Potholes on the Road Less Traveled, Chapter 16

In the end, we ran Oak Meadows Pet Resort for about 16 years. We never regretted our decision to carry on.

How lucky were we, to spend years amid thousands of dogs and cats of all sizes and breeds?

Patting a Bengal or Egyptian Mau cat was like patting a tiger.

In addition to the hundreds of regular housecats, we boarded stately Abyssinians and plush Persians, regal Maine Coons, Birmans, Burmese and Himalayans. We got over our initial uncertainty about the hairless Sphynx. The ones we met were just as cat-like as the furry kinds.

In addition to lots of Jack Russell terriers, fox terriers, schnauzers (giant, standard and miniature), wheatens, Westies and what was to me a surprising number of Kerry blue terriers, we met Irish terriers, Border terriers, Lakeland Terriers and Prague ratters. Three of the latter came to us as puppies. I’ve never seen smaller or feistier dogs.

They were hilarious, carrying on with each other like Dobermans; the size of a generous shot glass but with the hearts of lions.

And oh, the malamutes, the Bernese and Swiss mountain dogs, the St. Bernards and charmingly loopy Newfoundlanders, slow-wagging their tails and lumbering after you with devotion in every line of their great shaggy bodies. The gentle Great Danes and shy mastiffs. The Samoyeds and Great Pyrenees who, when lying down together, looked like a snow drift, if the snow drift had been gently singing the song of their people. The boxers and bulldogs, who looked so formidable, but were mostly big clowns.

Hundreds of Labrador retrievers and golden retrievers passed our door, alongside the Nova Scotia duck tolling retrievers, the Chesapeake Bay retrievers, curly coated retrievers and flat coated retrievers. The Irish setters rubbed shoulders with the Munsterlanders and vizslas; the German pointers with the Gordon and English setters.

The beagles came in their hundreds, but we also boarded otterhounds, redbone hounds and basenjis. The one and only Ibizan hound and the one and only saluki we boarded were rescues from the Middle East.

They were matched in elegance, if not in pedigree, by the aristocratic pair of borzoi puppies we took care of. The wonderful plush coats and curly tails of he Norwegian elkhounds.

We met one bloodhound – a sweet, shy darling who drooled so much her water bowl always looked like half set Jello.

We had dozens of rescued greyhounds and lots of whippets.

We had the joy of meeting several Irish wolfhounds. One of those giants lived with a Yorkshire terrier. It was amusing to walk them together.

The sad eyed basset hounds could be total drama queens when the occasion demanded it. One got run over in the play yard by a rolling pack of dogs engaged in play. She was galumphing along behind them, barking at the oblivious herd to wait for her. Suddenly the swarm changed direction, right over top of Maggie. She gave a bellow and started limping.

We examined her, but it seemed to be nothing more than a small sprain, if that. She was putting weight on it and by the end of the day, was barely limping. Her owners came to take her home the next day. Maggie seemed fully recovered by then. As I followed Maggie out, I thought to myself, “If you didn’t know she had gotten run over, you’d never know, it because you can’t even see a trace of the limp.”

As Maggie and I came through the interview room, she spotted her two dads. She immediately began to cry in great howling bays, lifting the injured limb completely off the floor and generally acting like a dog whose leg was in need of immediate surgery, if not amputation. Despite my earnest explanations and assertions that she had not even been limping that day, we never saw Maggie again.

Along with the many, many Shelties and Australian shepherds and cattle dogs, there were the corgis and a handful of rough and smooth Collies. We had some bearded collies who had springs in their heels. One in particular would always start his walk by leaping straight into the hair, circling three or four times before coming down just so the lead could get hopelessly ravelled in his long fine fur.

And my favourite of course, the Belgian sheepdogs. We only had four over the course of our sixteen years. And although I was and am devoted to the long haired Terverun variety, I have to say that the party always got started when Sophie, our one and only Malinois, was in residence.

If Teddy or Keira the Airedales were also there, then one could only stand back and watch the whirlwind swirling past.

