Beloved Pets Never Leave Us

(Featured photo by  Mia Anderson)

The following is excerpted from Heaven Knows: A Personal Journey in Search of Evidence by Sandy Coghlan. It has been featured on Sandy’s blog “Heaven Knows…” and is reposted with permission. The original can be viewed HERE.

My darling Muffin had been panting for most of the day, and I knew she was in pain. “Just a tummy bug” I told us both. “You’ll be fine, we’ll get you fixed up soon.”

By the time we arrived at the veterinary surgery, she could no longer stand. I requested a stretcher and the receptionist helped me carry her into the surgery. With great difficulty, Muffin swung her head around to ensure I was still with her.

“How old is she?” the vet asked as he examined her.

“Almost fourteen.” I replied through my tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently, “but there’s really nothing we can do at that age. She’s old and she’s obviously in great pain. The kindest thing would be to put her out of her misery.”

My tears turned to audible sobs. “But it might just be something she ate.” I pleaded. “How can you be sure…”

He gently placed his hand on my shoulder. “We’d need to do tests, keep her here for days,” he said softly. “Do you really think she would want that? Would you want that?”

“No.” I whispered, stroking her head. Apart from a few weeks with a surrogate mother, Muffin had been with me since I rescued her and her 3 siblings from the gutter one rainy night nearly fourteen years earlier. She had been my constant companion, my confidante, and the most intuitive animal I had ever known.

We’d played together with her precious red ball during those fourteen years because it was her ball and she’d have no other, even when it had lost its bounce and was covered with dried slobber.

She had protected me with her ferocious snarl when anyone she didn’t know came to the door. Little did they know that this huge, snarling beast was a gentle giant who let children feed her out of her bowl.

She had sat beside me during those endless, worrying nights on the back doorstep, leaning up against me as if to give comfort.

During those long, lonely nights, I occasionally noticed her wink at me.

At first, I thought I was imagining it, but it happened time and again. I began to wink back. When I did, she would immediately drop down beside me, slip one giant paw over my thigh, let out a long sigh of contentment and close her eyes. It was as if we shared a very special secret.

Now I was being asked to kill her.

My sobs became uncontrollable, and I looked down at her beautiful face. As I did, she winked at me one last time. It was all I needed to know.

“Go ahead.” I said quietly.

“You will never be replaced, my darling.” I whispered in her ear as the vet prepared the injection. I stayed with her, stroking her gently until she took her last breath. She was no longer in pain. I kissed her gently on the nose and drove home with tears streaming down my cheeks.

Once home, I gathered up her lead, her sheepskin rug and her beloved red ball. I didn’t want to see them again but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out yet, so I put them in a plastic bag and secreted them in the back of a drawer in the garage.

A few months after Muffin’s passing, I heard about a two-year old black and white Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that was being mistreated. I couldn’t bear to know an animal was suffering when I could do something about it, so I drove across town to collect her and paid a hefty sum for the privilege.

“Does she have any possessions?” I asked the surly owner. “A lead? Collar, toys?”

“Nah, never took her for walks,” he shrugged. “And she doesn’t play with toys.”

I lifted Nikki into the car and sat her on the passenger seat, and she looked up at me. Her enormous brown eyes locked onto mine. I scratched her head. “Don’t worry sweetheart, you’re safe now!” I turned to wave to the owner, but he had already disappeared inside.

As we turned the first corner, Nikki moved closer, then placed her paw gently on my leg, the way Muffin so often used to do when we sat together on the doorstep.

I parked the car on the side of the road and cried.

“Muffin, if you’re there, or here, or somewhere, watching, forgive me. I know I promised I’d never replace you. This isn’t a replacement. It’s a rescue.”

When I arrived home and carried Nikki into the house, my mother was out of bed and sitting in her recliner.

“Oh let me look at the little darling!” she said as we entered the lounge.

I put Nikki on the floor. She immediately ran to the couch, jumped on it and began pawing at the cushion.

“Hey, there’ll be none of that, little madam,” I scolded as I walked toward the couch. “Come on, get away from…”

I froze in my tracks when she uncovered what she’d been seeking. A deflated, dirty red ball. Muffin’s ball.

Mum and I looked at each other in amazement.

“Did you…?” I began to ask, well aware that she couldn’t have retrieved it even if she’d known about it. Her unsteadiness combined with the three steep steps without handrails at the back door prevented her reaching the garage where I’d hidden the ball over a year ago.

“Of course not! I didn’t even know you’d kept it!”

“Then how…?”

There was no answer. All we could do was sit in amazed silence as Nikki played happily with Muffin’s old red ball. I silently thanked Muffin for her approval, wanting, longing to believe she heard me.

For the 7 years, Nikki shared our lives, she could not be parted from that ball. We buried it with her when she passed peacefully in 1997. I have no doubt Muffin and Nikki are romping together in heaven, and that slobbery old red ball is just like new again.

You can read more of Sandy’s writing in a previous post from her about Elizabeth Kübler-Ross HERE.

SANDY COGHLAN

Sandy Coghlan worked in advertising and television in Australia and London prior to becoming an on-air director at a Melbourne TV station in 1979. Her first book, Travel Guide to Tasmania (Penguin) was commissioned by ‘Life. Be In It’ in 1984, while her articles on health and metaphysical subjects have been published nationally. From 1990 until retirement, Sandy qualified in a variety of alternative therapies, and in 1991, wrote and conducted a nutrition correspondence course for pharmacy assistants around Australia. She also taught creative writing and healing techniques at adult education centers. Sandy now lives with her partner Barry and their 2 cats in a bayside area of Victoria, Australia and is working on the second book in the Heaven Knows series.