My last walk with Jinx
I love dogs. I've always loved them. We grew up having dogs as pets since mom was allergic to cats. Our first dog that I remember was an Samoyed named Keeta that my mom drew a pastel drawing of that hung in our house throughout our childhood.
The first dog that was ever mine was Sage. He was a black lab husky mix with a fluffy white curved tail that looked like a cross between a question mark and a spiral and he "followed me home" one day in a red rider wagon that I pulled him in. Our old neighbors dog had puppies and they let me have one if my parents said it was ok.
I convinced my mom to let me keep him by pretending to be asleep with him when they came to give me an answer on whether we could keep him. He was a great mountain dog that went with Josh and I on our adventures and had a few of his own.
The last adventure I remember was when he went missing for a week and Mom and Chuck started preparing us for the inevitable let down of losing a dog. I remember crying so hard when we thought he was gone, I was 11. Josh and I looked for him everywhere. We lived in a tiny little mountain town so there weren't many places we could look, but our back yard was a mountain so my parents assumed he had run away and gotten lost and possibly met with a mountain lion that lived in the area.
Then one day Josh and I were playing in the front yard and he stopped and stood up and looked to the distance. He looked down South End road and saw an animal slowly limping up the street towards us and he immediately took off running. We were both screaming and crying tears of joy as we realized that it was Sage, still alive and coming home.
When Josh reached Sage he saw that Sage was completely covered in porcupine quills and was injured and bloody. He gently reached under Sage, picked him up and carried him back to the house where he set him down gently on a towel on the couch. Mom and Chuck took him to the local Vet and after a lot of tweezing and stitching declared that other than being a little thin Sage would be just fine.
He was fine, recovered and happy as he ever was. He was the best dog for two mountain boys and we loved him like only a boy can. Sage was part of our family for just over four years. In 1989 when Grandma got sick and Mom and Chuck decided that we were moving to California to take care of her we had no choice but to leave Sage with Wayne, my dad's band mate and friend to take care of. Mom said we would try to bring him to California eventually but we couldn't bring him right away because we'd be living with Grandma and she already had a dog and they didn't want to risk them not getting along.
So we moved and left Sage behind. I never got to see him again. Grandma's dog Romeo was a small Cockapoo that was friendly but not as playful as Sage was. When we were teens and Grandma had passed Romeo came to live with us for a while before our Uncle Dave took him. We had always wondered how old Romeo was since we remembered him from when we were little, but then Mom let slip that technically, this was Romeo IV and that Grandma had just replaced her late dogs with exact copies right down to giving them the same name. Those were the last dogs we had in our childhood.
While my parents did adopt another dog, KD (Karens Dog) after we had left home, we never bonded like we did with the dogs of our youth. In fact after Romeo I lived half my life before getting another dog. I was 36 the next time I adopted a dog.
I was halfway into my first relationship with Ixa (Danny) when we decided that we wanted a dog to be part of our family. We talked to our roommates at the time and they all agreed to have a dog in the house so we started going to the SPCA and looking at the dogs. We went back and forth about the breeds of dogs that we would love if we found one, for me it was the Great Dane, I'm a giant so of course I would have a giant dog. Ixa loved the smaller breeds though he had been raised in a house of Pitt Bulls so he ok with a bigger dog.
For a few weekends we went back and forth to the SPCA looking for that special dog that would pick us and one Saturday while we were wandering around my eye was caught by a question mark white tail and I immediately fell in nostalgic love. She had Sages tail and she came up to both of us and wagged it and that was it. We adopted her that day, March 26th 2011.
After making a long list of potential names on the white board that everyone contributed too, we landed on Jinx, and we signed the paperwork and took her home with us... Well... We tried. She was a very shy nervous pup at about a year old. She had been found out in the country wandering and was brought to the SPCA in San Francisco to be adopted out. So when we left the SPCA with her and tried to walk her home, she was scared about all the sounds and cars and busses and people. She froze and eventually we had to take a cab home with her.
Ixa spent a lot of time training her and acclimating her to life in the big city. The two things he did that I thought were the cleverest things was he wanted to get her used to the sounds of the city so he took a mini tape recorder and went outside near the bus stop and recorded a few hours of city sounds. Then when it was bed time she would go in her crate and he would put the tape on her crate so she could hear it while still feeling safe.
She was still a little nervous going on the muni so Ixa had the brilliant idea to bring her to Dolores park and wait with her near the Muni train exit so that she got used to the big trains and when it stopped I exited the train right where they were and she was always excited to see me, so by doing that a few times she came to learn that the big loud machine would bring me to her and she stopped being afraid of it after that.