The ball obsessed Border collies were usually pretty easy to manage. There was one that we actually walked off lead as he never, literally, took his eye off the ball. We did have a pair that showed no interest in chasing things. That was a shock.

Haley was a moderately ball obsessed Border collie. She was smart as a whip. We made the mistake of letting her see that we found her antics amusing. Ever after, at feeding time, we’d find her at the front of her room with her bowl in her mouth, wagging her tail and waiting for our laughter.

We boarded hundreds of cocker spaniels of all kinds of colours and varieties. We also met the elegant Brittany spaniels, field spaniels, a Clumber spaniel and to our everlasting delight, even a Tibetan spaniel.

From Japan, the small Shiba Inus were, in our experience more formidable than the Akitas, even though the latter were bred as fighting dogs. In general, the larger the dog, the more gentle they were. We had an Anatolian shepherd who managed to look majestic even when lifting his leg to pee.

We had a client of many years who always had two chow chows. Our view of the breed was formed by the sweet natured, funny Charlie and Flossie.

When another chow arrived for a visit and immediately started snarling and snapping, we were taken by surprised.

Early on at the kennel, we seemed to have a run of schipperkes. One named Elf was a Hearing Ear dog. Every time our phone rang, Elfie set up a fuss. He also politely lined up two little dog logs of Elfie poop each and every morning at the front of his room. I don’ think that was related to his hearing assistance duties.

Before we started the kennel, I would have placed myself firmly amid those who are ‘big dog’ lovers. I didn’t really get little dogs. Most of the ones I had come across were little barking machines who barely seemed to be dogs. At Oak Meadows I got a thorough education in the charms of tiny canines.

Affenpinschers and pugs. Elegant and sweet natured little papillons ( one named Zoe Bean, was actually a boy dog). Cotons de tulear and Havanese (Pablo, possibly the gentlest dog I ever met).

Pomeranians who were like living plush toys that you didn’t want to put down once you picked them up.

I still smile when I picture in my mind ancient little Romeo, a Bichon frisé, who would do a little side to side hopping dance, his black button eyes sparkling while licking his lips, whenever his food dish hove into his sightline.

Yes, even, or even especially Chihuahuas, the quintessential ‘yappy little dog’. Foxie and Gizmo came to us as puppies on a weekend when we were fully booked and had a number of families of big dogs staying with us.

We set aside the bigger rooms for the bigger dogs and assigned Foxie and Gizmo to a small room at the end of one dormitory wing. The next time they came to stay, I had assigned them a bigger room in the other wing. They weren’t having it.

As we took them back to the dormitory wings, they ran to the door to the wing they had previously occupied. We tried to lead them to their room in the other wing. They ran to the door back to the common areas, barking madly. We picked them up and took them to their new, improved room. As soon as we set them down they ran back to the door to common area. Wondering what would happen if we bowed to their demands, we opened the door to the wing they had originally stayed in. They raced right down to ‘their’ room and refused to leave.

They boarded with us their whole lives. They insisted on the same room for 16 years.

There was a wonderful variety of mixed breed mutts. In fact, whenever I was asked what breed of dog I would recommend to people thinking about getting a dog, or another dog, I always suggested they think about a rescue mutt. My experience was that they tended generally to be healthier. Temperament-wise, if a dog managed to survive to be rescued and taken to a shelter, chances were pretty good that, like our own MacDuff, they would love you devotedly for life.

We’ve been bitten by many breeds of purebred dogs. We never got a bite from a mixed breed.

Were we ever afraid of the rottweilers, dobermans, Beaucerons, German shepherds, cane Corso, pit bulls, and other “dangerous’ breeds? No.

We never believed in breed bans. We judged dogs, like people, on their own individual merits.

As a matter of simple numbers, most of the bites we got were from little dogs, although the worst bite John ever got was from a big Russian breed. The consequences of a big dog biting you are more severe, but little dogs have, in our experience, a higher incidence of biters. My theory is that owners of little dogs tend to be more tolerant of their aggression. I’ve seen people laughing as their tiny dog bares its teeth and lunges at some hapless bystander. In general, owners of big dogs, especially those breeds with ‘bad names’ will be vigilant about training out any hint of aggression.

