A shih tzu named Chewbacca

 I had to let Chewbacca go this morning. He's over the rainbow bridge, and here's something I wrote for him in my MFA class. Sleep my darling. 

A love letter to my shih tzu 

He sleeps next to me on the futon downstairs. It's been months since he was diagnosed with heart failure and chronic bronchitis/COPD for dogs. Just so you know, this caramel colored shih tzu is the closest thing to a child I have.

Don't roll your eyes (you "non dog people"). You see, Chewbacca is sixteen years old and he and his recently (by "recently" I mean a year and a half ago as I'm still grieving) deceased shih tzu brother Frodo saved me when I couldn't have kids. 

I remember sitting with Frodo and Chewbacca and weeping after a horrible miscarriage. We had decided not to try in vitro again. Tears ran down my face and hiccuping my tears, I patted their heads and snuggled them close to me. They lifted up their faces looking at me with their soulful eyes asking in their doggie way if I was okay.

I watch Chewbacca breathe. His tongue lolls out of his mouth. His breathing is heavy. He's struggling. With the fires in California last week, it's been rough. Plus he has little eyesight and is going deaf. Sometimes, I peer into his eyes and I know he can't see me very well, but he can sense me and he licks my nose. My husband calls Chewbacca my duck because he follows me around and is very codependent. He sits at my feet when I work from home. 

I never thought I would revolve my life around my dog but I do. If we go away without him, I get a dog sitter. He's been certified as a therapy animal but traveling is hard on him. 

On the futon, he moans in his sleep. He breathes again, this time rougher. It's scary ragged this breath.

I think of how Woolf writes of life that "It is of lying half asleep, half awake, in bed . . . It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one, two, behind a yellow blind." (Sketch of the Past, 64)

I feel the waves breaking in my mind. One, two, one, two. I watch Chewbacca breathe, in and out. His chest rises and falls. He jerks awake and paws at me to get off the futon. It's midnight. I have court in the morning. 

I take him outside, then in. He cries. He pants. He paces. He might have doggie dementia. The nighttime kind called sundowners. Or perhaps, Chewbacca is just wrestling with his own mortality. I love him so. I wonder if I will really ever be able to let him go?

I'm going to have to let him go soon I know this, but I'm trying to get just a little more time with this creature whom I adore so deeply. I read a book by the late great writer Caroline Knapp about the bond between dogs and humans and she said that with our dogs, we secrete the same hormones that we do with babies and children. (See Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs (1998))

I pick Chewbacca up. I sing to him. I kiss his nose. I cradle him gently. I whisper "coo coo" in his ear as I rock him to sleep. Right before I nod off, I think to myself that I hope that there are dogs in my heaven. There has to be right? God couldn't be so cruel as to deny us our dogs.  

I cross myself and go to sleep. If only for a few hours until Chewbacca awakes again.