cumulative grief

Starting Over: Introducing Meridiana

Better late than never as they say. This blog post is way overdue, and I apologize profusely for that. Despite it being only a month away from the one-year mark of losing Kenzo and several months past that for losing Mela, I am still processing the intense cumulative grief. Meridiana will have been here for a year in late July, and she deserves a proper introduction for those who are not my Facebook friends or don’t follow my business Facebook pages.

Meridiana started her life as Lady. She is a now 2-1/2 year old red Chow Chow. She grew up on 6 acres in Ohio and was purchased from a breeder who let her go too young. Her original owners loved her very much and took very good care of her. But she began resource guarding her beloved human mom from the other large dog in the home. They were afraid she would get hurt. So, they rehomed her to someone who they thought had recently had his senior Chow cross the rainbow bridge. That someone turned out to be a dog flipper. His story to me was that he was moving out of state and would be working long hours. I drove an hour and a half to pick her up. She was much smaller than her pictures indicated, and she was terrified and matted and considerably underweight. I knew right away that he was not being truthful with me but there was simply no way that I was leaving her there.

So, into the Armada she went. I got her home almost without a hitch. She started having a meltdown when we were about 15 minutes from home, clawing at the back window and barking and pacing frantically. It turned out that she had to poop and poop she did. Fortunately, since she went on the pad that holds the water bowl, it was easier to clean up. Still, it was clear that she was very well housetrained and to have such an accident traumatized her.

Once inside of my house, I showed her the yard with me still holding her leash. The literal second that we got out there, some jerk set off an M-80 or M-100 right outside of my fence. She panicked and inside we went. I kept a drag leash on her inside. She chose to immediately install herself in my sunroom. The dog equivalent of sitting with your back against the wall. An excellent defensive position, if I do say so myself. I placed a water and food bowl nearby. She refused the food but had some water periodically water. She also refused contact and showed only suspicion towards me. I slept on the couch that night. I tried to offer her a potty trip several times but she shied away from me even taking the leash. It was clear that reaching for it would not be a good idea. I was not comfortable allowing her in the yard without holding the leash. I had no idea if I would be able to get her back inside or not. Potty accidents can be cleaned so that is where we were.

I woke up in the morning to her surreptitiously sniffing me. When I got up, she ran back to the sunroom but when I opened the door into the yard, she approached and allowed me to take her leash and potty her outside successfully. Once back inside, I let go of the leash but let it drag. She accompanied me into the kitchen, and I was able to feed her. Subsequent trips to the yard showed that she was starting to appreciate her new environment.

In the meantime, the dog flipper, who I still didn’t know was a flipper, sent me her vaccination records via email. They were in someone else’s name. I texted him and asked who that was and he never answered me. I spent a couple of hours that day searching various names that the flipper was using online after seeing another version of him posting an apricot Doodle for rehoming the day after I picked up Meridiana from him. I was very torn about contacting the woman named in the vet records, as I did not want to give Meri back if she had been stolen because I had fallen for her. But I could not in all good conscience stay silent. A friend found a Craig’s list as from a few weeks earlier for a dog that matched her description in Ohio. So I emailed the name on the vet records was incredibly relieved after she immediately answered my email asking me to call her. That is where I got the truth about her rehoming Lady. She had been blocked from contacting the flipper almost as soon as he got her to his place, after he texted her to complain that she was aggressive to his friend. She isn’t aggressive. He was mistreating her. Lady/Meri’s former owner had been frantic for about 3 weeks, wondering where she was now and unable to communicate with the man who she had thought was looking for a companion. We became Facebook friends and I now have some puppy pictures of her. It ended well thankfully. But that could have easily not been the case.

Incredibly, dog flipping is not illegal in my state. Dog abuse and neglect is so I reported him for that to my county’s state dog warden, who I am well acquainted with. So is fraud so I hope that he was charged with that. With the help of an Instagram friend, I was able to gather his true name, which wasn’t much different from the names that he used online. I also got his address and wonder of wonders; he used his real phone number. No one is accusing him of brilliance, that is for sure. I don’t know how the abuse/neglect/fraud investigation went. Truth be told, I was afraid to find out that nothing could be done to stop him from doing what he was doing. I could only hope that those dogs he ‘flipped’, ended up in good home. In any case, Meridiana is obviously here to stay.

Now, ten months later, Meridiana is the reason that I get up every morning. I would not have been able to cope with such staggering losses without her.

Aside from the four months that Kenzo and I spent missing Mela before I lost him too, this is the first time since 1999 that I have lived with only one dog. I never expected to be in a position to not have a ‘transitional’ dog. I have always had dogs who kept me going mentally (and vice versa) when we suffered the loss of one of our canine family members. Now I am starting over and it’s a position that I never expected to find myself in. At some point, I hope to provide Meri with a Caucasian Ovcharka brother But we definitely have some behaviors to sort out with her in the meantime. She is afraid of a lot of things/people, etc. I classically condition that daily on our walks. Amazingly, she has done superbly at my wonderful vet’s office with their sincere understanding of how to be as low stress as possible. Meri has also shown great success with impulse control around deer most of the time. Running deer, not so much. And let’s not even discuss squirrels yet, they get her brain spinning out of control. We are working on that. It’s a journey, not a destination. One that I am and will enjoy. Wish us luck and joy.