And when it came to forcing a pill down the throat of a domestic pet, give me the enormous maw of a doberman any day over the tiny mouth of an angry cat, bristling with tiny, razor sharp teeth and attitude.

One of my brothers and his wife have been very active in rescuing rottweilers.

If there was ever a dog who one might suspect of being dangerous, surely it would be a rottweiler who had suffered abuse. In that household, the rottweilers were all sweet natured. They did go in fear of the resident Lhasa Apso though. That little bugger would be your best friend one moment and bite your finger off the next.

Mostly what we learned was that the claims made for any given breed as to temperament, behaviour and energy levels could not be applied over a wide range of examples of the breed. There could be variations even within the same litter.

We had beagles who barked constantly, but we also boarded beagles who behaved like they had taken a vow of silence. We had Border collies who were ball obsessed and Border collies who seemed offended if you threw a ball in their direction.

We had poodles who were scary smart and one poodle who was so stupid, even his owners called him challenged. He didn’t know his name. When you called “Toby” repeatedly, he’d just look puzzled, like he was thinking, “Why do they keep saying that word as if it’s supposed to mean something to me?”

We had Labs like Wilbur who were crazy high energy. We also had Labs who were total couch potatoes.

Arnie was one of the former.

“He must have been a real pistol back in his time,” we remarked one time to the owner of this elderly Lab.

If you played ball in the yard when Arnie was present, you had to have a half dozen tennis balls, because Arnie, even at the age of 12, beat the other, younger dogs to them, would get three in his mouth at once, and defend them against all comers.

“You know, before Arnie, we had another Lab. She was the quietest, best behaved, most obliging dog we ever owned. When she died, we thought, ‘We’ll get another of those nice sedate Labs’. We got Arnie. When he was young, he was so uncontrollable that one vet suggested we have him put down. We persevered with training him, but it was a real struggle.”

Boston terries provided a similar example. Suzette, a Boston terrier, was a perfect lady. She went where she was asked to go, when she was asked to go there, and was content to remain by your side whenever nothing else was going on. Suzette eventually became asthmatic. That was when we learned that it is possible to put as asthma puffer over a dog’s face.

When Suzette died, her owners got another Boston terrier, a puppy they christened Isabelle. Isabelle was quite possibly one of the most active dogs we ever boarded. She very good natured and happy, but she was a holy terror. People who owned small dogs would sometimes ask if we kept the little dogs separate from the big dogs at playtime. Once we got Isabelle, we always used her as the prime example of why we did not have any hard and fast rules about matching dogs with playmates based on size.

We would struggle to find a compatible play group for Isabelle and it never included any dog smaller than a chow. Mostly it was the huge energetic boxers, labs, Australian shepherds and the dog we owned at that time, Caesar, who weighed 145 pounds and was a cross between a Great Dane and a rottweiler. Isabelle would get to be too much even for them – and Caesar had the patience of a saint.

We had to give her frequent times out.

No, the type of breed was not always a reliable indicator of personality. Why, we even boarded Siamese cats who were relaxed, mild mannered and not at all inclined to tear anyone’s eyes out.

We learned so much from our dogs and cats. The beautifully sleek, fast flat coated retriever who lost her leg to cancer, never sat around feeling sorry for herself. She enjoyed running after a ball on her remaining three legs as much as ever she did when she had four. The arthritic dogs who could barely drag themselves to their feet, never gave up trying. The blind cat went about her business with her usual fierce determination.

You will never see dogs shun another because that other belongs to a particular breed, or has a certain handicap. They will just see another dog and think “I wonder if she wants to play?”

Our pets are philosophical. If the dogs were expecting a walk, but it was cancelled due to an electrical storm, they went to the play room with equal enthusiasm. They were open to new experiences. They greeted every day with the optimistic belief that something wonderful was going to happen. A human being giving them a pat and saying their name was enough to make their tails wag.