Jinx was always a cat dog. That is to say a dog that acted more like a cat. She didn't really play or fetch, she didn't need to be next to one of us all the time. She liked to sit in her space and just watch things from a distance and she merely tolerated all the lovin we gave her. I loved cuddling with her even though she just laid there and took it. She was never overly affectionate unless Steph came over. She LOVED Steph. She got up and came to her whenever she came over, put her nuzzle on Steph and generally wanted to be near her. It was then that we realized we had adopted a lesbian dog.
When Ixa and I lost the house and broke up, Jinx came with me. We stayed in a few different places that weren't the best for her until Steph and Jen had a room free and let us come stay with them. It was while living here that Jinx really started to engage more. She lived with me and Steph and Jen and got to play with other dogs all day, go for long walks with Jen and be around Steph all day and she was very very happy.
When they decided to make the move to Portland and I started looking for a place to move it became very difficult to find a home that would let me bring Jinx with me. There were at lease three places I looked at that balked when I mentioned having a dog. The closer the move out date the more worried I was getting. Trying to find a place that I could keep her seemed impossible in SF. Eventually Steph and Jen and I sat down to have a conversation.
Jinx was a great barometer for Jen's dog business as she was well trained, good with people and dogs and was great at assessing a new dog client to see if that new dogs temperament would be a good fit for Jens pack walks and dog sitting. The dogs that Jen was taking to Portland with her were both elderly and persnickety and weren't the best advertisement for Jen's new Portland dog walking business. Jinx was.
So we decided that while I looked for a new permanent home in SF, Jinx would accompany Steph and Jen to Portland and begin their life and business there. We thought that when I finally got settled that she might come back to live with me, but that took longer than we expected. By the time I finally got settled in LA she had been living with Steph and Jen for five years. Longer than she had been with Ixa and I.
I felt bad from time to time because I made a commitment to Jinx to be her Daddy and to me, that is not something you just walk away from. I had been forced to walk away from Sage and never saw him again and to this day it still makes me sad. I didn't want that for Jinx. It eased my guilt a bit knowing that she was with two people who absolutely loved her and took her on long walks multiple times a day. she had doggy friends and spent the best years of her life joyfully running through nature. I also helped pay for monthly dog insurance so she could see a vet anytime without worry. I promised her that I would be there for her entire life, that she was my dog and I loved her.
They moved to Portland in November of 2012 and Jinx never lived with me again. I did however go to see her around three times a year for the last thirteen years. Anytime Steph and Jen went somewhere I would fly up and stay with Jinx. The first few times I got the tap dancing happy dance, but eventually she would just notice that I showed up, sniff me, let me pet her head and then go lay back down. Ixa came to visit a bunch of times too and she allowed a bit more cuddling with him than she did with me, but when I wanted cuddles from her I just picked her up. She would just go all limp, arms out and wait for me to finish cuddling her than she would go back to her bed.
For the last year or two she had been getting slower and slower, she lost her hearing and most of her sight, and she moved like molasses when taking her on her walks. Every now and then she got a burst of energy and she did her loping bouncing walk that I always thought was the cutest thing ever, but they got less and less frequent as time passed.
I went to see her at the beginning of this year and it was the first time I really realized how old she had gotten. She spent most days laying on her bed, didn't ever want cuddles and really only got up to eat, walk or wander aimlessly around the apartment. We all talked about end of life care and what the plan would be when it became time. Jen had several dogs previously and I trusted her to know when the time came. This meant that each visit became the possible last time.
While this gave us time to prepare mentally, we all hoped that she would live forever. She was such a good dog that it's hard to imagine ever having such a good dog again.
Two weeks ago, Steph and Jen went on a vacation again and asked Ixa and I to come dogsit for the week. We both managed to clear our schedules and went up and stayed with Jinx for a full week. She was weak, had trouble standing and walking up stairs and needed extra assistance which I was happy to give. Hell, I even woke up extra early each morning to take her on her walks. It was a very full circle moment for both Ixa and I as we had been there for her at the beginning together and we were together with her at the end.
On my last walk with her before heading home to LA I took a few pictures of her, I wanted a really good face picture so I put my hand under her chin to get her to look up at me. She did, and then she rested her head on my hand so that I was fully supporting it. It reminded me of how she would put her head on my hand or knee right after we adopted her and it made me cry.
We both knew the time had come around at last. A week later Steph and Jen let me and Ixa know that it was time and that she was gone. We all had a good cry about it. But she had a great life, surrounded by people who loved her. What more can anyone ask for in life.
I love you Jinx, you'll always be my dog and I'll see you again on the other side of the rainbow bridge.
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