RIP, Zoet

I've come to realize I don’t actually post much anymore. But I keep it because it seems like at the very least I need a place to eulogize current and future pets. And the time has come that I have had to say goodbye to Zoet.

And maybe some day I’ll be travelling again. God, I miss travelling. Then I can inundate you with pretty landscapes, too.

But to Zoet. I hope she had as much fun in her last decade (she actually only had 1.4 of them anyway) with me as I did with her. It was only in retrospect that I realized I was trying to fit a dog-shaped peg into the Tom-shaped hole in my heart, but she became my shadow, and never said no to a car ride, even if that car ride was five minutes down the road to the vet, of which there were many. I might have been gone all day at the Dana; or I might have gone into the cellar to get a can of tomatoes, but each reunion was met with happy barks and jumps and great relief that I hadn't left forever. That kind of enthusiasm is addictive.

Great Falls National Park

It was during routine bloodwork prior to dental surgery that we found out she had something wrong with her liver; we never fully identified it but were able to control it for the most part with medicine. And no this was not related to the little weed Thing That Happened. And it only now occurs to me that she never did have that dental surgery.

When I originally moved to Virginia she stayed behind in Medford with 96 until I was settled in and back from Croatia (October 2019) but she joined me for that drive home from Boston. She very much loved our recent move to Springfield, VA, where she once again had a yard with plenty to smell, as by that point her vision and hearing were both failing, but her snoot remained astute.

Another very odd mystery I never solved is that, once she 

everyone's got a hobby

moved to Virginia, she never barked. Never, not ever, not even once. And for people familiar with Zoet's ... enthusiasm (and I'm looking at you and you know who you are, you) ... will be surprised to hear this. The only theory I've come up with is that once she moved to the Alexandria apartment she didn't feel territorial like she did when she lived next door to the Fells. She'd see a dog on a leash walk in front of the house, and begin barking at it there, and continue barking all the while running through the living room to the back of the house, up onto the back of the couch, to continue the coversation, on the off chance the dog walked into the woods through the easement adjacent to the house. And then repeat when her sniffer would sniff out dogs exiting after their walks. Okay, it was loud.

Of course most of this last year has been spent in isolation, which in the early days was a struggle for both of us. But once national and state parks reopened for visitors we devised a schedule to visit as many as often as we could. She even, at 14 years of age, learned that she loved swimming. My car still has that wet, old dog smell.

As these last months and weeks dragged on, though, I could see her decline almost daily. She eventually went into diapers (which, I’m sorry but she’s cute!) and even walks around the complex became too much for her.  I’m glad I had a little carriage to bring her outside, so she could ride in comfort to wherever looked like it had a worthwhile step-to-sniff ratio.

It became obvious late on her last day that she needed to let go; while I’m pretty sure she was in no discomfort I wanted to make things as easy as I could for her. I like to think I’m the last thing she saw before she crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. I think Tom's beloved Maxwell will provide her a warm welcome, even if Ada is curled up in a corner hissing at her and Scruffy runs upstairs. Assuming heaven has an upstairs.

RIP Zoet. You will be missed. You already are.