Her Name Was . . . Dropspin?

Sitting at home alone while my boyfriend was off on long work trips, I decided that our house needed a four-legged family member. I should bite my tongue for saying that a gay man can watch the Golden Girls only so much before needing the vacancy on the sofa beside him filled, but that’s where I was in my head. However, not since my teen years had I cared for a pet in any of the places that I lived, and the more I considered it the more I longed for a furry buddy.

I told Jonathan of my wish when he came home from work one evening. “A dog should reflect the qualities of its owner,” he lovingly patted me on the shoulder after he had an endearing vision of being greeted at the end of each day by two loves in his life. “I think we should look for a dog that is a perfect reflection of you,” he encouraged.

“That’s a bit bizarre, don’t you think?” I was confused until he explained that every dog and dog owner that he had ever seen looked like they were certain to have a common forefather yet to be discovered through Ancestry.com. Wilford Brimley walking a mustachioed schnauzer fleetingly flashed through my mind.

“Just imagine yourself as a dog and choose that one,” he suggested, and we took to the internet to look at the variety of adopting options. The prospect of starting a family together—without the incessant crying and diaper horrors of an actual miniature human—filled me with hope.

The next morning with my coffee in hand, I sat on the front porch and made a list of all the things that I wanted to find in a canine companion. With my thirtieth birthday just behind me, I was deluded with a certainty that I exuded virile qualities that could be matched up by the Shelter Pet Project. “Muscular,” I proudly added to the column, imagining myself as a strong Rottweiler or a sleek Doberman. “Intelligent,” I scribbled as the mental image of Marc the German Shepherd sniffed out narcotics and chased burglars across lawns to heroically hurdle fence after fence.

When the postman walked up the steps to hand me the mail, I chuckled quietly to myself as I imagined our soon-to-be-added guardian locking its jaws on Mr. Guffey’s backside with its body perpendicularly and immovably attached. “He’s just looking after of his poppa,” I would boast and snap my fingers for the perfectly trained Rot-berman-Shepherd Bull, or whatever we would find that fit my desired description in a muscly mutt, to obediently return to my side, tail wagging proudly.

Around dinnertime, Jonathan excitedly burst through the front door, grabbed my hand, and pulled me outside. “I found her! I found her!” he sang and danced toward the car.

“Her?” I asked dubiously as I fastened my seatbelt.

“She’s perfect! You’re going to love her,” Jonathan assured and said no more as he tore out of the drive and zoomed to the local animal shelter.

Fifteen minutes later, a pair of dark brown eyes gazed hopefully into my own. Picking the toy poodle up and holding her against my chest, her tongue slathered several wet kisses across my face. “We need to have a long talk about what you think you see when you look at me, babe,” I shot at Jonathan with a disapproval that the little hyperactive black ball of fur successfully melted away in a matter of seconds.

As soon as she entered the house, our miniature queen took command and we obeyed. She sniffed about the upholstery and soon decided which part of the sofa was to be her perch—and only hers. None of the plastic chew-toys Jonathan had purchased captured even the slightest bit of her attention. Rather, she approved of the darling little plush animals I laid before her and she snuggled them around her as her courtiers.

“Dropspin?” Jonathan asked with a chuckle. “That’s her name?”

After years of teaching color guard in the marching arts, I thought the term for the first skill one learns to do with a flag a cute name for my girl. “It’s adorable, and you know it,” I defended.

Being so tiny at three months old, I chose a maroon velvet hair scrunchy to adorn her neck that caused everyone who saw her to ooh and ah. She always turned her head to the side and raised her chin with regal pride as though she understood the sounds the humans were making.

Dropspin learned words quickly and we never had to play Doggie Charades to figure out when she wanted to potty or when I wanted to go back inside. And she was a finicky eater, but after months of her dismissing each new can of food I would bring before her, we found her favorite—Pedigree Choice Cuts. She only accepted my apologies for the string of failures with a French Fry—or three.

Taking her to marching band rehearsals and competitions helped her to learn her name quicker than the Fido’s and Spots of the world. Laughing high school girls holding flags repeatedly saying her name followed by a barrage of attention-granting strokes on her soft black fur was—pardon me—Pavlovian. Dropspin developed a large fan base throughout the Midwest color guard circuits, and I did my best not to be jealous.

Before the end of the year, Jonathan and I broke up. “She's my dog and she's coming with me,” I was resolute and whisked her away to Indiana. In my lap as I drove bawling my eyes out, she gave her support motionlessly curled in my lap.

