On Sunday evening my wife and I sat down to watch television. My dog, Bella, was on the 17th hour of her normal 20-hour nap day. At some point during the middle of the show we were watching, Bella got up and started throwing herself to the left over and over. Her front legs went stiff and she twisted her body uncontrollably.

At first, I thought she was being weird and chasing her tail, but less than 5 seconds later and I knew something was wrong.

“She’s seizing,” my wife said and she immediately began calling the emergency vet.

I dropped to the floor and held her, trying to figure out exactly what was wrong. She wasn’t exactly seizing, but she wasn’t able to walk or control herself either. So I just kept holding her and she kept writhing around in my arms scratching me. I tried to calm her.

No bite marks (maybe a snake bite?). No physical evidence of any obvious injury. She hadn’t eaten anything. No weird swelling (allergic reaction?).

My mother-in-law came over and kept an eye on things at home while we ran out with the dog.

I held Bella for the half-hour ride to the emergency vet. Bella looked scared and confused. It’s frustrating, with animals. A person you could say, hey, just sit still, we’re going to figure this out but with an animal, you’ve got to fight them to help them.

But Bella wasn’t much in control. She wiggled and squirmed through no fault of her own and every four minutes or so she would relax and pee on herself and me as I cradled her. She curled up and rested her face on my shoulder and I braced myself for the worst. Hopefully, it was something simple but in my heart, I had that feeling that I was on a one-way trip with my friend.

I hated Bella’s name.

Naming your dog Bella is dumb and cliche. I got her as a little skin and bones rescue pup. Back in 2012, my wife at the time brought me a picture of this little cute puppy that needed a home, being sold by a family about 20 miles away. 

“Can weeeeeeee?” she exclaimed.

We already had another dog (Charlie), whom I love dearly. And Charlie IS an amazing name for a dog. We spent a lot of hours with Charlie, going to classes making sure he knew ALL the tricks. He jogged with me, he played frisbee, play dead, roll over, crawl, close the damned door on command! He could (although just don’t do this please even if you can) walk off-leash trustily. I thought in my head, yeah more of that, please.

“Charlie needs a little sister,” she continued.

Needless to say, I’m not made of wood. She didn’t really need my permission and showing a picture of a puppy like that is JUST EVIL BECAUSE OF COURSE I’M GOING TO SAY YES.

We go to get her, she immediately pees on the floor greeting us. She’s emaciated but friendly, apparently, she’d been kept in a crate in the garage with a bunch of pit bulls. Full disclosure I love pit bulls, but not those pit bulls and what I mean to say is that I love all dogs but THOSE dog owners should not have had that many animals unless they could have afforded to treat them right. They were Jersey Shore trash people (which is why the dog’s name is Bella). I hope they stop having animals, but I digress. I guess we could have changed the name but we just kept it. I elected to extend the name to Belladonna Spaghettio Durante, to give full Italiano vibes.

We get home and come into the house. Charlie is curious and happy. Charlie loves everything and everyone and what’s this? A new doggo? Show the boi the doggo! Show him AND

Bella flips the fuck out. She attacks Charlie and tries to latch onto his neck. Charlie is so much bigger but traumatized. I could see the “what the fuck dude?” in his eyes. This is not a brand of behavior he has ever encountered. She’s also submissive peeing all over the house and it’s driving us crazy.

I sit with Bella and Charlie in a small room for two hours and have them slowly get to know one another. When they start fighting I pull them apart. We keep it calm, nice.

Over the next few weeks, they became accustomed to each other. We tried bringing Bella to classes but she didn’t really take to it. The socializing didn’t help either. She didn’t like other dogs and strange people. She liked her dogs and people. I understand that.

The vet said she was anywhere from 0 to 2 years old and we found out that she had no less than 9 kinds of parasites! No wonder she was skin and bones (and again FUCK those people who were her previous owners). It was amazing that she could fight Charlie as such a featherweight. Seriously all ribs, and her vagina was distended, hanging outside of her, it was a lot.

But we got her treated and she started putting the weight on and she was a healthy normal (looking) doggo. 

We lived in a fairly busy mixed-use neighborhood with townhomes and businesses. I was careful when walking Bella to stay away from other dogs. 

Bella nearly got me in a fight.

Once I was taking Bella out for a walk late at night and she slipped out of her collar. She booked it across the street and made a straight line for these two big beautiful, friendly, chocolate labs and proceeded to snarl and bark and get in attack stance. I was mortified. I managed to get her and said “sorry sorry” to their owner as I crouched down nearby and got her collar back on. 

“Control your fucking animal,” he yelled. “My kid and wife are asleep in there.”

