Sara--
I have no doubt that our animals say goodbye, and sometimes they stick around to make sure we're okay.
When my beloved black lab mix passed away some four years ago, I was heartbroken. Non-functional heartbroken -- crying jags at work, unable to sleep at night, kept her collar under my pillow in hopes of feeling closer to her. She was nearly 15, and she was my best friend, and I couldn't imagine life without her. I'd never not had a dog from the time I was 10 months old, but somehow, I couldn't conceive of loving anyone or anything that much again, and I couldn't even think of getting another dog. But several months passed with too much quiet and too few kisses and then I found a house I liked and decided it was time. I'd never lived totally alone before, and a new house seemed to require a dog. We'd make a new start, I thought.
I planned to adopt a dog the day I closed on my house. That morning, though, a weird thing happened. I'd long since decided that I was going to get another black lab or lab mix, though I was considering a yellow lab, too. But as I was lying in bed in the early morning hours, eyes closed, I could feel my beloved Tiffany curled up in the curve of my legs where she always used to sleep. The feeling was so powerful, I knew, absolutely KNEW, that if I opened my eyes, I could see her. But instead, I asked her, "Tiffany, what kind of dog should I get? A black lab or a yellow lab?' And the bed shook just a little, as if she was shaking her head no.
Even now, I can still remember how VIVID this dream was, how I could feel the heat and the weight of her against my legs, the emotional closeness, and how her presence just permeated the room. How I knew she was there, even though I knew it should be a dream and made no sense, but a part of me felt awake, too, and was positive that even though it made no sense, it was REAL. And I asked again, "So will I get a black lab?" And again, the little bed shake, her saying no." So I said, "Then I'm going to get a yellow lab then?" No. "But those are the only dogs I'm considering," I remember thinking at her. And all I got was that no feeling from her.
The dream dissolved into other dreams, and eventually the alarm went off and the dream was gone. I closed on my house, had a celebratory lunch, and went dog hunting, dream forgotten, everything forgotten but finding myself a new lab friend.
But another weird thing happened. The first place I went to had a zillion black lab mixes, but all had something that made them wrong for me. One wasn't good with kids. One was dog aggressive. One was too young, and I was looking for a dog, not a puppy. After lookng at everything they had, I was ready to try another shelter.
My sister pointed out Jessie and I said, "Very nice. Okay, well, let's go someplace else, I don't see any dogs here." And my sister said, "What about this one?" And I looked and said, "Very nice, but way too big, and she's not a lab. She looks kind of shepherd-y, and I'm not really a shepherd person."
Sis convinced me to take her out and walk her to at least let her stretch her legs (she was very big and the kennel she was in...wasn't), where she ignored me, then clacked her jaws in my face a few times (very typical malinois, I would later come to realize), then eventually warmed up to me a bit, though mostly stayed aloof. She had very sad eyes, and no one there seemed to think much of her or have much in way of raging endorsement (the best they could come up with was "she likes to play ball." Little did I know they meant "was ball obsessive and will retrieve a ball 500 times in a row then bark at you to throw it again until your arm is ready to fall off. But I digress...)
I felt bad for her, but she didn't seem overly enamored of me or all that affectionate (hah!), and anyway, she wasn't a lab and was much bigger than what I was looking for. So I told her she was a very nice dog, and perhaps we should both think about it some more, and then I went off to other shelters looking for a dog.
Now where I live, lab mixes are EVERYWHERE. It's virtually impossible NOT to find one if you're looking. But everywhere I went, there was some weird reason I couldn't find one. One shelter was closed for renovations. One wasn't adopting because everyone had kennel cough. Another was closed for the day because the owner had taken ill and couldn't find anyone to come in on short notice. Another had put all their dogs on busses the night before to take them to a fair in another state where they were having an adopt-a-thon type event.
I drove from place to place, all day long, and not one lab to be found.
So it's finally 8:30 at night, I've given up, am driving home, when I had the flash of the dream. And I swear to this day that Tiffany told me to go back and look at the aloof shepherd-y dog, the one who wasn't a black lab or a yellow lab. The more I thought about it as I drove, the more the dream came back to me. So I had to go back, just to look again.
And the minute I got there, Jessie lit up like a Christmas tree. Gave me her paw through the kennel six or seven times. It was like she'd thought about it and decided she wanted to be mine and that was it. A completely different dog, joyful, affectionate, like she was greeting a long lost best friend. And I thought about the dream, and I knew that Tiffany had brought me back here to take this dog.
While I was doing the paperwork for her, four different people stopped in front of her crate to look at her. And each time, she turned her head and the whole upper portion of her body very deliberately away from them. Like she was saying, "Nope, don't look at me, I'm taken already." My sister kept laughing at this, and I said, "Oh, she probably just does that when anyone comes over, she'd do it if I went over." And I went over to prove it, but instead of turning her head away, she smiled and pushed her paw through the kennel again.
When I got home that night, Jessie slept in my bed wrappd around me. And I'm absolutely certain that Tiffany stopped by, made sure all was well, and then headed off to wherever dogs go when they've done their job on earth and are ready to move on.
Many times in the early difficult days with Jessie, I would be near tears, and I'd think, "Tiffany, how could you DO this to me? How could you pick THIS dog for me?" But I'd never get an answer.
We trained like fiends, and perhaps because of the overwhelming challenges, and my absolute belief that I was fighting for Jessie's life, we bonded in an incredible way. We both learned and grew and she became the dog I knew she could be. An extraordinary dog. Complicated, but worth every bit of effort and then some.
And two years later, when I started to have serious health problems, Jessie really came through for me. When I would be so dizzy and sick I couldn't get up off the cold bathroom floor, she would curl up around me and sleep with me all night on the cold, hard floor in my teeny tiny bathroom which is barely big enough for me, forget a hundred pound dog. She learned to fetch my medicine and the phone on command. She learned to "help" me to a resting spot when I'd have a dizzy spell so I wouldn't fall on the floor. She's become not only my best friend and companion, but also my service dog, my protector, my helper.
And every now and then I look at Tiffany's picture and say, "Thank you for picking her out for me." Because I know she did. If there are "dog angels," I know my Tiffany is one. And I've no doubt she stayed with me until I was able to go on without her.
Jan