Good Bye Claudia Jean

 “Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day.” – John Grogan, Marley & Me.

Saying good bye to CJ.

6 weeks old

Most dogs are complicated, once you get to know them. Oh, the basics are easy enough - feed them what they want to eat, don't leave them too many scary places when you run off to vacation spots and if it's a nice day a lap around the park will do everyone a world of good. Car trips can be a good excuse to explore, a great way to find a new place to hike and a fabulous excuse to nap in the shade by a Moab waterfall. Those are givens.

It's the individual quirks that matter, and our CJ had them. A Portuguese Water Dog, she came equipped with webbed feet. That's what the true water dogs did; swim nets, retrieve objects, take messages from one boat to another. Protect the boat and the catch. Only...

No matter how much training and encouragement CJ got, she never really liked the water. "That's got to be the slowest swimming Portuguese I ever saw," said one judge at a competition. She used her hind legs as a sort of rudder, not that she ever went fast enough for it to work. At all. Throw one of the training "bumpers" into the water and she'd look at you with utter disdain. The look as much as said "You don't expect me to get that, do you?" She did like riding in the boat, watching our other PWD get wet. She just never really took to being an actual water Water Dog.

But, she had the protective thing down cold. She was with us at a time when we both endured significant work upsets. We'd walk for miles in her company, our Papillon Radar zigging and zagging while CJ trotted along beside us. Ever wary, she didn't get very excited by other dogs, but if we betrayed the least little discomfort with other people, it was all hands on deck time. The behavior wasn't overt - which is even more ominous to anyone with a mind to mess with us. It was the stink eye, the subtle warning, the body language that said, "You're close enough." She never tired of long walks to the park, never once thought that the long conversations Mom and Dad had were repetitious, or boring.

She was going to be my other writing companion, to go along with Radar. We had a second floor balcony, perfect for sitting on wicker furniture, sipping something cold and working on a novel. Radar had seen me through a couple manuscripts and CJ...went out once, looked through the railing at the ground below and quickly returned to the sliding glass door. Never again to venture out willingly. Or, for that matter, even enticed with a treat.

She found her stride, and her favorite moments, learning K9 Nose Work. The sport, a sort of hide and seek with scent (birch, clove and anise), suited her intelligence and even temperament. The sport was relatively new - her license was in the 300s whereas our almost two year old Joy's is in the ten thousands - and many of the teething issues were worked out with her generation. She titled her first time out, won several ribbons and not once did she have to go in the water. It was so perfect a sport for her that, even weeks away from the Rainbow Bridge she still enjoyed a chance to sniff the air for a hide.

When her health started to fail her in 2021, we brought in Joy, a high-motor Havanese, so that our other PWD Jed wouldn't be an only dog when the inevitable time came. It seemed to give CJ, of all things, a new lease on life. She joined in the backyard chase games, barking and running as though years had fallen away. Instead of being a bulwark against Jed being lonely, Joy gave CJ nearly two more quality years. Go figure.

Just a few weeks past her 16th birthday, the last of her litter, it seemed that the time had come. And so we said good bye to our girl, who had seen us through half our marriage, a chaotic and emotional period of moves and medical issues and the passing of our parents, and walked with us into retirement. We assume we will see her again when our own Rainbow Bridge crossing arrives, ready to walk again with us on our next adventure.