Emma

I know it’s not polite of speak ill of the dead, but let’s get this out of the way up front:   Emma was the worst.    THE. WORST.     She had great wet, needy eyes, breath like a dead opossum smoothie, ratty hair that shed at the rate of 6 to 8 full grown hamsters a day, and a butt area expressly designed to collect and cultivate dingleberries.    I once caught her eating a full baby diaper.   She licked her gooch constantly.   Every day, because you mother could not remember to shut the bedroom door, she would climb up on the bed and leak various juices onto my pillow.     She only stopped because I began putting duct tape with the sticky side up on the bed, and then ripping it off her when I got home.    She counter-surfed like it was her job.    Her remaining teeth looked like rotting wood chips randomly stuck in her bleeding gums.   She even had one of those blood filled tumors that looks like a chicken liver on her side that she would chew till it oozed red jelly.   But her crowning achievement was her stank beard, which was black from bacteria and an unholy combination of rotting low-grade dog chow, barf flecks, and cooter stew.    The worst.  

  

Your brother didn't have much of an opinion about her.

 

 

Some of Emma’s issues can be traced back to her origins.   In the spring of 2006, your mother adopted Emma from a “doggie day care” center because her beard looked a little like Harley’s.   (And if you ever find yourself saddled with student loan debt, ask your mother how much doggie day care costs.)   To ease the transition, we immediately changed her name, which didn’t seem to bother her at all.   She was stick thin with matted, clumpy hair and had about 8 teeth left, most of which were nubs.    Legend has it she was locked up in a garage all day by her prior family until she was abandoned after having the audacity to chew through the sheet rock to get out, which would explain the teeth.    Her eyes were clouded and grey.    The vet told us she was about 8 years old, which I doubt, and that we were now basically running a hospice.     And yet….she lived.

 

 

And lived and lived and lived.   And then lived some more.    For 8 more years.   Even after being diagnosed with heart failure in April of 2013 and given three to maybe six months to live, she lived on, hacking and wheezing her way around the house.    Her weight dropped, her belly swelled and every night, she woke the entire house (including your infant brother) with her booming hacking.    All the expensive medicines Wal-Greens could dole out couldn’t fix her.   Every six weeks or so, I’d take another round of “last” pictures.   And so, when Emma began coughing up blood on June 1, a full 14 months after she was given six months to live, you and I were on vacation, leaving your mother to take her to the vet to be put down.    Even now, that scene is painful to think about.  So, basically, she died as she lived- in the most annoying way possible.  

 

 

The last picture of Emma.  May 15, 2014

 

That said, we loved her.   Even you, who have a healthy distain for all dogs.    And she loved us.    Emma was living proof of how appreciative adopted mutts are.    She never forgot how great it was to wake up in on a rug in a house with your people and a full bowl of food waiting, and she showed it.      I honestly don’t think I ever saw her tail not wagging.     She was boundlessly enthusiastic; if the family was standing in line to get our feet chopped off by a wood-chipper, she’d cut to be next.   All she wanted out of life was to be petted and acknowledged by her people.   When you would pet her, the area of her body you touched would literally heat up with her joy.    Everyday was the best day of her life.     She was unadulterated love, and, at the end of the day, that washed away all of her more cosmetic shortcomings.     We all loved her, and we all miss her.

 

Here’s Emma in a nutshell: every morning I’d wake up with a hand draped off the bed.   I’d barely be conscious when I’d feel that cold nose bang against my fingers, and then feel the soft hair on the top of her head moving back and forth.   She would be stealing a head scratch, and when I’d wake up enough to see her face, she always had that dopey grin of the hopelessly pure.     Like most things Emma, it was sort of nasty and annoying at first, but humbling in it’s purity in the end. 

 

This is how I'll remember y'all.

 

We’ll miss you, Emma.    You were a good girl.