Sharing Your Soul with a Dog: Notes from Bailey and Me

I have a new journal called "Notes from Bailey," and it's a list of all the things she tells me now that her furry little body is no longer here with me.

My shadow is gone.

I write this for those of you who know me; know us, or have maybe seen us together in Brooklyn any time from August 2003 when I adopted her at six-weeks old, to the end of her bodily life on earth at 1:41pm on October 15, 2020 (*I have named 2020 The Year of the Extreme Assholeness of Life).

During the afternoon of October 15, 2020, I held her hand and stroked her beautiful face and said "see you in not too long," and many other things meant only for her soft little ears with that little bit of black fur at the very edge. I allowed her little belly to stop rising and falling with breath and beats then. I don't quite really know the right way to say it happened. I wish it was not true.

I also know that 2020 has been quite enough for everyone so I really am sorry to break this news. I know well how many people knew us, knew of us, as a duo, of our bond, and I know that us two not being together anymore "in the flesh" in the face of the pandemic and all the other terrible things going on might shatter ideas of fairness and God to a small tribe of friends who know me well.

Bailey Anne Margaret Ross was born on July 13, 2003. She was the runt of a litter of about 8 puppies. She was born on a farm in Carney's Point, New Jersey and her biological mom was euthanized soon after the puppies were born due to illness. As a young law firm associate who was also very sick, not physically, but just sick of my job, I spent hours online at work looking for the perfect puppy to adopt. I don't know why I was looking for a puppy. I was dating but single, employed but not committed to the career, and already a true New Yorker having lived here for ten years with no plans to ever move away. I lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the 8th floor of a Brooklyn Heights coop near the Borough Hall subway station because I loved to go to Manhattan on a moment's notice to hang out with my 20-something friends. Brooklyn Bridge Park did not exist at the time. It made no sense for me to get a dog. So I guess in retrospect, she was calling out to me.

Knock, knock, goes the universe. It does that sometimes, when you are very lucky.

Bailey was only the second dog I'd ever really known. The first, my childhood dog Bandit, was promised to me for five years before I got him, and while he ended up being my Dad's soul mate, he was my puppy and he watched over me the way Bailey eventually watched over my kids. From the moment they came home from the hospital, years later and only days old, she slept in their rooms each night until they fell asleep, and then moved on to mine.

She was my first baby, so I suppose in many ways I was her mom. But really, we were best friends with the understanding that either one of us could mess up at any time and no one ever got mad. Literally, not once. She never got mad at me. I never once got mad at her. Even when she was a puppy and would turn over the garbage and push it all around the kitchen. I truly didn't care. I just scolded her enough for her to understand it was a bad habit. It was like nail biting. Not a big deal. Likewise, if I came home late from work or went out for a few too many hours at night (it was my 20s after all), she would run to me, jump up, and embrace me with dog kisses, just as full of love and elated to see me, no matter how lonely she might have been or for how long she was holding her pee.

I wanted a boy dog because of Bandit. Familiarity is comfortable. The shelter I connected with in Carney's Point, NJ had two litters of lab-mix puppies. One group was bigger. I was not very interested in the larger dogs given my small apartment. One group was smaller. I committed to taking one of the smaller male puppies and they approved me by email.

So first thing on a beautiful Saturday morning in late August, I got in my powder blue Pontiac Grand Am by myself and I drove 5 hours south to the last exit on the NJ Turnpike before Delaware.

Isn't it funny how you can look back on moments in your life that seemed so ordinary at the time, but turn out to be these massive, pivotal, life-shaping experiences? This was one of those: the start of one of life's greatest adventures.

When I arrived, all the male puppies in the smaller dog litter were gone.

"It's Saturday," they explained, "lots of people got here before you."

There were just two little girl puppies left. The guy at the shelter steered me toward the bigger puppy litter and said, "I thought you wanted a boy. We have four of them here"

"No, I want one of the little ones," I replied. "Can I take them outside to decide which one?" I asked.

"Sure."

So I did. One by one. Because I knew that even though they were girl puppies and different from what I had before, this was the right litter of puppies for the size of my life and apartment. Wouldn't it be funny if things worked out that way, still, today? If the dog you ended up with always perfectly fit your life and apartment? I suppose things were a little different back in 2003.

I took the more outgoing puppy outside first. She walked around the grass, sniffed, rolled, and was so genuinely sweet that I loved her instantly. There was no more question. No more wanting. So I brought her in, ready to say, "this is it, I'm done," and the shelter guy handed me the second puppy.

