We said goodbye to that lovely little girl up there a week ago. I like to tell the stories of the wonderful animals who adopted us but it's been very hard for me to sit down & write Yoko's tale. I think it's because she was taken from us too soon. In all the other cases, though the deaths were hard, there had been illnesses the preceded the last days. Yoko went fast & it has felt impossible, like discovering the moon has just disappeared.
You would not have thought Yoko & I would become so close if you had been there when we first met.
Yoko adopted my oldest sister Pat some time in late 2014. I was living with my wife, my three beagles, & my four cats in Lexington, Kentucky. We would trek to Texas - where my mother & most of my family was - about once a year, usually in May, when my wife Magda had a break after the spring semester (she's an academic). On the drive there, chatting with Pat on my phone, it seemed obvious she was unwell. I had to contact her husband & her son to encourage them to get her to go to the hospital. She went, but she made me promise we would stay at her house mainly because she wanted us to be able to take care of Yoko.
Yoko wasn't called Yoko yet. She had been named Chica by the family down the street from where Pat lived. My youngest sister Karin has told me Chica lived in a house with two big dogs - a Rottweiler & a Pit Bull - who did not treat her well. Chica made her way to Pat's house & Pat fell in love with her & got the family's permission to take her in. One major draw was that Pat fed Chica lots of food - when we got there, we discovered Chica had three food bowls - one with wet food, one with dry food, & one with treats. Chica was a fatso. She weighed thirteen pounds. & she was a little mean. She snarled & snapped & growled & yapped at us when we arrived (my sister still in the hospital). I spent the first forty-five minutes I knew Chica sitting across from her on the kitchen floor trying to get her to calm down & be sweet. Eventually - because she had backed herself up against the back door - I used a broom to move her out of the way.
Around 3am, our dogs needed to go outside, & Chica came along with us, making no fuss whatsoever, & she climbed into bed with us when everyone came back in. & she was a snuggler.
When Pat came home - this was before she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - she asked me if something were to happen to her, would I adopt Chica. I said of course I would but also nothing was going to happen to her. Little did I know she would be gone in a matter of weeks.
Naturally I came to get Chica when I returned to Texas for my sister's memorial. Chica & I spent two days together on the road, sleeping at La Quinta Inns, where she would yap mercilessly if I left her in the room alone (so I took her everywhere I went) & where she would just pee on the carpet (sorry La Quinta) if she found an interesting place to do it. Not a lot of pee. She would pee so much on walks that she really didn't have a lot of pee in her.
But she was a great traveling companion! In the car, she slept in this little bed she had slept in in Texas:
The first night, in the hotel in Texas, she slept by herself in that bed, which I brought up to the hotel bed. The next night, in the hotel in Memphis, she slept next to me.
At the time my wife Magda was doing research in Spain & unbeknownst to me, she was plotting to find someone to adopt Chica. We had three beagles, she was a beagle person, she didn't want a chihuahua, especially one she knew to be a bit aggressive & yappy. When she got home, though, & met her, she changed her mind. She fell for Chica. But I confess I didn't like the name. So Magda gave her a new one.
It had been a conceit that we named our beagles after the Beatles - we had a George, who had died in 2012, & at the point, the summer of 2015, we had a Ringo, a Winston (John Lennon's middle name), & a Pauline (since she was a girl). Magda decided Chica would become Yoko because "she broke up the beagles." Magda even made her a shirt.
Yoko was large & a little greasy, like a sausage. Pat had told me she was finicky & I used to joke that of course she was finicky - her every meal was a buffet! You'd be like, "Say, why are there no mashed potatoes today? I was in the mood for mashed potatoes!" I did worry she might not like what we fed the beagles. She turned her nose up at her dinner bowl those first days. But Magda said, "Just wait, she'll eat." & you know what? She did. & she went on walks with us every day.
Hw fat was Yoko? This fat:
But after living with us for a few months, she became the little foxy fox she was meant to be:
Magda has reminded me that there were some issues with Yoko fitting in. It turns out there was an unexpected event that would help her integration into the household.
My sister Pat had told me that Yoko was spayed. She even showed me what appeared to be documentation. But when I looked at it later, it turned out to just be an estimate. Because in the fall of 2015, Yoko went into heat.
Why my sister didn't tell me I don't know. Maybe she thought I wouldn't adopt her if she weren't spayed. What happened however was that when Yoko went into heat, my two neutered male beagles & even my female spayed beagle began to pay a lot more attention to her. She was suddenly of interest. & though we had her spayed afterwards, the hormones had done their job - she was now welcomed into the household.
