She'll Make Her Way

A week ago today, I had to make the very difficult decision to lay my best friend to rest. She was 14, and she lived an extraordinary life, and my own life has been made better by having had her in it. The unbearable sadness that has followed in the last 7 days is not something that I could have ever prepared myself for, and settling into this life without her is not a choice- so here we are.

Oddly, it was 14 years ago last week that I brought Molly Brown Truffles home. I named her after the Unsinkable Molly Brown, and she was a 9 pound, 8 week old puppy. She had the brightest green eyes, and the waggliest tail. I wasn't prepared to get a dog- I didn't have a leash or a collar or bowls for her. She sat on the front seat of my car on the way home, where she immediately peed, and when the two of us stopped at Petco to get the necessary supplies. she proceeded to poop in the cart I had placed her in. It was clear, in that moment, that I was not ready for this squirmy little being. I had to chase down an employee to find out where I could get supplies to clean up after the dog, and for about five minutes, I questioned whether or not I knew what I had signed up for. And then, after I cleaned up after her, I picked her back up to put her in the cart, and she snuggled up against me, and that was it. I had a dog, and an immeasurable need to protect her. I didn't know, then, that this dog would end up saving my life.  

I had a friend, at the time, who was making and selling dog treats - and to the detriment of that friendship, I thought I could do what she was doing better. So, after much research, and many many different treat recipes, in 2005, I became one of the inaugural members of Etsy, and I opened The Chocolate Lab, an organic dog bakery. Learning to bake for dogs is easy. Dog nutrition, is actually fairly simple.  Gigantic rule of thumb, if you put it in your food to make it taste good, (Salt, sugar, cinnamon or onions, for instance) your dog doesn't need it.. and in the case of onions, it could kill your dog. I spent hours baking - for customers, for retail clients, for craft shows, and pet expos, and especially for my own little four legged friend. She loved them.. and I attribute a good amount of her long life, to the fact that I took care of her extremely well. She ate the best... because I made what she ate, with care, and love and expertise. I got a lot of press, and acclaim for what I was doing - I made friends all over the world through selling on Etsy, and those friends always asked about Molly.. she was my muse, and the reason that I literally slaved over a hot oven for ... sometimes 18 hours a day. I quit my day job to bake full time. I was living my absolute best life, and so was that dog. In 2007, a company in Brooklyn NY sued my business for Trademark infringement, and I was forced to change the name of my business. I changed the name to Little Pies (pies is the polish word for dog.) and tried to recoup some of the brand that I had built- but the market had shifted. This was before the market crash in 2008, and people weren't spending as much money on their pets, because they had less money.. and in 2010, I had to make the difficult decision to close my business completely. I was in the process of getting a divorce, and I didn't have the time, the money or the energy to keep putting into the business. 

Throughout the process of my divorce, that dog remained my faithful companion. She was the sole reason I got out of bed most days. She got me through a crippling bout of depression, and even though it meant she stole the blankets and snored in my ear with her head on the pillow - when you wake up with a wet dog nose on your face, you can't help but get out of bed to make sure that the dog gets a walk before you head into work. In 2011, my divorce was finalized, and in early 2012 I started dating a man I had known since childhood. That relationship lasted nearly 6 years, and in that time Molly really started to age. She was 7 when we started dating, and she was subjected to much of the same chaos, destruction and abuse that I was during that six year period. On many, many occasions, when my ex would have one of his outbursts, I would scream at him that he was scaring the dog. She would visibly shake and whimper while he hit me, spit on me, screamed or destroyed things. By 2017, I was very tired of the life I was living. I am not too proud to say that on more than one occasion, I begged god to help me, because I couldn't do it anymore. I had been stripped of every ounce of dignity I had, and I could no longer see myself as a person who had strength, or value, or was deserving of being loved. That dog though... I still felt the need to protect her. She was getting older, and I didn't want to subject her to his rage or his maltreatment of her for a second longer. I wanted her to have the peace she needed for whatever time she had left. So while I never loved myself enough to get out of that relationship, it was my love for the dog, and her quality of life, that really pushed me to end that relationship. My love for that dog, eventually saved my life. 

I received a lot of very lovely messages from friends when I posted on Facebook last week that I had to make the tough decision to put Molly down. She had a vestibular event that the emergency Vet we visited advised me was possibly due to a brain tumor. My friend Stacey, however, wins the award for the message that made me cry the most. She said "You know what that dog did? She Mary Poppins'd you! She knew that you were safe, and that she didn't need to protect you anymore, and it was time for her to go." Because at the end of the day, she's right. I'm safe. I'm loved. I'm cared about beyond measure, and she knew I'd be ok.  And eventually, when I can stop crying, I will be.

I'd like to thank the staff, and importantly,  Dr. Benjamin Miller at Midcoast Animal Emergency Clinic who is hands down the most compassionate, and kind human being I have had the pleasure of dealing with when it comes to my pets. He made an absolutely impossible situation bearable, and I will never forget the kindness he showed to Zach and I, and most importantly, Molly. This world won't be the same without her in it.