I did. At one point, when I had been particularly busy, and hadn't taken Sprinkles for a walk for about four days, Joan called me and told me, "Your dog misses you."
But one day, a few days before I was planning to finally bring him home, she called me with reservations. Sprinkles had bitten one of her cats without provocation, taking his entire head int his mouth, and even though the cat more more wet than harmed, she told me that she didn't know if she could adopt him to me in good faith.
We discussed it further, and both thought about it a lot. Joan's house was a literal zoo; she helped run a cat rescue from her home, had roughly fifty foster cats and kittens all over her home at any given time, on top of their own three dogs and three or four cats.
There were also and lots of comings and goings of people, due to the cat rescue, as well as lots of friends and family members, and regular entertaining. Their place was pretty much always busy with something.
My logic was that my home was much calmer, I had only one cat at the time, Bear, and not a lot of people coming over. I felt that it was a calmer atmosphere for him, he would be the only dog, and we both thought that part of the issue was the recent aggression between him and her other male dog, Rascal, who were both vying to be alpha dog.
Joan had also told me that he was terrified of thunderstorms, and fireworks, and had cleared their chain-link fence in the back yard once, trying to getaway from the fireworks their next-door-neighbor was setting off.
But after I adopted him, when he was four, he was fine. I was sitting in the living room reading one night, with Sprinkles lying on the floor about ten feet away, and when particularly loud crash of thunder reverberated through the house, he raised his head to look at me.
I love thunderstorms, so I told him "It's okay, it's just a storm, we're safe inside," or something to that effect. He put his head down and sighed. No more terror of storms. He was even fairly okay with fireworks, as long as I was; if it didn't bother me, it was okay with him. And after Marek entered our lives, they bonded even more strongly.
As Marek and I started our search for property, we took several trips, ranging from long weekends to a few days. Our friend who took care of our animals told us that, the longer we were gone, the more despondent Sprinkles became.
So when we decided to take the Matrix Energetics practitioner course together, which was held in Seattle, we decided to drive across country, and to take Sprinkles with us. It was to be our first real vacation since we had been together.
So we set off for Seattle from Largo, Florida, a trip that took five full days, and we had a great time. Sprinkles, as always was a great traveler. We took Marek's Silverado, which had a camper shell and bedliner, and we had opted for sliding windows in both truck and camper shell, so we could talk to Sprinkles in the back, and hear him if he needed us.
And he had about three times the space, or more, than he would have had in my 4Runner.
There were a lot of highlights along the way, including the first time Sprinkles saw snow, in Wyoming. Newfoundlands were made for snow, and Sprinkles was thrilled. Of course, the downside to the Silverado was that, unlike the 4Runner, it was too tall for Sprinkles to just jump in, so Marek had to life eighty-five pounds of cold wet dog back into the truck. Every time he got out.
And Seattle itself was nice, though it rained much of the time we were there. We were staying across the street from where the class was being held, so every break we went and walked Sprinkles, who got to meet several of our fellow class members, and made friends with them.
And after the class was over, we began the trip south. Marek had never been to California, I hadn't been back in eight years, and there were so many things we wanted to see together.
We stayed in Grants Pass, Oregon, for a couple of days, where I still have cousins, got to have lunch with my cousin Jean Ann, and we both fell in love with the Rogue River.
And Fish Lake, in southern Oregon, was where Sprinkles had absolutely the most fun in his life. Here, the snow was deeper, pristine, unbroken, and unspoiled by footprints . . . no one else had been here since it had snowed.
Sprinkles was in his glory. He ran, he romped, he played tag, he raced . . . he kept going until he was exhausted, but I've never seen him happier, even at Dog Beach. Sprinkles, Florida dog that he was, LOVED the snow, every freezing cold wet morsel of it. So he was REALLY soaked this time, when Marek lifted him back into the truck.
