My Mia

It's been several months now since my Mia lost her battle to lymphoma.  I started writing this shortly after I learned she was sick and as she got worse, I didn't have the strength to finish it.  I don't want to leave her story untold, though, so here it is...
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I first met Mia when she was just a few weeks old.  She was one of the puppies born to my dear friend Ann's dog, Shammy.  I don't specifically remember Mia as an individual, so much as I remember the whole wriggling, wiggling, tumbling mass of puppies in Ann's laundry room.  I do remember being surprised to find that Shammy, a yellow lab who is so pale she is almost white, had given birth to an entire litter of puppies that were such a dark brown that they looked black except in the most direct sunlight.  At the time, I lived in a tiny house on a tiny lot next to a street that was often used by drag racers late at night.  I enjoyed playing with the puppies but knew that I wouldn't be taking any of them home with me.

Another woman and her daughters were there visiting the puppies at the same time.  They ended up adopting the runt, Mia, and  one of the males, whom they eventually named Trooper.  I figured that was that.

Two years passed.

One day, at work, Ann came to me, distraught.  She had just learned that the puppies (now 2 years old) were being sent to the pound.  To make matters worse, when they were turned in to the pound it had been reported that they were acting aggressively towards people and other dogs.  (Although I don't know for sure, I suspect this was a complete falsehood.  They play loudly and they try to sound tough when someone comes near our property uninvited, but they don't have an aggressive bone in their bodies.)  This meant that instead of trying to find them a new home, the folks at the pound were going to have them put down.  Knowing that I had just recently moved to a new home on a completely fenced 2 acre lot, Ann asked if I would foster Mia and Trooper while she worked to find them a new home.  Assuring Mike that it would just be temporary, I managed to get him on board.

They arrived at our house on a Saturday.  Ann and her husband helped us reinforce the fenced outdoor cat-run, and they settled in.  I quickly realized that these rowdy, untrained labs were going to be hard to place.  Not wanting to set them up for failure, I had to admit to potential adoptive families that they barked at anything that moved, dug holes all over the yard, went nuts when they saw the cats through the windows, climbed both under and over the fence to roam the neighborhood, and didn't know a single command.  They jumped up on people, loved to tear open garbage bags and throw the contents about the garage, and even jumped onto the roof of my car (leaving some nice, deep gashes that nearly gave my father-in-law a heart attack when he saw them).  They were beautiful labs with energetic, friendly personalities, but their bad habits were daunting.

After several months of fostering, I starting thinking of them as "my" dogs.  By that time, I had started teaching them to come when called and to sit on command.  They were learning to jump next to, rather than onto, people when greeting them.  After many nights with me hiding near a window and throwing penny-filled soda cans toward the kennel, they were learning to limit their barking to appropriate times.  Eventually, I admitted to myself and my husband that I had no intention of letting them go.  A big reason for that was the events of the Fourth of July.


From the very beginning, Mia was an independent thinker.  She did what she wanted, when she wanted, and how she wanted.  She had spent the first 2 years of her life as the leader of the pack (Trooper may have been bigger, but he recognized that she had all the good ideas and followed her loyally), and wasn't going to hand over her crown easily.  She also had built up a fair amount of mistrust for humans.  Although she was friendly enough, you could tell that she was just waiting for something bad to happen.  Shortly after the dogs moved to our place, Mikey was doing yardwork.  He picked up a large branch to toss it onto the brush pile, and Mia, on the other side of the yard, immediately dropped to the ground in a defensive position.  Later she did the same thing when a male friend of ours was using the hose to water the garden.  It took her almost a year to lose that reaction to men she perceived as "armed".


Trooper quickly accepted us into the pack, but Mia treated us like company for a long time.  On July 4th, 5 months after they came to live with us, was the first time that she really let her guard down around us.  Mia, like many dogs, was terrified of sudden noises.  She didn't like hearing gunshots, or even loud hammering, in the distance.  Imagine her terror then, when the fireworks started.  At that point, we were still keeping them on leash whenever they were out of the kennel since they had a bad habit of disappearing over the fence as soon as our backs were turned.  Trooper and I were sitting on a rock, and Mikey was walking Mia around the yard as we waited for the show to start.  After the first crash of fireworks, Mia began pulling frantically at the leash.  She didn't stop until she had made her way over to my rock and into my lap.  She spent the entire 20 minutes huddled up against me. 

From that point on, Mia gradually entrusted me with the role of pack leader.  She would (mostly) do what I asked, often with a wry look that said "Alright, but that's not how *I* would do it", and she never gave up the habit of trying to climb into my lap - all 55 pounds of her - when she was nervous.  The next 3 years were fabulous.  Mia and her brother went from barking, digging, chewing, escaping visitors to being two of the best dogs I have ever known.

In February of 2010, Mia started walking funny.  At first we thought she was having muscle or joint problems, but eventually, as she gradually lost the ability to control her hind legs, we determined that there was something pressing on her spine.  Suspecting a ruptured disc, she had the first of what ended up being many, many procedures.  Instead of the disc material he expected, the surgeon found a mass that allowed the doctors to diagnose her with small cell lymphoma.

We threw everything we could at the disease.  She had a 4 week course of daily radiation treatments, followed by several different forms of chemotherapy.  Mia and I were at one vet's office or another several times a week for the next 7 months.  Through that time, she accepted everything we did - poking, prodding, traveling, medicating, restraining - with the same faith she showed me on that Fourth of July.  She trusted me completely.  I will always be honored that my Mia, a dog who knew her own mind, was willing to put that kind of trust in me.

On September 20th, Mia let us know that she was ready to move on, even if we weren't ready to let her go.  Her calm acceptance of the truth was the last lesson that she shared with me.  I still have Trooper (and my dear spazzy Wiggles), and I know that I will share my home with many dogs as the years go by - I'm a sucker for an animal in need - but I don't think I will ever love another dog in quite the same way that I loved my Mia.