For the first few months after the breakup, she would lay beside me as I cried myself to sleep, always nestled against me with her chin in the crook of my elbow. Over time, those loving eyes reminded me that someone other than myself deserved attention and I paid my gratitude in belly rubs that lasted until I could hear the first gentle snore come out of her muzzle.

We lived with my business partner and his five cats. She took a liking to all of them. Once she tasted their moist food, she swore off the cans of Pedigree—every flavor—for good.

Every May 15, I celebrated her birthday by taking her to Pet Smart to pick out her favorite treat and a new stuffed animal of her choosing. The first time we went, I signed her up to get a professionally grooming and took a walk outside the plaza until they were finished. When I returned, I could almost hear my little friend shouting her disapproval at me, “The continental clip? What is this cartoonish crap?” After that, I found a new groomer who made her look adorable without the pretentious and silly cut.

Many times, I would have to travel out of state for upwards of a week at a time. Dropspin had already claimed her spot on my business partner’s sofa, the same spot she had on mine. She would be there as I would leave, fully aware of what the suitcase meant. Every time I would return, I’d be so happy to see her bouncing up and down behind the glass storm door, ecstatic that I was home. However, I’d have to sit with her on my chest begging for her forgiveness as she held her head turned away, punishing me without a single kiss. Eventually, she’d snap her head around and turn her tongue loose across my laughing face.

My business partner’s wife came home one day with a little stuffed cow she bought for her granddaughter hidden in her purse. About an hour later, I heard her yell, “You little thief!” I darted down the hallway to find her standing in front of Dropspin, arms akimbo. Seeing my little poodle cuddled tightly and protectively around the black and white spotted toy, I doubled over with approving laughter.

She carried it with her everywhere, even outside when she needed to go potty. It was as if she knew that it would be snatched away and taken to the intended recipient if she left it for even a moment. But after a few weeks, my business partner and I returned home from lunch to find stuffing and little shreds of black and white fabric all over the living room. “She must have figured out that it wasn't real,” I laughed.

As the years past, Dropspin seemed like she would live forever. She was always full of energy and entertainment, tilting her head back to howl whenever I would sing—or maybe she was criticizing. It wasn’t until she was fifteen that I started to see her labor to jump up to her favorite spot on the couch and that I noticed her hearing wasn’t quite as keen when I called her to come inside.

My business partner’s wife, a product of farm living, suggested once that we put her down because she was quite old for a small dog. “You’re in your fifties!” I ardently defended. “Aren’t you glad we’re not slipping pentobarbital into your iced tea?” I was hot with rage. Dropspin was merely old and hadn’t shown any signs of pain. “You can’t say you’re putting someone out of their misery when they aren’t even in misery to begin with!”

But then as she entered her sixteenth year, misery slowly arrived. She could no longer jump onto the sofa without a sharp painful yelp, and so chose to remain on the floor in a little curled up ball. Her sight started to fade, and she’d sometimes bump into the door frame to the kitchen or be startled when I would sit beside her on the floor.

One night, as she slept in the crook of my arm that was her nightly cradle for sixteen years, I watched the rise and fall of her labored breathing with tears of gratitude for the life we had together trickling down my face. Just a year earlier, she would have heard my sobs and dutifully turn to lick the salty fluid from my cheeks. But she couldn’t hear me anymore, even as I spoke to her gently, begging her to pass quietly and peacefully in her sleep so that my business partner’s wife would stop pressing me for a day that no dog owner should ever be forced to live through.

While I was away on a retreat out of state, it happened. Apparently Dropspin started to yelp incessantly in pain, most likely from a disk in her spine that had become a nuisance in those last years. Unable to contact me, my business partner and his wife made the decision and took her to the vet for the last time.

I don’t know if anyone was with her. I couldn't find the courage to ask. And I refused to talk to them when I returned home to collect my belongings. Looking back on it, I know they did the right thing. But that little furry lady was the single greatest soul to ever come into my world. It's a crime of nature in my eyes that these amazing angels aren't assumed directly into heaven at the end of their earthly sojourn.

In cold veterinarian rooms, loved ones are left with little choice but to stare into their loyal friend’s eyes and watch the lights slowly fade. I don’t know which would be harder: having watched her leave this world myself or sitting here now, crying over the fact that I didn’t get to.

Dropspin—my little angel, my little snatcher of French fries, my little bedtime buddy, my little voice critic . . . my queen—I pray that the Rainbow Bridge isn’t a myth because sixteen years was nowhere near enough, baby girl.