And then set off for California, taking the Redwood Highway as we went, and Marek took note of all of it as I was driving. And the mountains grew taller, and the trees grew much bigger, and he finally asked, "And you left California . . . why?"
Why indeed. We reached the coast at Crescent Beach, marveled briefly at the redwood logs and driftwood on the sand, and headed for the marina, where the docks were damned near covered with elephant seals.
Sprinkles wanted to take them on. ALL of them. Badly.
It was all I could do to hold him back, and finally required Marek's help, as eighty-five pounds of muscle with a low center of gravity is tough to convince that, really, you DON'T want to tangle with a pissed off elephant seal weighing close to half a ton; much less dozens of them.
Finally, we headed back down to the much-quieter beach, with literally not another human in site, and spent a few more contemplative moments before heading to our hotel for the night. I've always adored Crescent City.
Marek couldn't get over the redwoods. He wanted to camp in them. Now. With no camping gear. I was more concerned that Sprinkles, never the greatest at coming when called, would simply take off and leave us in the dust. Marek thought I was being silly. Perhaps I was.
The next night found us in Ukiah, and we visited the Ukiah Brewery for dinner, the first fully organic brewery in the U.S., where I was delighted to discover (thanks to their backward sign in the window) that Ukiah, spelled backwards, reads haiku. Perfect. It felt like a homecoming.
After a truly fabulous dinner with some great brews, we got to our hotel and couldn't get our key to work, and so went to tell the night clerk. When the gentleman took us back to our room, and then reached through the window to gain entrance for us . . . ummmm no, thanks all the same, we'll stay somewhere else.
So we wound up down the road, in one of the smallest hotel rooms I've ever stayed in, but it was clean and we didn't feel like moving again, so okay. Marek started watching a special on Roman soldiers, which I found interesting, so I watched it with him.
But as I watched, I found myself having a mental fantasy about a Greek villager who, having been speared by the Romans, which has pinned him to the ground, winds up as the only one still alive; his comrades lie fallen all around him, as he can hear, but do nothing to stop, the Romans laying waste to his village, as he hears the screams.
I was playing with a song about it in my head when Sprinkles passed me, and gave me a strange look, which I shook off.
That night I had a vivid dream that we had gone camping in the redwoods, that Sprinkles had indeed taken off after a rabbit or some sort of animal, and that we lost him, and in the process became separated from one another. As I wandered alone, trying to find him, my sleeping self, unknown to the me in my dream, realized that he had run afoul of a larger predator, and that we would not be seeing him again.
As one who rarely remembers my dreams, this was particularly vivid, and unsettling. I awoke out of sorts, went to the bathroom, having to step over Sprinkles in the process as the room was so tiny, and then came back out to let Marek know that it was time to get up, and go get some breakfast.
As I headed back to take a shower, my foot brushed the top of his fur, and I automatically told him "Sorry," though I hadn't kicked him. I sat on the end of the bed, above where he lay, and he growled at me. I asked him, "Why are you growling," and he suddenly launched himself at me, biting deeply into my face, and holding on.
I cried out, "Sprinkles, No!," then started screaming.
By the time Marek pried open Sprinkles' jaws to release me, and handed me a clean washcloth to try to stop the flow of blood, our room looked like a scene out of CSI.
Our first stop, obviously, was the emergency room, where I got awesome care, and lucked out in that the doctor who cared for me had done a residency in plastic surgery. Thanks to him, I still have a face, and don't scare too many little children by looking at them.
The rest of that day was something of a daze, which may well have been in part due to the painkillers, but also to my own meandering thoughts. Did I somehow bring this on by my musings the night before about the Greek villager? In my musings, he was impaled and immobilized, but not dying, as the spear had missed his vital organs.
He was also waiting for the dogs to find him.
Or could my dream have been somehow shared by Sprinkles? Could he have sensed my feeling that he wouldn't be with us much longer? Was it a premonition? Or, God forbid, could he have thought that I meant to harm him?
