Flea's Story

Flea's story is rather different from my other pups' stories. His is a tale of persistence, determination, blood, sweat, and tears. On March 26, 2010, I was at work and Drew took Bunkin for a walk around our apartment complex. The dog field area was lined by a very dense bamboo forest. As Drew and Bunkin began to walk back home, a raggedy little dog clamored out of the bamboo and followed behind at a short distance. Drew tried to approach the dog, but he bared his teeth and snapped angrily at him each time. Drew eventually gave up, but the little guy followed him and Bunkin all the way home. He stopped short at our front door and refused to cross the threshold. Drew tried to reach down and pick him up, but the little guy wasn't about to tolerate any contact. Drew shut the door, but the wild little dog just stood there and didn't run off. He says he knew I'd kill him if he didn't do something, so he put on his game face, snatched up the little dog, incurred several nasty bites, and tossed him inside.

When I came home, I did a double take. There was a very unhappy, very roughed up looking, snarling miniature version of Bunkin in my living room. He was about 8 pounds, rather malnourished with an upset digestive system, and very atrophied with old injuries to an ankle. His legs were so weak and wobbly, he could barely walk along without stumbling. He was so scared and small; it was clear his only defense mechanism was an aggressive facade. We still didn't know much about rescue / shelters at the time, but we knew this little guy wouldn't stand a chance in a high volume animal control facility. We knew he was going to be a nasty long-term project that most people wouldn't care to deal with. We knew we were stuck with him.

Well, stuck we were. It took us about 3 weeks to get to the point where Flea stopped biting us all the time. It took at least 6 months for him to begin behaving around friends and family. He took a chunk out of a friend's calf, took my sister's fingernail clean off, and drew blood countless other times. He and Bunkin didn't get along, even though he followed him home that day. He slept on the ground in a blanket or under the bed most nights early on. He was a complete disaster when it came to potty training and he had anxiety issues like nobody's business, on top of the behavioral drama. Flea was a certified mess. Many days we thought we'd gotten ourselves into a huge mess when we took him in, but we loved him nonetheless. We just had to convince him to love us in return.

This March, it will have been three years since Flea found his way into our home. He's come such an amazingly long way, though his journey still isn't complete. He now weighs 13 pounds and is good and strong. He's able to be off his anxiety medication, without his belly bands 24/7, has learned how to cope with various daily stresses, and how to behave properly (well, relatively properly) around visitors. He's my little lovey baby and he spends most of his time sleeping in our laps or whining because he wants to be in our laps. He's still the same old feisty Flea that he always was, but acceptably so now. I love his firecracker personality. He's the boss and he knows it. He and Bunkin still aren't fond of each other, but Flea secretly loves Oliver and Oliver understands Flea's boundaries. If someone knocks on the door, Flea perches on the very top of the couch and barks like nobody's business until we give him the ok. He loves cat toys, playing fetch, and lounging in the sun. Most of all, he loves us. I have to admit, there were many many days I thought we'd never get to this happy place of status quo with Mr. Flea, but the patience has finally paid off. Yes, he's still a total mess and he's a holy terror, but he's mommy's little monster and I just love him dearly.

I am now certifiably obsessed with Chihuahuas of all types (we think Flea's probably something like a Chihuahua / Min Pin mix) and I can thank Flea for teaching me so much about the plight of small dogs. They're valiant, robust, lionhearted little fellows who just want a person who will treat them like the king they know they are. Yes, they can be slow to warm and trust and often come with tough behavioral issues that stem from deep-seated fear and anxiety, but once you begin to understand them and win them over they make the most wonderful companions. Their loyalty rewards your diligence in spades. Flea is no exception. I'm so glad I've finally gotten the chance to revisit and share how all three of my dogs came to be part of our family. They own our hearts and they truly are the joy of our lives. There is no doubt that we've got many more adventures ahead to share together. I wouldn't trade my motley crew for anything in the world.

Feb 10, 2023

UPDATE 2/14/2023: For the first time in my life, I know what it feels like to have a broken heart on Valentine's Day. Drew and I decided to say goodbye to Mr. Flea, just six weeks shy of his 13th adoptiversary with us. My office feels so lonely without my little buddy keeping me company as I type. The hallway is lined with all his belongings as we cycle through laundry and prepare to store everything. This dog had approximately 9,246 little beds and blankets around the house and just as many teeny tiny cat toys stashed everywhere. Corners look empty and it's oddly quiet without the sound of his little "tic tac toes" as he relentlessly circled the house in search of crumbs. I've told his origin story to so many friends over the years so many times that it feels like lore. I have to admit, as I reviewed my original post on Flea (above) in preparation to begin writing today's update, it struck me as an inadequately simple overview of our time with this dog. It makes sense though - I wrote it only three years into our journey with Flea, which I am so proud to say is just a small fraction of the time we spent with him. No wonder it doesn't do him justice - 10 additional years of adventure have transpired!

