Sophie

I haven't written about Sophie before, partly because I felt she was more Nate's dog and partly because I've had a lot on my hands with Zoe. But I've been thinking of her and I wanted to write a few things about Miss Soph before too much time passes and I forget.

I met Sophie when Nate and I were just friends, before we dated. I always thought she was a very good dog. Then Nate and I became an item and one day I told Nate I wanted to take her for a walk. We lived in Austin at the time and I took Sophie to the hike and bike trail. What a Mistake (capitalization intentional). She lunged and barked at every dog. Each time I saw the hint of fur on the trail, I tensed because Sophie, normally sweet as pie, became a snarling, growling, barking beast who would use her weight and leverage to throw me off balance. That walk was awful and I learned my lesson. Of course, she always listened to Nate on walks, much more than she did to me or anyone else.

Then Sophie and Nate moved to Chicago. Eventually I moved there too and Sophie and I became roommates. I used to joke with Nate that Sophie must have been some awful person to him in a past life, maybe a cheating wife or girlfriend, who was reborn to totally adore him this time around. There were times when she would rest her head on my leg or hip and I would think, awww, she likes me, and then I would realize that no, she was simply using part of my body to get a better look at Nate.

But as she and I spent more time together, we developed our own relationship. She would always come hang out with me while I was writing or doing my freelance work, and I think she came to love me, though of course I would never eclipse Nate in her eyes.

There was one night in Chicago when Sophie was about seven years old and Nate and I were engaged. It was a gorgeous, crisp autumn night. A few friends had come over for dinner and we'd had a wonderful evening of conversation with good people, drinking red wine, and eating warm stew with fresh bread. I was in grad school studying a topic near and dear to my heart. I was writing. Nate and I were very in love and planning our wedding. We'd built a life together and saw that things were only going to get better in our future. When our friends left, I started crying. While I could easily blame a little too much wine, I explained to Nate that I was crying because I knew that things would change. That the night we'd just had had been a pinnacle of that particular stage in our lives: Chicago, grad school, those friends at that time, that apartment and the home we made there, our lovely pets, our feelings for each other ... but everything would change. And then I blurted out, "Sophie and Roscoe will die." I bawled my eyes out. And as strange as it sounds, I think I mourned Sophie that night, because I knew she had become entwined in my life and I knew that she would leave it. As a friend of mine said, any relationship with a pet in your life is a contract with sadness because you will almost surely outlive your friend.

Then we moved to Dallas. We adopted another dog and Sophie began the long, arduous process of trying to explain life to Walker (he's pretty but he sure ain't bright). As Sophie got older, she got a little frailer. She was easier to handle on a leash, because she didn't have the strength she'd had before or the interest in challenging other dogs. She got a little mellower. And even though I always knew that Nate was tops in her eyes, it got to where if Nate was in one room and I was in another, she would usually come hang out with me.

You see, Sophie had a good girl complex. She wanted to please, and there was no one she wanted to please more than Nate. So if he happened to sigh, or say a curse word while playing a video game, or seemed at all unsatisfied with something, it would totally stress Sophie out. I think it was because she assumed she'd done something wrong to upset her main man. But with me, she could just hang out since she didn't really care what I thought.

Over the past year or so, she really slowed down. She'd begun to have problems with incontinence while she slept. We got a prescription for that, but then she began to have other problems as well. Unfortunately, things were getting worse for her as I was entering my later stages of pregnancy. I'll always remember her hanging around while I was in labor. Sometimes my breathing and moaning and cursing freaked her out to the point where she had to leave the room, but she always came back.

After I had Zoe, we came home and Sophie immediately took a turn for the worse. She couldn't poo or pee, and she lost interest in eating. The last night of her life she spent outside (which she'd never done before) because she was obviously so uncomfortable. She kept feeling the need to relieve herself, but she just couldn't, and because she was such a good girl, she refused to come inside because she was afraid she'd have an accident. Her last morning I woke up after a night of very little sleep. Zoe was only days old and I'd been up all night nursing a baby who didn't seem to want to go down for even a nap. I saw Sophie outside and she was finally asleep after a night of walking from the patio to the grass, trying to pee and failing, and then wandering back to the patio. I thought: I should go pet her. But she was finally resting after a rough night and I'd had a rough night myself, so I didn't. I slept. Nate took Sophie to the vet later that day and the situation was bad enough that they decided to put her to sleep then.

I never got to say goodbye to her. When Nate came home and told me and my mom he'd had to put Sophie down, I cried. Mostly I cried for Nate, because she'd been his friend and companion for 11 years and she was his girl. I cried because I knew she'd been in a lot of discomfort those last few days and weeks. And man, I cried because I wished I'd made a little extra effort and gone ahead and walked outside to pet her that last morning.

After she was gone, I would often think (in my sleep-deprived/new parent phase) I'd see her curled up in one of her normal places, and then remember she was gone. That's gradually faded away over time, except that earlier this week I thought I saw her in our bedroom and last night I dreamt of her. And I started thinking that my life, in a way, got put on pause when I had Zoe because my time and attention very naturally had to be focused on my baby. But as we're growing and developing and I'm resuming my "normal" life with work and other things, I realized why I was thinking of Sophie more. She was part of my old life and as I go back to that life in work and routine, she is one element that is missing. And maybe I didn't have the time or energy to think about this too much before, but I miss her. I miss that damn dog. Even though she was always more Nate's, she came to be mine, too.

Love you, Soph. I'll try to take good care of your Nate.