Day 26 - Remembering Taylor

There is no time like 1:30 am, when you’ve woken up to go pee to realize that you totally messed up by volunteering to change your schedule on a day when you already had plans. There is really not much you can do about it until the morning so it just sort of eats you up and twists up your stomach for a while. The good news is that this is my first serious round of insomnia in a while.

So, while lying there I started thinking about where I was two years ago. This next week in 2009 was a time of joy and a time of loss. There was so much to be grateful for. I am going to take a stab at a little slice of this today.

Two years ago I was huge. There was a little girl inside of me that I had only seen through an ultra sound. I didn’t know much about her other than she didn’t seem to keep a regular sleep schedule and that she was a mover and a shaker! My due date was December 17th and I was hoping to be on time if not a few days early. I was ready for her to get out of my belly!

On the 16th my mom had taken our family dog to the groomers to get a bath and a nice trim before the Christmas. But something happened there and when she brought Taylor home, she couldn’t walk. My mom spent the rest of the night trying to help her but, was pretty sure that Taylor would not recover. So, on the morning of the 17th, my brother, his wife, my Mom, my Grandma, and I all spent our last few hours with our faithful companion before having her put to sleep. A sad day.

Taylor was a gift to me from my brother, Ted, on my 19th birthday (August 13, 1994 for those of you keeping track). I was working at Miller’s Outpost in Manchester Mall back when it was a cool place to work. And so, standing there in my jeans, tucked in shirt, and belt that undoubtedly matched my shoes, I saw my brother and his girlfriend walk in through the door carrying a paper sack. As he placed the sack on the glass top of a rounder of Anchor Blue clothes I could see that it was moving. Inside was this amazingly cute furball of a puppy! She was so tiny! I really, really liked her instantly and I took my 10 minute break to hang out with them. One of the hardest things to do is to go back to work knowing that there is a freaking adorable puppy at your house waiting to play with you. Time went by very slowly that day.

If memory serves I think we might have had a night at home without my mom. Little did I know that my mom wasn’t exactly “in the loop” on the “og-day ituation-say”. In fact, she claims that Ted asked her and she said that we could NOT have a dog. He remembers that she said that they would “talk about it”. Either way, he may have ignored her and poof – we had a dog. My mom came home from work the next day to find an empty house, which she expected, with a tiny puppy, which she did not expect, peeking out to greet her. I laugh when I imagine this happening!

Taylor ended up breaking two major Cindy Barnard rules. We were taught from an early age to never get a female dog. This is going to sound sad but we actually had to take a dog back to the Long’s Drugstore parking lot where people had been giving away puppies because the people lied to us and said it was a boy when it was actually a girl. There were no boys left so we went without a dog for awhile. And then there was Baby but, that’s another story. Anyway, we had a girl dog but, there were never any puppies as we followed Bob Barker’s instructions and had her fixed!

Taylor spent the summer of 1995 swimming. She was reluctant at first but, we lured her in the pool with weenies. By then end of her first summer she was a swimming fool. Taylor’s favorite thing to do in the whole wide world was go swimming. I mean she LOVED it. Unfortunately, she loved it so much and ran around the pool so often that she actually ran the pads off of her feet. She was sort of insane too because she absolutely would not jump in the pool unless someone had thrown a ball for her. So she would bark or cry at you until you did; that part was sort of annoying. Then she would run around the pool multiple times to make sure she jumped from the best angle. Overall, my best times with Taylor were spent in the pool. Somehow we figured it out so that I would jump in the pool and throw the ball at the same time. Then I would hang out underwater at the bottom until I heard her splash in. Then, she would circle at the top with ball in mouth waiting for me to come up. Once I came up from the water, the race was on! She was a great swimmer.

The second Cindy Barnard rule that Taylor broke was that she ended up becoming an inside dog. When I left in January of 1996 to do a semester in London, Taylor was an outside dog. I mean, she would come in and hang out with us but when we were not home she was outside. She slept outside. But, my mom bought a new house while I was gone and there was no landscaping in the backyard. Things were always muddy out there so my mom ended up breaking her own rule and let Taylor become an inside dog. We were all happy with this decision.

For the most part, Taylor was to be trusted as an inside dog alone in the house. Yes, she chewed the cover off of Ted’s autographed Angels baseball. Yes, she would dig into the bathroom trash and pull out used feminine hygiene products. Yes, she would lay on the couch when she thought that no one was home. But, Taylor was such a loving dog that it sort of made up for the shenanigans. At the same time she was sort of fierce and I always felt safe with her. Standing at about 20 inches toes to ear tips and weighing about 40 or 50 pounds, she guarded the house with all her might! When that doorbell rang – lookout! She would go crazy. Even if she could see that she knew you and even if she heard your voice. Talk about a Pavlovian response! Lookout pizza man!

When my Grandma moved in with my mom, Taylor came to know even more creature comforts. My grandma would seriously buy Taylor her own nuggets when she went to a fast food restaurant. Of course, Gram would call Taylor a “he” when she really was a “she” and nearly got us to do the same but, in the end the two of them spent a lot of time together and became close.

Taylor was not injury prone but she did have a couple of issues. She was bit by a spider above the eye and spent a few days looking like Rocky Balboa. In her old age another dog took a chunk out of her back. But, she recovered from both and even seemed to more energetic when she would recover.

We believe Taylor to have been a lesbian which is fine. We are a progressive family. She hated bicycles, skateboards, the vacuum cleaner, singing through wrapping paper rolls, the Jaws theme on the guitar, UPS men, and anybody working at a drive through. She loved swimming, chasing balls, chasing me around the couch, French kissing Utah, having her belly rubbed, and lox and bagels.

It was sad that Merrill never got to play with her because she loves dogs. I worried that my sadness on that day would somehow transmit to Merrill in-utero. If it did, you couldn’t tell. She was a pretty content baby.

There is so much more I could say about Taylor and her funny ways and sometimes neurotic behaviors. She was a such sweetie. A short legged, perky eared, big brown-eyed, stout little sweetie.