It looks like my writing left off back in 2013 emphasizing how far Flea had progressed behaviorally and how much we already couldn't imagine our lives without him (growls, snarls, bites, and all!). That trajectory continued upward for the most part; Flea turned into a really good little guy and mellowed more with age, although I'd be lying if I claimed he was ever truly an easy dog. We travel quite a lot and finding dog-sitters is always an arduous undertaking that requires the most thoroughly prepared and fearless individuals (and even then they have to remain undeterred by my 10 page dog instruction manual and come through the meet & greet event unscathed). If everyone is alive and no blood has been shed when we return from vacation, it's a success. We have been extremely fortunate to meet some wonderful pet sitters who have cared beautifully for our crew over the years, but with Flea it's never been a run-of-the-mill job! Thank you to the several brave souls who have made our travels possible by staying with Flea et al. I'd be remiss if I didn't also shout out to the many veterinary professionals who courageously worked with Flea over the years. From wildlife gloves and caution-flagged files to muzzle intolerance and a shockingly high "tolerance" to sedatives, handling Flea never got easier. 

I am relieved to share that the only victims of his bites since way back when have been me, Drew, and the other resident dogs (none serious, just typical ninja-strike Flea bites and, for the most part, predictably deserved). Friends who came over always knew to ignore him while he yelled at them, then not to panic when he eventually came up to sniff and inspect them. By and large, Flea's bark was much worse than his bite and he typically warmed up to people before their visit ended. Having said that, if you are a friend of Flea, then you are one of a specially chosen few. Even among his small circle of friends, there is only an even smaller handful of folks who could get away with just walking up and greeting Flea directly without getting an earful or risking a finger.

The key to a successful human-to-Flea approach: confidence hedged with respect and recognition, laced with faux reverence, and extended only on his terms. If you flinched even oh so slightly at his intimidation tactics, you were as good as chopped liver and doomed to catch nothing but menacing side-eye from Flea for the rest of time. On the flip side, all it took was a couple of those confident interactions before you'd be able to scoop him up and levy pets without real trouble. Now listen, I'm not going to name names because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by leaving them out and revealing their true standing, but the most trusted inner circle knows who they are and can forever hold pride in their status as tried and true Friends of the Flea. There are FIVE people on this planet who could walk into my house on any given day, pick Flea up, love on him, set him down, proceed uninterrupted with the purpose of their visit, and live to tell the tale. If you aren't one of the anointed five, please take no offense - it probably just means you've got superior self-preservation instincts (and no doubt all ten of your fingers).

Ok, I'm already starting to feel like this Flea story is shaping up to reflect his legacy better. It will still  probably take me a couple days to put everything into words here. What a life! Where to start? What to say next? Flea shared most of the same adventures as Bunkin and Oliver and plenty more beyond that. From tolerating (and keeping in check) the bazillions of foster dogs over the years, to moving from GA to CA and back, to taking countless trips by car to FL, to kayaking with us like a right proper first mate, to enjoying TWELVE cabin vacations (he loved cabin trips), to visiting 15 out of 50 states, this little dog lived life large. And those are just some of the main highlights / life events. I'll never forget the first time we put him in a swimming pool only to discover that his version of dog-paddling occurred perpendicular to the norm and resulted in swift sinking. He loved floating on my raft in the sun with me though! Here are a few more timeless tales off the top of my head:

- when he convinced Oliver to dig up half the yard and flush a chipmunk out for him

- when we were moving and couldn't find him because he'd hidden inside a boxspring

- the time during our Cinco de Mayo party when he held our friend's little girl hostage and ate all of her tacos/salsa/queso/guac straight off her plate because she was too terrified to move

- when a chocolate lab grabbed him by the head because he attempted to steal a tennis ball from him and Bunkin saved his life

-  when he held Drew's brother hostage on the couch for like two hours by sitting on top of his chest and growling every time he'd try to move

- that time he got impounded by hotel security in the middle of the night

- the time he ran away for 4 hours and then came back like no big deal

- when I took him to Petsmart obedience classes and he was still feral and terrorized the class

- when he finally allowed his vet to successfully place all her acupuncture needles, only to immediately shake them all out