We loved our job. By 2010, we had boarded some 3700 different dogs and 500 different cats. By the time we retired, those numbers were probably close to 5000 dogs and 800 cats. We still fondly remember a very large number of them because they were ours, in a very real sense. When we heard that one of them had died, we mourned them. When the owner of that dog or cat came in with a new puppy or kitten, we rejoiced.

For people like us who love dogs and cats and relate to them far better than to people, it was paradise. Though there were increasing challenges, and not just from bullying clients.

John ran the kennel by himself for significant periods of time one spring. I had suffered a ruptured appendix and resulting septicaemia. Then a month after my hospitalisation for that, I was back in hospital for another week because of internal bleeding from an ulcer caused by the H-pylori bacteria I had apparently picked up in the course of my first hospitalisation.

John never turned any dogs or cats away during that time. We had had a couple of pieces of luck. For one thing, this had happened in April, traditionally one of our slowest periods. For another, our youngest son and his wife came out to help on weekends.

As soon as I got back from the hospital, I was over at the kennel, abdominal drains and all, scrubbing beds, doing check ins and check outs, answering the phone and emails, updating reservations and whatever else I could do to keep things running.

One winter morning, I slipped on the wet tile floor of our own front porch, twisting my left knee so badly I couldn’t stand on it at first. I took myself to the hospital, where X-rays showed no fracture. I was given an elastic bandage to wrap around my knee and sent home.

I continued walking dogs through the snow drifts and cold. My walks took longer because of my bad knee. Sometimes I came back to the kennel with hands so frozen, I was crying from the pain.

One morning I was gatekeeping in the backyards as John let the dogs out of the kennel. I was kneecapped by an enthusiastic Great Dane as he ran past. The pain was so bad, I thought I would pass out.

With one thing and another, the knee never seemed to get any better. How bad was it? So bad that finally I actually went to the doctor. I never go to the doctor.

She agreed that the injury should have shown improvement by then, and sent me for a CT-scan. A few hours after the scan, I got a phone call from the hospital. A semi-hysterical tech told me that I had a fractured fibula, almost at the knee cap.

“I hope you haven’t been walking on it!”

I broke out laughing, albeit a little bitterly. I was instructed to return to the hospital forthwith. The orthopaedic surgeon who saw me just shook his head when he heard the history. After some discussion, it was decided that putting it in plaster was probably useless at that point, as the fracture had in fact healed somewhat. I was fitted for one of those stiff fibreglass removable casts and a crutch, and told to stay off that leg. Given the exigencies of the kennel, that was never going to happen.

As I said to John, I didn’t quite know whether to feel mad or happy. On the one hand, I’d been walking dogs through ice and snow for weeks on a fractured bone. On the other hand, if I’d been put into a plaster cast, I wouldn’t have been able to walk dogs at all and then what would have happened with the kennel?

These kinds of things got me thinking about our increasing age, the inevitability of coming infirmity and what would happen to the dogs and cats if we had to close on short notice because one of us suddenly suffered a severe injury or illness. As the years went by, it started to dawn on us that personally engaging in a business with extreme physical demands had some inherently self-limiting aspects.

I developed arthritis in my hands and knees. We were both falling now and then when the walking paths were icy. It started to sink in that there was a real possibility of one of those falls resulting in a broken hip, especially as we got older. If that happened, how would one of us run the kennel for weeks and weeks while the other had surgery and did rehab?

In the early years, it had never even so much as crossed our minds that a dog existed who was too much for us to handle. Now we were both occasionally having doubts. For the first time, John encountered a big, strong, tough dog that was beyond his capacity to control. He started off for the first walk with a boisterous, badly trained Great Dane.

As soon as the door opened, the dog dragged John off his feet. Of course after all those years, it was ingrained in us not to let go of the lead, no matter what. The dog dragged John across the gravel and headfirst into the gate leading out of the enclosed area by the kennel to the walking path.

Then there was the big house, the garage, the yards, the 100 acres. One of John’s great pleasures had been the upkeep of the property. He had a tractor and he used it to move big rocks and concrete blocks around to reinforce the fences in the dog yards. He gardened and did some of the snow clearing in the winter. Eventually reaching his mid-sixties, even he, who laboured under the unshakeable belief that he was immortal and invincible, began to slowly realize that all of this was getting beyond his physical capacities.