Tags: adopted dog, Chow Chow, cumulative grief, dog flipper, fearful dog, multiple dog households, pet loss, rescue dog

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Endless Love: Celebrate it EVERY Day.

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Valentine’s Day: a day that I used to look forward to but now means the anniversary of having Mela suddenly and traumatically pulled from my life. The Christmas decorations stayed up this year longer than usual. The Valentine’s Day decorations usually follow and I struggled to decide whether I would find it too difficult to recognize the significance of a “holiday” that I now view with soul crushing sadness. Ultimately, I decided to put them up as a tribute to my love for them. Not only to Mela, who crossed the rainbow bridge that day last year, but also to my beloved Kenzo who followed behind her only 4 months and 1 day later. For much of the time right after losing Kenzo, my mind was in a very dark place. I functioned but it was all on the outside. I function better now because nearly 6 weeks after losing my perfect Boo, I was moved to add another dog to my life. I owe her an introductory article all of her own, so for now, just know that she exists and that her name is Meridiana, Meri for short. So I still exist in this realm because I chose to, not because I wanted to. I knew that Kenzo and Mela would have wanted me to choose to. But it was and is still is, very hard to be without the physical presence of those you love so deeply.

I try every day to be bright for Meri’s sake. I think that I succeed most days. Some days I even feel somewhat human. But most days inside, the love that I have for Mela and Kenzo is there so vehemently with no solid landing place. So, I talk to them. My very wise friend Dana calls the rituals that we use to cope with extreme loss “active coping”. I would have to agree. They are not only my connection to my beloved babies, they are my connection to my past self who will never exist again. We change with extreme loss. We learn how to move forward because we have to if we choose to go on living and we should choose that. But we construct new personas out of what remains of our old personas. There will always and forever be that layer of intense grief where we are a literal second away from an ugly cry because of. With time, we learn to hold it together more easily but it’s always still there. It always will be. I can be transported to the day that I knew my life would change because something was off with Merlin in a mere second. It’s that close in my heart. And that is okay. I am told that my most recent grief experience is called cumulative grief because both losses were sudden and in a short time span of one another, though certainly one traumatic loss alone can shake your psyche to the core. I survive but I am changed forever. I am okay with that. We live. We learn.

What has not changed at all is my love for those I have lost. Through losing Mela and Kenzo back-to-back, I now feel that I sort of have Merlin, Siri, and Trent back. Not in the physical form. But back here in my life in the form that they took after crossing the bridge but chose to stay and watch over me. No, I did not forget Kera. I am told (and can feel) that she chose to move on with another life after she crossed the bridge years ago. I am sorry that I failed her somehow, but I wish her all of the happiness. I am comforted on a daily basis that the rest of them will remain with me for the balance of this life. I knew that shortly after they crossed and I always look for signs from them but now I feel like we are all here together much more cohesively. I realize that this may be a bit too woo woo for some who may read this and that is your prerogative. But as I said, my rituals are active coping for *me* and I care only how *I* feel about what I believe, as it doesn’t harm anyone else. Let people like things, as I often say about other subjects when it only affects them.

My active coping rituals are many. One involves talking to all of my lost loves daily but especially when I am making my bed. All of their primary collars live under my pillow. I sleep wearing Kenzo’s rolled leather collar because I can. It fits. I gives me comfort. And that is okay. It’s necklace length on me. It would probably be some sort of fashion statement if I did it during the day. That makes me smile. Active coping also involves allowing myself to cry when I need to and the intense longing to touch them again, especially Mela and Kenzo. Those two were my only sudden losses and I feel like they had more life to live here, but that is likely because I miss them so very much. Sometimes they “talk” back. Not as much as when they first crossed the bridge and sometimes I really have to listen but listen I do.

My love for them is endless. Endless love really does exist. It never wanes. I feel it all of the time. My heart aches with it and there is nowhere to put it, outside of my active coping rituals. So this Valentine’s Day, I will cry for my losses but I will also celebrate the fact that I received the incredible gift of loving these dogs enough to miss their physical presence so very much. I will also celebrate having Meri in my life now. Love them all fiercely while they are still in your physical presence. Every day counts. But when they do cross the rainbow bridge, love them the same then as well, as they *do* feel your love when they are gone from this realm, and they want you to feel their love right back at you.

The beautiful banner art used here, that was commissioned for me by Cameo Anderson, shows that she knows this as well and was inspired to create it exactly that way. No one asked for the words that she wrote. She chose them. I choose to believe that my dogs inspired them. I thank them and her and my friend Jim, who commissioned the piece for me to try and help me heal. I will always cherish this beautiful gift. This is also part of my active coping as I think it was intended to be. So today on Valentine’s Day, celebrate those you love, both in this realm and beyond.