- how he used to love chasing, jumping, and chomping at bomber bees in the yard

- the time he encountered a giant moth and was absolutely enraptured by it

- that time we snuck him into a state park so he could go kayaking with us

- when he bullied our friends' greyhound out of his entire bowl of food and ate the whole thing, giving himself a roiling case of pancreatitis

- that time we gave the three brown dogs a canine IQ test and Flea scored the highest

 

PetSmart Graduation 2010

Everybody has all the little things they love about their dogs: the
way they smell, their soft ears, their happy tail wags when you come home from work, and all their cute quirks. I could go on and on forever about Flea's quirks and how I'll miss his little grumpy sounds and how smart he was, etc. But I think what I'll miss most of all, aside from his companionship, was how much of a big personality he was. He was an absolute character and I don't think I'll ever find another dog with that much moxie. He'll always be a legend: that crazy little angry dog who emerged from a bamboo thicket and left none of that ferocity behind as he went on to rule his household for over a decade.

I also love how literally every single one of my friends, coworkers, and family members has at least one Flea story of their own. There's no way I can recall them all at will, but I know how many laughs and tears they'll bring me over the rest of my years. There are so many stories / adventures / moments - some happy and some sad or intense, but that time he got out of the yard in 2018 really did something permanent to my heart. He'd found a tiny hole in our fence and just decided to go off on an adventure when I let everyone out to potty one day. I went to call them back inside and he was just gone. I turned the house upside down, thinking maybe I hadn't let him out in the first place and he was inside somewhere. Nope. I went out the front door and spotted him across the cul-de-sac on a neighbor's porch. I called his name, he took one wild look back at me, then took off like a shot into the woods, middle fingers up. I traipsed around the woods for a while, set some feral cat traps, drove slowly around the neighborhood shaking his food container out the window and yelling "dinner", nothing. I alerted his microchip company and all the lost pet networks, made fliers, called animal control and gave them a heads up, and then realized I couldn't do anything else but wait and hope. I knew no one could catch him and I just remember the sick knot in my stomach and the ice in my veins as I told myself I'd have to accept that I'd never see him again. I'd have to just focus on the good life we'd given him while we had him and take comfort in that. That was how Flea's story was going to end - I just couldn't believe it. I sat there, numb to the core, when I heard the back door open and Drew call my name (he'd just gotten home from a work trip 20 minutes prior and joined the search efforts). He was standing there with Flea in his arms. He came back into the yard through the same hole once he decided he'd had enough adventure. I guess he'd forgotten that it wasn't all that great being wild and free. I died. I literally dropped to the ground and busted into hyperventilating sobs of emotion and relief. Drew told me later that he'd only seen people react like that in movies. I was so mad at that stupid dog that I was completely ok with the fact that he'd ripped off a dewclaw getting caught on something - he deserved it. I'm still not sorry. An ounce of suffering for literal years off my life. He'd live. I was never quite the same.

That story and those feelings came back to me in a moment of clarity while drowning in anticipatory grief ahead of Flea's departure. I realized that I was lucky: having to make this decision for Flea was a privilege - one I almost didn't have. All life ends in death; there's no way around it and there's no easy out, but there are some fates worse than others. I almost lost him forever and would have never known what happened to him. Instead, I got to enjoy five more years with Flea after his escapade and I get to have peace and closure surrounding his death. That's the goal. That's a gift. That's something to celebrate and appreciate forever. Everybody dies and it's normal to be sad over the loss, but we must temper our grief with gratitude and solace. How much more wonderful this little dog made our lives, as we certainly did his.

In the end, our decision was guided by our ability to manage Flea's comfort and quality of life. Flea had degenerative joint and disc disease and resultant osteoarthritis and neuropathic pain. We did all the things you can do to manage this over the years: lifestyle changes like carrying him up and down the stairs and prohibiting jumping on/off furniture, an ever-evolving multimodal pain management approach curated by an army of veterinary professionals, acupuncture, joint supplements, and so much more. We began using a stroller to allow him to still enjoy neighborhood walks on days where he didn't have the stamina or needed convalescence. Despite our efforts, his physical deterioration predictably progressed and was eventually compounded by cognitive dysfunction. Dogs can develop "old dog cognitive disorder", which is basically a rather undignified name for doggy dementia. Flea exhibited telltale CCD behaviors like repetitive circling, aimless wandering, and obsessive licking. We started him on a medication to bolster his cognition and made sure he had plenty of mental stimulation to keep him sharp (he loved puzzle games and snuffle mats, so he'd come up to my office with me and work on his puzzles uninterrupted while I studied). Each time we added something to his regimen, we saw a period of improvement and stability. Then we plateaued - he sort of hung out in that directionless "senile" state and began to have more and more breakthrough pain. We got him through a bad flare at Christmastime only for him to lapse into another in February. His increasing baseline of pain combined with his deteriorating cognition led to about 50/50 bad days vs good days - a dark harbinger of worse days ahead.