I started to consider how we could retire, where we would retire and how we would sell this unique property and business. That discussion took place over two years. Suffice it to say that in a repeat of history, when we eventually accepted the necessity to sell, the day after the “For Sale” sign went up, we accepted an offer for a substantial sum in cash.

Through Oak Meadows, John and I were privileged to share the occasions of our clients’ lives, great and small. We learned that when people find someone they trust with their dog or cat, they give you complete loyalty. Many of our clients stayed with us for our entire sixteen years, bringing their dogs and cats to us several times a year.

It was an interesting aspect of kennel life, that we saw people at major turning points in their lives, both good and bad. Someone was getting married? Their dog came to us, and we saw the wedding photos when they picked her up. That same couple has a baby a few years later? The dog came to stay with us. When the baby is a few months old, they take him to see Grandma and Grandpa in B.C. Guess where the dog came?

We met children when they arrived as little kids coming with their family to bring their puppy to us. Then we saw them become old enough to drive, and bring their now elderly dog in themselves. Children who we first knew as toddlers, we saw driving off to university with their parents lugging the student furniture, and leaving the dog or cat with us.

We were in business long enough to share experiences with a lot of people in our age group who left their dog or cat while they went away to care for an elderly parent who was in crisis. I could relate.

We saw the dark side of our clients’ lives as well. 

One day in our first year of operation, John made the routine inquiry of one of our clients, a robust and friendly gentleman of about 50 years, “How are you Peter?” The reply, in a perfectly matter of fact voice was, “I’m dying John. I have a brain tumour and don’t expect to see six months.” Sure enough, that was the last time we saw him.

His widow faced life alone with courage and optimism. She continued to travel, bringing us her wonderful Lab and standard poodle. When the last of those dogs died at nearly 16, she acquired a beautiful Landseer Newfoundland puppy. It may be that somewhere in this world, there is something more beautiful and cuddly than a Landseer Newfoundland puppy but if so, I can’t quite think what it is.  This one was like a little bear cub.

Of course every time a puppy or kitten came in, I was sure that one must be the cutest ever.

When we would hear a news report of a fatal road accident or airplane crash, John would occasionally ponder if the day might come when one of our clients simply did not return for their dog or cat. After all, people do die on holiday, as well as going to work or shopping or in their beds. 

One day we got a call from someone we didn’t know, telling us that an elderly dog who was to have gone home that day with the couple who owned him, would not be picked up. This person was rather cryptic in his remarks. We were told that David, the male half of the couple who owned the dog, might not be in a position to come, but sooner or later ‘someone’ would get the dog.

It turned out that while away on vacation, the couple’s car had been broadsided by a truck when David had been making a left turn. His dearly loved wife, Alice, had been killed. David was in the hospital. Eventually, David did come for his dog. He behaved like a man living in a nightmare, hoping desperately to wake up. What he said was one of the most heartbreaking tributes from a man to his wife that I have ever heard.

“I keep expecting Alice to come through the door and make everything right again, because that’s what she did. She always made everything right, no matter how bad it was.”

Six months later, he emailed us to tell us his dog had died.

One of our elderly clients lost his wife. He remarried a couple of years later, in his eighties. We boarded his Cavalier King Charles spaniel for both his first wife’s funeral and his wedding to his second wife.

We keep a Samoyed for a client attending the funeral of her brother-in-law, who had died in bizarre circumstances. He was driving his car on a road in Amish country in the United States. A large number of Clydesdale horses, kept by the Amish farmer whose property fronted the road, broke through their fence onto the road, panicked. One of them jumped onto the roof of his car, crushing him to death.

The most heartbreaking and at the same time inspiring story involved a local older couple whose lovely yellow Lab, Gemini, we had boarded many times. She was one of those dogs that we never refused a booking for, no matter how overbooked we were, because she would always stay in the playroom, minding her manners, greeting all comers with a grin and a tail wag, and getting along with whatever other dogs happened to be passing her way.

