It's puppy-time!

I think the girls had been begging for a dog for a while. Since Mike has summer's off and Brooke was getting ready to go into kindergarten, we finally decided it was time to get a dog. Mals picked up a Thrifty Nickel at Osco's and Mike found an ad for free puppies from "Dog Town" near Paxton. Cooper was five weeks old when Mike, Mals and Brooke brought her home: a little fluff ball not even as big as our cat (Noney). The girls named her Cooper because they thought she was a boy. I didn't even bother to check. But when my mom came by a week later, she announced that 'he' was a 'she.' The name Cooper stayed. What a little sweetheart she was; happy, fun-loving, energetic. Even our cat, Noney, had no complaints.

A household fixture

Cooper was good about hanging just around the house. I just had to say, "Stay close" and she'd usually just lay passed the front door. But she regularly did a 'yard-check' to check for varmits and intruders.

Just one of the girls.

You know, I've always felt kind of sorry for Mike: being the only guy in a house full of girls. Three two-legged and two four-legged. And our girls definitely loved Cooper and included her in everything. She was their buddy, their baby, their clothes model, their confidente.

CooperNuk of the North

We know Cooper's mom was a Shetland Sheepdog (miniature collie), but we're pretty sure her dad had to be some kind of snowdog. She loved the cold, and she loved the snow even more. In fact, the colder and the snowier, the more frisky and happy she was. She'd run out with her mouth open and scoop it up as she ran through the fresh snowfall. In fact, I think the only thing she didn't like about winter was the reindeer antlers.

Who's walking who?

Mike and I walked Cooper from the beginning. We started with a cool Old Navy leash and matching collar. She looked sharp. As she got older she had a thing for chasing squirrels and bunnies. Bunnies were her favorite. As she got bigger, we got one of those retractable leashes. It gave her more distance, but she was still practically pulling my arm off before I knew it. There were a few dogs in the neighborhood who walked without a leash, but Cooper soon became one of them...well, that is, in the next couple of years. Some walks went overtime, as we stood around waiting for her to come back after a commando bunny raid.

There goes the neighborhood.

We weren't the only ones Cooper had wrapped around her little finger. The whole neighborhood considered Cooper the officical neighborhood dog. She basically had free range on our block. In fact some of the neighbors, especially Barb and Alan, kept treats for her. Barb and Alan were Cooper's 'surrogate parents;' the few times we didn't take her with us on trips, she stayed with them...and even sometimes when we were at home! During the summer, if she was out and I hadn't seen her for a while, I'd walk over to Alan and Barb's and there she'd be, sitting with them in their back yard, or even in their house just hanging out. Lots of kids at Southside School, at the end of our block, knew Cooper too. One time, they actually let her in the school!

A bone to pick...

I don't think Cooper ever found a bone she didn't like. Her favorite were soup bones. She also liked her rawhides too. Her favorite ones had the knots on both ends. She would gnaw off one end and then the other. They gave her hours of enjoyment. Sometimes she'd bury them; we weren't sure if it was to save them for later or just to 'season' them. But we would know when she had buried them because she'd have a clump of dried dirt on the end of her nose!

Am I in the way?

Cooper had great hearing: as she as she heard me in the kitchen she was right there on the kitchen floor, waiting attentively. When the neighbors were over we'd usually congregate around the kitchen counter. Everyone took their turns stepping over her.

Special Needs

I think it was in the spring of 2004 when I was walking Cooper that I noticed she had blood in her urine. Cooper never complained about a thing, so that scared me. It was deja vu when the vet told me she had diabetes. But we knew how to deal with this, and she was a trooper all the way. Still, I had to start coming home at lunch time when the weather got cold, because she couldn't wait all day to get out and relieve herself. She still tried to get me to go the way she wanted but I didn't have enough time to do more than walk her around the block.

Slow Down

Cooper managed to get around fairly well, but her hips started giving out. It was slow going either from the sofa, or even just from the floor. Her morning walks with Mike went were down to just around the block. It still took 25 minutes-- in part, we thought, from the arthritis and also because she couldn't see what was ahead of her. She still looked forward to these walks but she didn't have the stamina to go the distance. At night, I finally had to put a gate up to keep her from going up the stairs: she fell on them several times, and I held my breath every morning as I listened to see if she would make safely. This was a punishment to her to be restricted from being with the rest of the family at night. She sneeked up a couple of times when I wasn't watching.

The rest of the story.

The one thing I think we all do is to take things in our daily life for granted. Cooper, as far as our family was concerned, would always be around. Despite the loss of her sight, and the struggle she had just to get her hips to allow her to get up from a prone position, she still went through the daily routine, albeit at a much slower, and quite dwindling pace. We tried to be patient, but we were always in a hurry to get somewhere. Cooper tried to keep up but it was getting harder and harder. And even though we'd say, "this is probably the last time she'll do this" and "this is the last time she may do that," we didn't stop to realize the finality of our words. I think we just couldn't fathom what was really happening to our beloved pet.

'Friday the Thirteenth' turned out to be about as devilish a day that I could remember. A host of trivial, annoying and minor mishaps kept me from feeling like I'd accomplished anything that day. But little did I know, that it was the beginning of an even more trying week for Coop. The next evening, Mike and I went out to dinner with our neighbors, Chris and Rita. Normally we'd invite them to come back to the with us, but that evening, Mike wanted to watch a game, and I had two freelance jobs waiting for me. When we walked in the door, we were greeted by a scent that almost sent us back outside again. Cooper not only had an accident, she had it all the way around the dining room table--the last resort spot when she was stuck inside. Of course she felt really bad emotionally, but, what we didn't know, was how badly she was doing physically. That signaled the beginning of her withdrawl from nourishment.

In the next couple of days, she seemed disoriented at times, and we couldn't get her to eat or drink. We were struck with the realization that things were probably not going to get better. Thursday, January 19 is a day I won't soon forget. Cooper was so weak that day, Mike had to carry her in from her beloved outside when he got home from school. Seeing how bad she was, that evening we called her surrogate parents, Barb and Allen and told them to come see her for the last time. She was visibly in pain, her breathing labored. She struggled through the evening finally taking her last breath around 11pm. It was a bittersweet goodbye: I was happy for the end of her struggle and heartbroken for the loss of such a loving, selfless and devoted friend.

What helped me go to sleep that night was thinking about where Cooper was going. I imagine she's in this HUGE field, full of light-footed rabbits and wiley squirrels. There are great things to smell and great spots for her to 'water.' There's probably a meaty bone around every corner and a nice cool breeze. Good for you Coop; you deserve it.