A different switch went off in me. I turned apologetic to annoyed. I get why he was mad. But no harm had been done.

“Alright, well you don’t have to be a dick about it.”

I was still crouching down. He placed his dogs in the house and made a straight line toward me. When he did that I immediately let go of Bella. I didn’t know what brand of crazy this guy was and prepared for the worst. I needed to stand up before he got to me.

I think the guy must have been drinking and I also think that he may have misjudged his courage. Because when I stood up I kept standing up until I was probably about 7 inches taller than him. He looked up into my face and I stood their fists clenched. He was a lot shorter and pudgier than me (I’m 6’3” and about 220lbs).

He poked my chest and said, “what did you call me?” however he was no longer as cocksure. I don’t think he had seen me standing before.

I said, “Touch me again and you won’t be walking away from this.”

He looked me up and down and said, “Well, next time use those muscles to control your animals,” and quickly walked away.

I breathed a sigh of relief but was mad. I was ready, to destroy this tiny arrogant man who was completely in the right, UNTIL HE WASN’T.

I ran to my townhome a block away and Bella was waiting on the front stoop. I shook my head, let her in and took a while to calm down.

A dog that just wants to eat and nap

So Bella was a pain. Couldn’t take her anywhere. Couldn’t introduce other dogs to her. There were points when my ex suggested maybe we get rid of her, but I, as stubborn as Bella, while also annoyed by her, wouldn’t pass the buck. My dog, my problem.

Eventually, we moved to a house with a backyard and a fence so it got better in terms of avoiding people. She didn’t like going on walks anyway, they were just utilitarian for going to the bathroom. She didn’t really pee inside the house anymore. She did pee if you got mad at her say, if she got into the garbage or ate something she wasn’t supposed to or WHATEVER SHE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO FUCKING DO. So it was an exercise in restraint when she came out with that guilty look, knowing I was going to see something that would otherwise make me furious but also knowing that if I made a big deal about it she would pee, and I would get madder and she would pee more and a whole PISS ANGER DEMON HELL CYCLE would happen.

This got better with age. She got more confidence in herself and the shitty things she did. Bella also would dig around the yard and attempt to kill anything that entered it. She would get scents and follow them, and I imagine blackout, and go “oh god where am I, who am I, what have I done?”

She also ate her own poo if you just left her back there. She barked at everything that moved even if it was a person she’d seen a thousand times, she had to go through a period of re-familiarizing and suspicion (I get it).

So Bella proved to be the kind of dog that just wanted to be let out for a short period of time to go to the bathroom and then let inside so she could resume eating and sleeping. Her body was showing it too. The skinny pooch had become a portly pup. This would only get worse as my three children came into the picture.

**Oh and helpful hint. If you have a dog that eats shit they aren’t supposed to, have some hydrogen peroxide handy. Take a straw fill it with the peroxide and drip it into the back of the dog’s mouth while rubbing its neck. AKA make them swallow it. One straw full is enough. In 5-20 minutes you’ll find whatever they’ve consumed has been handily thrown up (so do it outside).

The nervous farter

Bella slept on the foot of my bed or would burrow under the covers at the foot of the bed like some sort of freak mole dog that doesn’t like breathing while they sleep.

In my old house, we had a smoke detector directly above the bed. The smoke detector doubled as a carbon monoxide detector. It was VERY sensitive. I would argue too sensitive and if one went off, the whole house went off.

The reason I say too sensitive is that if one(say a dog) were to pass gas frequently enough, they would actually set off the carbon monoxide detector. 

Bella did this frequently and it would spawn another hell cycle of her barking and getting scared and farting and setting it off again and on and on and on. The kids would wake up and it was a whole thing. My new house does not have this problem so fart at your leisure. 

The escape artist

That set of instincts that led her to dig, also got her confused and outside of our own fence a few times. Notably, one time my ex-wife, seven months pregnant with our first called me while at work and said, “Bella ran into the woods, I don’t know where she is.”

Luckily work was only 5-10 minutes away. I ran to my car and went home. My ex-wife was standing at the edge of the woods.

“What direction did she go in?” I asked.

She pointed and I just ran. I needed to get to her before she hit a road.

I booked it through the woods. Down into the watershed protection area behind our home and followed a creek (she was likely chasing a deer). I probably made it about a quarter-mile when I heard a small familiar bark.

“Bella!” I called. 

Feint whimpering. 

I followed the noise and sure enough, there she was, up to her stomach in mud, short legs fully in the bog, barely able to make a step toward me. I pulled her out and cradled her. I carried her like a muddy football back home.

We got back to the house and I showered her off. Fuckin Bella.