When we consider a pet's quality of life, we don't want to see more bad days than good. This seems simple enough, but it doesn't always shake out to be so cut and dry. In cases where nothing is overtly wrong with a pet, it can be tremendously difficult to make a decision based on gradual changes to subjective observations. Bunkin had an extremely aggressive cancer; that decision was objective and out of our hands. Oliver and Flea - not so much. They were just old and busted and we have to do our best to take a few steps back and evaluate their overall enjoyment of daily life. They get to the point where they need us to be strong enough to release them when we can no longer mitigate their suffering. No matter how familiar you are with these notions or how many times you go through pet loss, it never gets easier.

**I'm writing a separate post to hold all my thoughts on our QOL process and the details of Flea's pain management protocol. I figure maybe it's useful for other people with senior pets and it's definitely been part of my processing journey, but I didn't want this entire memorial post about Flea to be focused on those details. So if you're interested, check back here and I'll link that post when it's ready to share.

Ultimately, I ran out of solutions and Flea made it very clear that he needed us to let go. My once deep red-tan colored feisty Chihuahua was now an ancient white-faced ghost of himself and utterly out of energy. We went from wrestling with a difficult decision to staring clearly at the right answer in a matter of three days. Flea was ready to rest. His nervous system was failing him - think of it like your body's control center short-circuiting, your nerves irreparably on the fritz - and he needed our help to escape the pain and confusion. We had one of our dear friends, Dr. Greener, come to the house and help us say goodbye to Flea. He left us calmly and untroubled - I always feared this would not be the case due to his demeanor, so I am forever grateful. I didn't want his final moments to be spent fighting and I was determined to stay strong for him until he was gone; I needed Dr. Greener, a fellow Chihuahua mom and one of Flea's chosen friends, for me as much as I needed her for Flea. The relief that flooded my heart as I realized we'd helped him go peacefully is inexplicable.

Flea had surf & turf for dinner and Reese's peanut butter cups for dessert. His last day was beautifully sunny and breezy, so he and I spent time on the porch listening to the wind chimes and basking in the sunshine. I like to think we were reflecting on our journey together, enjoying each other's quiet company one last time and opening our hearts to the peace of the moment. I know I'm humanizing him a lot, but our bond was perfection. This is what people call having a "heart dog". It's like the pet version of a soulmate. It doesn't mean I love my other dogs any less, just that Flea and I had an elevated connection. Losing a heart dog hurts extra, they say. I'm doing ok, honestly more so than I expected. I think I experienced so much anticipatory grief in the years leading up to this final portion of the journey that I had, in a way, already processed things. I am terribly fatalistic and guilt-oriented, always struggling to live in the "now" and not dread / worry / stress myself to death over what's to come. It's a character flaw, but it does mean that I'd been preparing for the day I'd have to let him go for a long time now. I know my grief will come in waves and tears will flow at unexpected moments, but my heart will heal with time. I am so lucky and grateful to have the guidance of my vetmed friends helping us navigate these turbulent waters; the peace I have is due in large part to my colleagues and their reassurance along the way. Flea's issues were unfixable and a pretty typical part of the aging process - we rest easier knowing we did absolutely everything possible to give him a long, wonderful, beautiful life full of love. And we succeeded.

I've got his fancy little sombrero ready to prop up against his portrait, like Tiny Tim's crutch

against the Cratchits' fireplace. I'll feel closest to him on sunny days, when I can imagine him enjoying a lazy afternoon with me. I'll always miss his little upside-down reverse noogies and his little "murf" noises. There are so many things I miss and so many memories that are melding together into a giant ball of fullness within my broken heart. I can't possibly write it all, no matter how many pages and hours I spend trying. I'll never know why he chose to follow Drew and Bunkin home that day in 2010, but I do know that I'm sure glad he did. Our lives wouldn't be nearly as rich without him. Drew pointed out that it gives him a certain sense of closure and peace knowing that our "three brown dog" trio is together again, like the final chapter of a book. I'm as certain that Bunkin and Oliver are waiting to speak with the manager to ask who let Flea through the gates. I'm going to make another post with a bunch of Flea photos, but I've included a few good ones here. Thank you for 13 years of colorful adventures, Mr. Flea. I will never stop telling your stories or smiling at your memory. 

February 14, 2023

In Memory of The Three Brown Dogs