She exemplified everything a Lab should be. Meeting Gemini was a full explanation for why Labs remain the most popular purebred dog in North America, year after year.

One day we got a call from the gentleman owner (we’ll call him Ian). He said there was a family medical emergency in Montreal. He knew we were fully booked, but was there any way we could look after Gemini? We said of course. Ian said he would be in touch with us later to finalise the details. 

The next day his wife, who we’ll call Minerva, contacted us to say she was going to bring Gemini in later that day. The dog was coughing and retching and they wanted to get her checked out with the vet before they left town. 

I offered to take Gemini to the vet, but Minerva said she didn’t want to put us to that trouble. (Demonstrating that most of our clients were delightful, thoughtful, caring people, despite the evidence to the contrary in this book.)

That day passed without any further word. Before I went to bed, I checked our email. There was one from Minerva, saying that before they could get Gemini to the vet and leave for Montreal, their fifteen year old grandson had died. That was the ‘medical emergency’ to which Ian had initially referred. They hadn’t yet left, but of course they were planning to go to Montreal and would be in touch the next day.

Shocked and worried for our clients, we went to bed, to see what the next day would bring.

In the morning, Minerva called. I offered what small words of comfort I could summon. What exactly can you say to someone who has just suffered the death of their grandchild and is now facing the task of trying to comfort their daughter in her own grief? We agreed that she would call after she’d taken Gemini to the vet. We would open up, whatever the hour, to receive her. 

The call came. Gemini did not.

The vet had found a huge mass in Gemini’s throat. The tumour was malignant and inoperable. They had just said goodbye to her forever.

I was horrified. Minerva was calm. She said that curiously, of all their grandchildren, the boy who had just died was the only one who had been great friends with Gemini. He loved to visit with her, and would always walk her when he had the chance. Minerva’s calm came from her belief that Gemini had chosen to go to be with this boy who loved her, to be beside him and help him on the journey they were both making.  

I was having trouble holding myself together at this point. I managed because I understood that it was not my place to weep on Minerva’s shoulder, when she bearing all this with grace and dignity. But we ourselves had known and loved Gemini for ten years. She was one of our family too, and we were heartbroken to lose her.

I thought things were about as sad as they could possibly be. But within a few days, Minerva shared with us the true scope of the tragedy, forwarding to us a letter written by their daughter and son-in-law.

Their grandson’s passing had been a suicide. He had tried to hang himself. He survived the attempt, but blood and oxygen had been cut off to his brain. He had no brain function. The family had had to make the difficult decision to end life support.

The extraordinary letter related that the family had donated their son’s organs so that others could live.

We were asked to pass on this letter to anyone who we thought might benefit from it.

Since I could never match their eloquence, and to honour that request from these courageous people, I am taking the liberty of quoting some passages here:

“While this seems almost impossible to understand and assimilate, this thunderous black cloud has a huge silver lining. Please let me explain.

[Our son] took his own life. We would like to share this fact with our community in hopes that he can help others to talk and listen and learn about suicide. If his experience can help raise awareness for people who need help, then we will be very proud of that huge gift. If you know of a kid who might need someone to talk to, please tell them about available services like Kids Help www.kidshelpphone.ca or Suicide Hotline (1-800-273-8255).

Many of the kids who use these services are well-functioning kids who are just trying to deal with the everyday problems of growing up. It would be a miracle to know that just one kid has found hope where they thought there was none. [Our son] has given this gift to our community.

There are many other positive things to be taken from [our son’s] death. As we write, [he] is very busy at work. He is with a huge medical team at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and Transplant Quebec. He is donating all of his organs so that today some deserving people can get new, better lives. There are many families that have learned today that they will receive a heart, kidneys, liver and other vital organs. Until today they lived in fear of death and now they have new hope. This organ donation is keeping us strong. We know that [our son] will live on in many other bodies for years to come.

[Our son] brought our extended families together so that we could be with him these past few days. He has reminded us how much we love each other and how important it is to say and show it. We will worry less about the many trivial things that can consume us day to day and we will enjoy the company of the people we love more often. We had the gift of [our son] in our lives for 15 years. We all learned from him: about love of animals, caring for the environment, love of the outdoors, the value of humour, hard work and perseverance against difficult odds.”