She was clearly the runt. Smaller, timid, eyes blinking. 6 weeks old. Mom euthanized for bad health, I was told. So I took her outside as well, just to play with her and confirm my decision to take her sister.

But then the sun shined down on that little patch of grass and I let the little timid puppy run around and she kept circling back to me. Slowly, because the puppies were sick then; they'd left their Mom too early. The runt suffered the most. I watched her circle and come back to me, trepidatious but open. I picked her up to bring her inside. As I walked to the door a question popped into my head, clear as day. "Which one will be more okay if I leave them without the other?"

So I asked the shelter guy, "What happens to the other puppy who I don't take?"

"They'll be fine, we'll put her in with the other litter," he replied. I turned and looked back on the bigger puppy litter running around like wild. It was a stampede of paws too big for the size of their bodies.

"I'll take her," I replied, with the runt still in my arms. There was no way I was leaving her sweet, timid little soul with those bigger dogs.

"Are you sure?" he asked me as I signed the paperwork with my dog in my arms.

"Yes," I replied.

Yes.

And that is how Bailey and I came to be. We listened to the radio on the way back and "Wonderwall" by Oasis kept playing in every town's radio station, even as we moved, frequency to frequency up through New Jersey to the Holland Tunnel. That became our song.

She vomited on the front seat. I cleaned it up.

She was the runt of the litter but she turned out to have the highest tolerance for pain and the greatest capacity for love of anyone I've ever met. When I brought her home she would not eat because she had kennel cough, hookworm, and giardia. I brought her to the vet in Cobble Hill and he fixed her right up. He told my Mom, who accompanied me on some of her early puppy checkups, that she ought to get some grandkids for the way she cared for Bailey like an infant. We laughed about this a lot. My sister had already made her a Grandma more than once.

This story can go on for a long time because my best friend lived to be 119 in dog years (which 17 in people years). She went through several illnesses and we beat every one of them. Demodectic mange that almost stole her coat. A heart arrhythmia. Three incidents of older dog vestibular disease. And later, kidney decline. The inability to walk. Seventeen years for a dog is, by anyone's standards, a really good, long life. Suffice it to say that during these past 17 years my Bailey shadowed me through love, loss, breakups, new relationships, babies, children, heartache, and every day of life. She is the best friend I'll ever have (no offense, human ones) and she is now fused with my soul.

Humans have rituals. Each night I brush my teeth, wash my face, put on my PJ's, and lie down with Bailey curled up in my nook - the space behind my knees. Dogs have rituals. Every night she circles, then circles again, and finally finds the right formation in my nook, and lets out a sigh. Then we both find our way to sleep. That is the best sleep.

Over the past few months Bailey started to lose her sleep and experience the pain of no longer being able to walk, much less run. She was the fastest runner in any park she ever entered in her younger years. When she slept she would run in her dreams. I have watched her skinny legs running during her sleep every night she has not been able to walk. She lost her protective bark.

But most of all, she cried. She cried because she was in pain. And no matter what I did, I could not fix it. I definitely blame big pharma for pumping out all of these myriad potent drugs but not giving dogs better options when they are old and arthritic with dementia and in pain. We used every holistic measure at our fingertips but we didn't have a ton of options. I wish we had more of them just to make this all easier for her. I did the best I could with what I had. It will never feel like enough.

And so it went. From that first day when I brought her to our home in Brooklyn Heights with all the hope in the universe, to this last day in Carroll Gardens with all the sadness in the world.

You might not believe in magic, but I do. I don't feel much like it this week, but I still do. I let her go on October 15th because that would have been Bandit's 35th birthday. I told my kids that she could not be late for the dog party. I made her a breakfast of lamb chops, rice, and avocado (her favorite) and I carried her around and stood her up so she could feel her little, now wobbly legs hold her up one last time. We listened to "Wonderwall" and she lay in my nook. She peed on the bed. I did not get mad.

There is magic because there must be.

I still feel her. She is not gone. She is still here, inside me. Soul glued to soul, never coming out. And she has always been much wiser than me, so if I have half a brain I'll listen to the notes from Bailey as they come.

May my little girl's body rest with the stars and the sky. She runs beneath them, faster than any dog at the park. She eats lamb for every meal. And when she circles at night, she lies right here in my nook. I hug her with my whole body while she rests. The best sleep. But still, this is the hardest thing.

XO