My Little Tasmanian

My mother brought him home to me as a gift on my fifth birthday. The second I made eye contact with those sweet chocolate eyes and scratched behind those pointy ears that stood straight up even as a puppy, I knew we were bonded. I know it sounds strange to say this or how I would know it that young but you know how sometimes you just... know? The connection I felt to this little brown ball of uncontainable energy was unbreakable.

At just a mere five years old, my mom bestowed the honor of gifting him a name and you know the first thing that came to my mind while looking at his brown fur and uncontainable energy? The Looney Toons Tasmanian Devil. I mean, why wouldn't I? That's all I watched so I knew that little cartoon devil all too well. Just like the cartoon, he destroyed EVERYTHING in his path. Absolutely nothing was safe from this little pup of destruction and chaos. His energy was the perfect match to my own, we would spend hours playing together and he would crawl into bed right next to me at the end of the day.

Fast forward fifteen years, my Tazzy was diagnosed with colon cancer. After several surgeries and attempts to save his life, I was absolutely devastated when the doctors told us there wasn't much, if anything, we could do for him besides make him as comfortable as possible. We had to schedule THAT dreaded appointment for him, we didn't want him to suffer anymore than he already has. What fur parent would, right? In the end, you have to do what's right by the animal and put your own selfish wants aside. He was hurting and it didn't take a doctor to tell us that.

Obviously, this was far from my favorite memory but I needed to give a little context in order to tell the one that was.

About a week after father's day of 2013, a little after Taz's diagnosis, I got sick. So sick that it was difficult for me to just roll over in bed and I was coughing so hard, I thought I had broke blood vessels all over my face and neck by all the red dots that just kept appearing. I already had chicken pox when I was a toddler so it couldn't be that. My mom made the very correct decision in forcing me out of bed and into the capable hands of our family doctor. Come to find out, It was actually the onset of Scarlet Fever.

The one thing I will never forget, that makes my heart swell with an ache that makes me miss him so much, is that Taz hardly ever left my side for the whole week it took for me to recover.

My room was at the top of a flight of stairs that had the minimum of twenty steps and at this point, Taz was thirteen years old and having a hard time even walking on flat ground with how much pain he was in. He trudged up those stairs and stayed at the end of my bed with me, only left me to go to the bathroom. It got to a point he wouldn't even leave my room to eat or drink so I had my mom put his food bowl and water dish in there to make it easier for him.

I scratched behind those drooping pointy ears, smiling at the nearly toothless, lazy grin he flashed at me when I told him he was "such a good boy". Although they were ridden with cataracts now, they were still the sweet, chocolate puppy eyes of my little Tasmanian Devil. That'll never change no matter how long time has passed since he's been gone.