The escape artist 2.0

I’ve moved since then but she pulled the same trick at my new house. She dug under the fence. I wasn’t watching her, my mother-in-law had let her outside (she was watching the baby). Frankly, it’s my fault because we usually keep Bella upstairs in the office while we’re working from home so that my wife’s mother doesn’t have to worry about it but ANYWAY.

I went to lunch, sat down, had a sandwich, and wrote in my journal. I went to the local bookstore and got some tea. I walked around and perused the new books. Then I went to Target to pick up a few things. It wasn’t a planned or set period of time.

When I left Target, I turned onto the main road which runs parallel to the back of my neighborhood. Through the woods is my backyard. As I drove down the road I could see a little orange blur running on the side of the road.

“Oh is it a fox?” I wondered. I’d seen several in the area recently.

“Nope, too fat to be a fox.”

It was Bella, running her little tubby, panicked ass down the road. I pulled over and put my emergency blinkers on. I waited as she caught up. I held my hand up to stop the cars as Bella, shamefully made her way to me, once again as if to say, “oh my god, what happened, where are my clothes, thank god you’re here, please take me home.”

She came straight to me. I put her in my passenger seat and we went home. That was about two weeks ago from when I write this actually.

Bella was adorable

Looks can get you a long way. Despite all the things that Bella did (and then some), she was a pretty doggo. Her furrowed brow always made her look concerned. Her eyes looked like they had eye-liner a la Cleopatra applied and her orangy blond color was almost cartoonish. She had a white belly, curly tail, and little white paws.

The little white paws incidentally, were the inspiration for me to call her “Chugachoo”, which was cutesy for “sugar shoes” in a little diddy that I would sing to her:

“Belladonna Choogachoo

Everybody look atchoo”

My wife and I also used to put her into hilarious costumes. Bella didn’t know tricks but man she could sit still for a good picture.

Bella despite all of her ire toward the rest of the world and her terrible violent tendencies was amazingly patient with all three of my children. She would growl as the kiddos would grab her tail and ears and explore their doggie but she would never bite. Only warn and lovingly nip as if to say, “Hey you know, if you weren’t you, this would be a whole different thing right now.” 

I think she had a sense of the pack and her responsibility to keep the little ones safe. She also knew that the little ones dropped food and that was pretty cool to her too.

My constant furry companion

When I got divorced, I got Bella. I still have Charlie over from time to time but Bella was ALWAYS with me. 

My new wife fell in love with Bella when they met and they have had their own special bond ever since.

Bella was there before and after the divorce though. When I was really going through it. I wasn’t tethered, I wasn’t alright. But I did have to take care of her, so even when my kids weren’t around I had to make sure she was alright and in many ways I think, she was making sure I was alright. I was not taking care of myself. 

Late at night when I was racked with this guilty thought or that, or thinking about something I’d seen on deployment, she was there and she just sat wanting to press right up against me. It helped.

I know I write a lot, and I can perform, but I don’t talk a lot and I don’t speak about my feelings or troubles nearly as often as I should. I don’t like to talk to people. I don’t like crowds of people. I don’t have many friends. I often wonder if I will be a shut-in. I can be mean and grumpy. I say terrible jokes in my discomfort. I wish the best for everyone, I just feel out of place talking with people.

For nearly the last decade Bella was there. Even when I was bitching about her. Even a few weeks ago when I stepped in dog shit in the backyard and said, “Any day now Bella. You’re getting old.”

And still when no one else was around when there was no performance to be made it was just me and Bella, sitting around not saying much because we didn’t have to. She knew I’d complain and say things but always save her.

My wife and I would lovingly get her a treat on my birthday. In the absence of knowing her actual birthday, we decided she could share mine. Silly I know.

The emergency vet

We got to the emergency vet and they saw us immediately. I handed Bella over and patted some of the fur off of myself. I looked down and saw all of her urine on my shorts.

My wife and I waited in a small room. We talked about what could possibly have happened? She’d just had her physical last week, and everything was normal.

The vet came in and said that there was likely a neurological issue. There was no visible injury, no major inflammation. There was no seizure and he explained that it looks as if Bella had lost the use of both her front and rear legs. He posited that it could be a pinched nerve or something more complex neurologically speaking.

It was a longer more detailed conversation but ultimately the odds were against us. Her age, the likelihood of securing the right specialist and the window of time for being effective for the surgery, IF tests were done in time and IF a surgery was needed, etc. The odds were against us and even if there was a test that found the right thing and surgery could fix it, how much more time would it give us? Would she spend one year recovering from something that would just happen again or not even work?

