Blue

As a child, I can never remember a time in my life when we didn’t have a dog or two.  But I grew up thinking dogs needed a place to run and play, so in my years of apartment dwelling, dogs were off the table.  But when I moved back to Canon and got my first house and had a boy and a baby, I thought a dog was in order.  We went to the shelter and looked at the puppies.  There were only five or six puppies on the day we went and they were all smallish breeds, except one–a blue heeler/lab mix little boy dog.  He had giant paws and in my mind, dogs should be big.  So we took him to the viewing room and he hid under the bench, trembling, until Shayne coaxed him out.  He was the puppy for me–shy and reserved.  We named him Blue–partly because he was a blue heeler, partly because I think animals should be named after colors (we had a gray cat named, Ash, at the time) and there was a dog named Blue in my favorite book–Where the Red Fern Grows. Plus Darian was too young to have an opinion, or the name debate would have gone on for two weeks. When my mom saw him, she rolled her eyes and said, “That’s all you need, another baby.  And look at his paws.  He is going to be huge.”  But my dad said, “Ven aca Blue-boy.” and rubbed the puppy’s ears thoroughly.

The first morning after we got him, I went out into the living room to find several piles of poop strategically placed all over the living room.  Tears came to my eyes, and I realized that the whole puppy thing was maybe a bad idea.  Shayne came out of his room, took a look at the scene and said, “I got this,” and he started the process of cleaning it up.  After that, Blue was pretty much Shayne’s dog.  He took him for a short walk before school everyday, and then a long walk after school.  He made sure his water bowl was full, and fed him and took him to obedience school.  Our shy little puppy transformed into a rowdy trouble maker.  He chewed big holes in the carpet.  He ate choice pieces out of the laundry basket, mostly my underwear, which could be a whole separate blog on its own, and he loved shoes.  He LOVED them so much that he’d chew them into pieces.  One morning he gathered up all the shoes from the neighbor’s front door and brought them to our door.  He could open the gate, the back door, and the bedroom windows.  We had to bungee everything closed.  Every time I got frustrated with Blue’s behavior, Shayne would hug the dog tight and say he would keep working with him.

Shayne started running seriously when he was twelve years old.  He started out training for middle school cross country and at first ran three to five miles a day.  He would take Blue with him.  The runs were great for Blue; he started getting a lot more exercise and settled down some.  As Shayne increased his miles, Blue was his constant companion.  They’d leave at four am and run for miles.  That lasted for years.  The year Shayne went away to college was hard on Blue.  He would lay around looking listless and forlorn.  His boy was gone and he didn’t really know what to do with himself.  I walked him everyday, and was surprised at well-behaved he had grown to be.  And he didn’t seem to age.

When Shayne came back from California, he was showing symptoms of schizophrenia.  At the time, we didn’t know what was wrong with him, but Blue knew there was something wrong with Shayne.  It wasn’t his boy anymore.  And in the last three years Blue has turned his loyalty to me.  He became my dog.  He followed me, slept in my room, and greeted me with tail wags.  Yet, when Blue had a stroke last spring and his leg stopped working and he seemed to be suffering from dementia, Shayne was the one that refused to let me consider putting him down.  He said, that he would still care for Blue and we couldn’t kill him just because he was old.  He said he would help him get outside and clean up if he had an accident.  Shayne has been through so much, and Blue was still eating and able to move around on his own, so even though, Blue needed assistance getting up and down the steps and couldn’t really walk far distances, and sometimes fell, we kept caring for him.

Last week we went on a short trip to the East coast to see a friend, get a taste of the ocean and visit college campuses.  I wasn’t sure about leaving Blue or Shayne.  Shayne is still not quite stable.  Traveling with him is worrisome, because I would hate for him to run away far from home, but leaving him alone is just as worrisome.  So I elected to take Shayne and I got care for Blue.  But it was too much for Blue.  He fell when he was outside and didn’t bounce back.  When we got home, he couldn’t get up at all and was lying in his pee.  Shayne picked him up in his arms and carried him outside and set him down on the grass.  The dog took two or three stumbling steps and fell onto his side and started crying.  Shayne swiped at his tears and told me that it was time.  He didn’t want to watch Blue suffer anymore.

We made an appointment to put him down.  When we got home, Shayne went to his room.  I didn’t know how he was going to handle losing Blue.  Stress can and has lead Shayne into psychotic breaks.     But when I checked on him, he was asleep and Charlie was curled next to his side.  It made me feel better and at peace.  I think all of us will miss that crazy, old dog, but he had a good life with lots of runs, plenty of stolen pizza off the table, and a boy who loved him beyond measure.