She was so tiny she would sleep with the cats - she was smaller than they were. But when I went through all the pictures I have I found she spent most of her time with Winston. I mean, it seems correct, right? John & Yoko? But I don't think I noticed it when Winston was with us. Here's an early example:
Here she is with two of our cats, both now gone:
But truly she fit in with everyone. & she had a particular bond with me. She was always watching me, & would often be right behind me if I were in my room. This is a particularly painful thing for me now, since I will turn & hope to see her. This picture is more recent, but it's where she would regularly be as I was listening to music or working on a radio show:
Yoko did get sweeter the older she got - maybe because her hearing got worse & her vision too - but she could still be a mean little dog in her later years. She hated mail carriers - we would find ways to keep her from noticing them on walks. She was not fond of bicycles or joggers either. One morning when I was very tired & Magda was either at work or away, I took Pauline, Winston, & Yoko to a local park, & let them off leash. I was listening to music when I heard "Hey! Hey! Stop!" & turned to find Yoko nipping at the heels of a woman running some few yards away. & she would lunge at much bigger dogs, often to our despair, since she was a tiny thing. But it helped at home because she could play with Pauline & Winston & even our youngest Pete when we adopted him two years ago.
Listen - I never showed her this - she would have been mortified - but look at what our vet in Fort Worth said about her:
Scandalous!
She grew old gracefully, was never much of a bother, was hardly ever sick. People we met, like our neighbors, loved her so. Little kids would want to cuddle her - I remember one child whose parent was doting on our beagles pointing to Yoko & saying, "I like that one." She was very much my dog but had no problem snuggling with Magda or with friends who came over or the people who watched her when we were out of town. She was a little lover, happy to be with us, even if it meant walks or adventures or anything. She even surprised me last year when it turned out she loved going on bike rides. Here she is in the basket on the back of my bike:
Here she is in the cargo bike with her brother Pete.
My heart breaks knowing she'll never be my companion on a bike ride again. I was looking forward to a summer with a Yoko behind me.
She lived with us in Kentucky, in Texas, & in Portland. She lived with us in five different houses. She went with us on vacations - she went with Magda to San Francisco, just the two of them, in the middle of the pandemic - & she accompanied us to places to eat, where she usually sat in our laps.
She was very brave & walked in the cold & rain, & Magda just loved dressing her up. She called Yoko a fashionista. Yoko did not complain.
She loved heat. She loved sleeping in the sun & she loved sleeping in front of a roaring fire.
Mostly she loved being with us - whether it was the dogs or the cats or her mother or me. She would come up to me & even though she totally could leap onto the sofa or onto my lap, she would just stare at me until I picked her up to be with me. Because how could you refuse this face?
This story has a sad end & that's why I'm writing this. After almost ten years of good health, this year she started to seem a bit off. She had a dental that revealed she had three oral-nasal fistulas which were the reason she had been so sneezy. We discovered she had a heart murmur. & when she wouldn't eat, our vet speculated she had "emergent IBS." She got a lot of blood tests. The vet would say, "Her blood tests are coming back fine." We would say "But she doesn't seem fine." At one point he told Magda, "Maybe she's just trying to get attention?" If I had been there I would've snapped back, "NONE of our animals are lacking in our attention. If anything they might wish we paid a little less attention to them!"
We had planned to take the hounds on a road trip earlier this month. We got her blood tested the day before we were to leave - our vet had said, "Go ahead, take her along, she'll be fine!" - but after the blood test he urged us to take her to the emergency room. She had stage four renal failure, The doctors at the hospital mentioned that she had abnormally small kidneys. After a three-night stay, she seemed a little better, but then got worse. She stopped eating. She was still loving & she still wanted to be with us but as any pet owner knows, when they stop eating, it's over.
She was always with us, almost always with me. She loved napping with me, so much so that if I went into the bedroom for a different reason during the day, she would run into the bed excitedly. I'll never get to nap with her again.
She loved giving kisses. Very often you would maybe want her to stop, but she didn't really want to. Magda would tell her, "Your kisses are wasted on me!" from the Pipettes song. I'll never get kisses from her again.
She was too young - just twelve years five months old. We didn't even get ten years with her. But we gave her the best life we could, & I hope we didn't prolong any suffering at the end. Our last few days with her, we carried her on walks, to the parks she liked, to some restaurants with us, trying to give her any food she would eat. On her last day she didn't want to be cuddled by me, she preferred to be with Magda, which was fine. She wasn't just my dog. But she knew we belonged to her.
Imagine her journey! Escaping from an unhappy home to a friendlier place in the neighborhood. & when that home was taken away, traveling a thousand miles to a different place with dogs & cats & goofy humans that couldn't help but fall in love with her. She never complained, she loved being with us - although she did sometimes run after those despised mail carriers or joggers but how could she not? She charmed everyone she met. She was an angel & a superstar & sweetheart. I miss her so.
One day on a walk in Fort Worth, she found a cicada on the ground & swallowed it whole. It was freaky as fuck. I might not have noticed if the insect hadn't screeched all the way down her throat. Yoko would walk behind us & would gallop a little to keep up so sometimes we didn't notice when she had found something to eat. Sometimes she would bring it along until she had the time to consume it.
You know I want to show you pictures & tell you stories about her all night. & well into the next day. That something that weighed seven or eight pounds could have left such a heaviness on my heart seems impossible, as impossible as it is that she's gone. I didn't know how to properly tell her story & I don't know how to properly stop. I won't forget her until I've forgotten everything. & I see her everywhere & look forward to her visiting me in my dreams. Hopefully during a nap. She loved napping with me. My sweet girl. My sweet little Yokotinski.
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