In the meantime, we had a dog that would be scared, in pain, confused and not be able to control herself until it was sorted. The doctor explained that in these situations there was often only one choice…

My wife and I talked and cried and decided it was the right thing to do. I just wish I could explain it to Bella.

We told the vet and he said just go check out upfront and come back into the room.

The transaction

I hurt as I walked out the door. I was in a daze as I handed over my debit card to the receptionist. 

“Are you putting a deposit down or are you paying in…” she looked up my dogs name in the computer, “oh. I am so sorry.”

“In full please,” I said.

It’s weird having something so personal done so transactionally. I was essentially paying to kill my friend. I could hear them bringing Bella into the room across the hall and was getting antsy as the receptionist took her time stapling papers together. I needed to go see her. There wasn’t much time left.

“Okay, we’ve given her a sedative to keep her comfortable. She’ll start trying to move around again after about five minutes. Then I’ll come back in and we’ll do it, okay?” said the vet.

We nodded in understanding and he left the room.

Bella was on a blanket on the floor resting peacefully on her side. We got down on the ground. My nose was stuffed but I tried to smell her. We petted her and said things to her, I’m not sure what. A lot of “good girl” and  “I love you” and “I’m sorry” and “I’m going to miss you.” 

The vet came back in and I lifted her to the table. She did start to move again and immediately twisted and stiffened the way she was while I was carrying her earlier. She was afraid. It was hard to watch. He applied another sedative. Then when she was resting he said “okay, this is it.”

He took his shot and put it into her IV. I put my head down on her little side and listened to her heartbeat until it stopped. From one moment to the next my little furry constant was gone. She was there, physically on the table but the spark was no more. You could sense it, feel it as soon as it happened. And it hurt so bad. I hummed her diddy under my breath and pet her. My wife and I remained for about 10 more minutes. We could have stayed longer but it wouldn’t have helped. Our girl was gone.

The drive home was silent. I cried in ugly heaving sobs in the shower.  I cry right now as I write this.  We fell asleep. We woke, she wasn’t there. All of her things were, but not her. The pictures on the wall. The toys on the floor. Just no Bella.

Telling the kids

We explained to the kids that Bella got sick and that she died. My daughter (5) smiled uncomfortably and then within 5 minutes cried uncontrollably. My son (7) is autistic. He said okay and was quiet. These kinds of talks are always hard for kids. Explaining the finality of something is hard. Saying you’ll never see your friend again but they’ll always be in their heart is hard. You’re also not sure if anything you are saying is true or helpful.

My youngest son (1) is the easiest but even he notices that something is amiss. He looks around for his furry pal. He looks down from his high chair and there is no one to throw food too. He points to the bed, he sometimes says what sounds like “Bewwa.” and it hurts to see. He won’t have remembered her. Not really.

On a normal Thursday morning, I would take my son to his occupational therapist appointment and then to school. Thank goodness this morning we didn’t have an appointment. I sat reading in an armchair while he played quietly with his transformers. I noticed that he stopped playing.

He looked up at me, his eyes glazed over, “I know Bella is gone.”

I held my hands out, “do you want a hug? We can look at pictures of Bella.”

A moment of delay, “yeah.”

We hugged for a long time. Then we looked at pictures. I said all the things again, unsure of their meaning to him. If I had just one day lived as a fly on the wall of my son’s mind. I want to know better how he connects the pieces. It was a victory that he showed that feeling though.

When I sat in the car line to drop my son off at school today I watched him closely. So quiet. And there was another school shooting at an elementary school. It is scary to send your kids to school. That pain completely overshadows the pain about my dog. 

RIP Belladonna “Sugarshoes/Choogachoo” Spaghettio Durante

But selfishly, this week I wanted to have my own special time for mourning where my pain was the most important pain, but it’s not.

I want to be sad about just Bella. I want to roll around in that pain and live in it. But these kids need me to not do that. I feel guilty about making the choice to end her life. I want to just sink into it and let depression take me forever to familiar despair but I just can’t.

I haven’t been very productive at work. I work from home as a writer and need more focus than what I have right now between the news and Bella. I hate that I’m like this right now. I’ve always been the stoic, stiff-upper-lipped, must-carry-on type. I can compartmentalize with the best of them. I had to in my last job as a COO, carrying around all the business problems and everyone’s personal tragedy, my own family tragedies, my kid’s needs, and my own failures. I certainly had to when I was in the Army. And so I’ve written this. 

We’ll plant a tree in the backyard with Bella’s ashes and carry on because life goes on. But right now I’m not okay and I walk around this house feeling a furry phantom pain from my friend who isn’t there anymore and it’s going to take a while. She was always with me, and now she isn’t.

I miss you Bella.