This boy’s heart now beats in the chest of a boy who was dying at 13 and his organs saved about 6 other lives. 

Our years at Oak Meadows taught us many, many things about what is, and is not important in life.

We had wealthy clients, clients who were eminent politicians and sports figures, and we kept dogs and cats for battered women who had nothing. We had clients of every skin tone and ethnicity to be found under the sun. We had gay and lesbian clients, and we had straight clients; people who had been married for years and those who got divorced and argued over custody of the dog. We had christian, jewish, hindu, sikh, moslem and atheist clients, and probably adherents of lots of other kinds of belief systems that we didn’t know about.

Here’s what we learned from all this. Most people are pretty much the same as they go through life’s pleasures and pains. Most people love their kids, their families and their pets just about equally. They try to do the right thing. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail.

I have been writing, editing, and re-writing this book for a decade or maybe more. After we retired in January of 2015, we were to have moved abroad. Those plans were abandoned. That saga is probably worth another whole book.

In short, John stayed in Canada while I traveled the world, taking up housesitting as a way of doing it on the cheap. From time to time I came back to Canada to see if John was ready to make the leap to living abroad, or if I could find a way to be content with retirement in small town Ontario. John came and visited me abroad several times over those years, as well.

In July of 2018, I decided that I needed to make a move to a permanent residence abroad. I was tired of living out of a suitcase and felt that if I didn’t at least try living abroad, I’d never settle to life in Canada.

At first, John declined to join me. Then he changed his mind. He found the strength and the courage to try something completely outside his comfort zone. We moved to Cuenca, Ecuador in October of 2018. We were both happier than we had even been in our lives, but John especially was more carefree than I had ever known him to be.

Then seven months after the move, I came into the kitchen to find John collapsed on the floor. He died two days later, on my 67th birthday, four months short of our 50th wedding anniversary.

Our story ended there. And what a wonderful, weird, joyful, painful, extraordinary story it was. To us at least.

My task now is to try to find a way to carry on alone, to create my own story. It’s not easy, after sharing my life, my thoughts, my hopes and fears with the person who knew me and understood me better than anyone in this world. Who was my partner in every way, since I was fifteen years old.

Some days I think I succeed better than others. But I am trying, and that’s the thing that counts, I like to think.

This book is dedicated to all the Mollys and Maxes, Chesters and Chelseas, Sams and Sallies, Buddies and Babes, Maggies and Marvins, Rileys and Ripleys, Cocos, Reeses, Mochas, Midnights, Ebonies, Blackies, Snowballs, Freds, Ethels, Rickies, Lucies, Chers, Bonos, Micks and Mikeys, Harolds, Hanks and Harries, Laceys, Rexes, Kings and Queenies, Princes and Princesses, Dukes and Earls, Chestnuts, Peanuts, Petunias, Roses, Lilies, Willows, Nutmegs, Cinnamons, Vanilla Beans, Apples, Taffies, Cookies, Sugars, Ophelias, Berts, Bernies, Melvins, Caseys, Callies, Lakshmis, Kalis, Kais, Kelseys, Kaleys, Emmas, Jennas, Jennies, Tiffanies, Ariels, Elsies, Belles, Beaus, Patches, Rags, Blues, Jazzes, Rockies, Rollies, Konas, Keiras, Kellies, Milos, Moxies and Mindies, Tobies and Tallies, Jacks and Jakes, Bobs, Jimmies, Dougs, Billies, Alfies, Allies, Abbies, Taras, Rileys, Fijis, Savannahs, Georgias, Charlies, Hercules, Xenas, Katos, Senecas, Caesars, Jupiters, Junos, Zeuses, Heras, Apollos, Venuses, Stars, Sunnies, Skys, Dawns, Rascals, Devils, Satans, Angels – all the dogs and cats who made those years such a pleasure and a joy.

And to all their owners. May your stories go on, and whatever potholes you encounter on the road, may they lead to your own happy ever after.

THE END