A Cocker Spaniel’s life span is between 13-15 years of age, and when the day came that Ella turned 13 I felt ripped off. I couldn’t believe her whole life had gone by, we just got started.
My time together with this unique dog – a rescue so damaged from abuse when I got her at 6 months old that you couldn’t touch her without being bitten – had seemingly flown by.
I dreaded her end of life.
But I made a decision that was so powerful it changed the remaining time I had with her. I decided that for whatever time was left, I was going to milk the eff out of it. Ella would know the most love she’d ever known; whatever made her happy she could have, my attention would be fully on her, I would be engaged and observant and participatory at all times. Not that I wasn’t those things normally, but you get used to someone being around you and take it for granted often.
Now I was dialing it up.
We went through a lot of potato chips after that. Ella licked every plate clean from every meal I had (I know that’s gross, don’t @ me) and I broke rules tossing bits of food down for her as I ate my dinner, or fed them to her by hand. If there was a car ride to be had, she was in, hanging out the window, wind in her curly blonde hair. During my morning coffee I’d pick her up and sit her on my lap and tell her she was the best dog ever made; licks all over my face came in response, and she’d put her head on my chest and sigh.
She was with me wherever I went.
I just delighted in her. I drank her in. I noticed and appreciated her curiosity, the tilt of her head, the little lady waddle of her bum when she walked. And those emotion-filled eyes.
Her sleeps grew deeper and longer as she aged. She no longer woke up the moment I moved. So I’d wake her up, every morning, with “a thousand kisses,” as I’d call them, face, temple, forehead, and she’d roll over and enjoy a belly rub as she came to; at night she was given the same affection before we went to sleep.
Bitch was loved and appreciated hardcore.
Soon she was 14. I couldn’t believe our good fortune to still be together; our rituals continued. But as time passed, my awareness of it slipping away increased. At night I’d place one hand on her when we went off to sleep, so that, in case for some reason she ever passed while in slumber, she would leave having my touch on her. Sounds morbid, maybe, but I was doing everything I could think of for Ella to know my deep love.
In January this year Ella turned 15. As much as I had spent time focused on loving her as hard as I knew how, I also had balanced that out by bracing myself for the inevitable, as painful as it was to even contemplate. If I didn’t, and her time came, I’m not sure I could have coped. I have never loved anyone or anything as much as I loved that little girl. She was my kid.
By the new year, Ella was slowing down. Her hearing went and we turned to hand signals to communicate, which my clever girl picked up on instantly. She had dislocated a knee in the summer and while it had mended, she walked super slow now, and wasn’t keen to go out for walks the way she had most of her life. I didn’t want her jumping off furniture or climbing stairs and risk hurting herself again, so became her “Ella-vator” (get it?) carrying or lifting her when needed.
On Good Friday, Ella passed. It happened so fast. She had been fine all day, normal. I’d taken her for an evening walk, and we hung out on my bed together. When I went to pick her up after an hour, she was limp. I raced her to an emergency vet where I learned she was in critical condition with suspected heart failure. I made the decision to put her down and held her in my arms kissing her non-stop as she passed.
It was the worst night of my life.
I can’t say I have known a grief like that which I have felt and feel in the days and few months gone by.
But what I am so grateful for is how very much I milked the fuck out of the last two years with her. I was so focused, so engaged, so paying attention. I took more delight in Ella in the final two years we had together than I did the thirteen that preceded them.
And it took the love we shared deeper than I thought it could go.
Raising a dog who came from brutal abuse was epic and packed with lessons. Lessons about trust, love, healing, and the power of saying yes to it all when it seems at first impossible.
But the final lesson Ella gave me is how we are each powerful focusing mechanisms. And because what we focus on expands, my life and my relationship with that blessed beast was enriched and enhanced and filled with love beyond my fondest dreams because of my focus. By appreciating her, by choosing to love her harder, by zeroing in on making the most of every day together, I – we – reaped the mighty benefit of joy and happiness more than we would have had I not made the decision to devote my focus to her.
I think in this mad world we live in right now it’s so very easy to get distracted, to have snowballing thoughts carry us away, to sweat everything, to take for granted the things around us. To not focus in on that – and those – we love so deeply.
My beloved Ella taught me in our final time together that it doesn’t have to be that way. And that living in the now in full appreciation is a choice that is ours to make, all day, every day, about the people and things we love and what matters most to us.
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