That night, I couldn't sleep because I was afraid. Every time he moved I started. I had never been afraid of Sprinkles, even when he once bit me on the hand while I was grooming him. Never had I not trusted him. Until now.
When we got up the next morning, Marek told me that he would support whatever decision I made, and I told him, "I hope you mean that. I called a few people, but the call I dreaded most was the call to Joan, who I knew would be devastated. When I told her I didn't know what to do, she didn't hesitate, but told me, Cori, you have no choice."
Which is what I felt as well. All I could think of was my friend Emily, who had recently brought her five-year-old over to visit, and she and Sprinkles had been smitten with each other.
And the young man at a rest stop along out trip, who asked if the toddler son he was holding could pet Sprinkles, then bent low so that his son could reach. What if Sprinkles had chosen one of these moments to snap instead? Or what if it had happened when Marek was out of town, and I was alone with Sprinkles? What then?
When I described what had happened to the woman who ran the shelter, she said it sounded like something called a "personality seizure," where for a brief moment, the dog literally doesn't recognize the person or people he lives with.
This explanation immediately resonated with me, and felt true; when I sat on the bed, and Sprinkles looked up at me, there was no recognition in his eyes. None.
So, in the end, I turned Sprinkles over to the animal shelter, in the care of the lovely woman who ran it, with a heavy heart. I also left him with his large and cushy dog bed, lots of toys, his food and a huge container of treats, with instructions that, after his passing, they be used to give comfort to other dogs at the shelter. I know she used them well.
Upon leaving the shelter, I pulled out behind a truck that had the worst possible bumper sticker under the circumstances: "Let me be the kind of person my dog thinks I am."
We had planned on visiting friends in L.A., but once I got my stitches checked, and was okayed for travel, I just wanted to go home.
That night was our last night in Ukiah. We had changed hotels after what happened.
The next morning, in that half-asleep-half-waking state, I clearly heard Sprinkles sigh, stretch and turn over at the foot of our bed. I quietly asked Marek, "Did you hear that?"
To which he replied, "What? Sprinkles?"
We had both heard him clearly. Sleeping in his dog bed, in his run at the animal shelter across town, our boy knew where he wanted to be, and with whom. And somehow, for a brief and shining moment, he had found a way.
I spent the next several days trying to reach someone willing to take Sprinkles on and rehabilitate him, but it was too close to the holidays, and I was unable to find anyone; he bit me on December 16th, and he was scheduled to be put down on the day after Christmas. The timing couldn't have been worse.
Mostly I was trying to get in touch with my friend Max, whose wife Nelly had opened a grooming salon next door to my frame shop years earlier. Nelly groomed dogs, but Max trained them, and he specialized in rehabilitating dogs that had histories of biting, and had a fabulous success rate. But no one knew where they had gone when she closed her shop. And I couldn't remember their last name.
Ultimately time ran out. I could not bring him home, and could find no one else to take him. I did finally get a call back, from the Newfoundland Rescue in California, a few days after he was put down.
I did finally finish the song about the Greek villager, and I wrote one about what happened with Sprinkles, as well. They were hard to write, and they took me a long time, but I needed to get them out. They were cathartic.
And I am always, forever, grateful to have had Sprinkles in my life, despite everything. He was a wonderful, funny, happy, silly, cheerfully goofy boy.
And I still miss him. And, like Ebony, I always will.
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This has taken hours, and has been exhausting to write. I'll format it properly tomorrow. Good night all.
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All words and images are my own.
The image of Sprinkles wading at Dog Beach,at Ft. DeSoto State Park in St. Petersburg, Florida, I took in September 2009. We went there a lot, because it was only half an hour or so from where we were then living in Largo.
The photo of our dog, Lolo, and our late cat, Miod, I took as they were cooperatively begging at the dinner table, despite our longstanding rule of not feeding them from the table. You can see how much that deterred them both.
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