Her name was Nene. That means Little Goose in Hawaiian. She was an eight-month-old, little, redheaded, stubborn, Pomeranian. That made two of us. I am a Taurus and Taurians are also stubborn. I wanted an older puppy that was already trained since I was old and I loved the companionship of a dog.
I prayed about it for a several weeks and one morning I woke up and something said “buy a newspaper today.” I did and sure enough there was an ad for an eight-month-old Pomeranian and I wanted a Pom. I had seen toy Pom puppies years previously and they looked like little ponies. I called the ad and the price was right, so I said I would be right over.
I rang the doorbell at this two-story house and a whole lot of dogs began barking so I knew there had to be a kennel involved or they raised dogs. This Hawaiian lady answered the door and I told her I was responding to the ad in the newspaper. She asked me to wait in the front room which was devoid of furniture.
Soon the room was full of puppies of all sizes. It seems her husband did not tell her that Nene was for sale along with the newest litter. Nene had become the family pet. I found myself sitting in the middle of the floor with puppies crawling all over me; except Nene, that is. Nene was totally ignoring me and exploring the rest of the room. I asked the man that walked in which one was for sale and he pointed to Nene. I had assumed he was the one I talked to on the telephone. I saw the lady’s face look very sad and felt that I should wind this up.
I told him I would take Nene and having taken care of business and letting the lady say her good bye to Nene, we proceeded to my car. Nene was shaking and I hugged her and left her on my lap all the way home. I patted her and quietly talked to her during the 20-minute drive and promised her that I would always love and take good care of her as she drooled and threw up all over my lap.
When we got home, she was naturally afraid of her new surroundings. The first thing I did was leave her with this strange man while I went out and bought her a new bed, toys, a doggy door and food. When I returned from the store, he was yelling at her because she had pottied on the floor. Apparently, she was not trained. I suggested maybe he should have taken her outside after her ride home so she would know where the door was and that she was just a little girl. Something about the way I said what I did made us forever friends. She jumped up on my lap and from that moment she was connected to my leg the rest of her life.
I named her Sashy because when she walked her backend sashayed. She was as close to being a people as any dog I ever had. If I walked, she was beside me. If I was in my wheelchair, she was on my lap. If I was on my PC, she was on my lap. If we had company she was on my lap and whoever was talking she would look at each one and smile and listen to them as if what they had to say was the most interesting thing in the world.
Training her to use her doggy door was a different story. I had hardwood floors installed a couple of months earlier. In Nevada our subfloors are cement so that really made them hard. Sash decided she did not want to learn to use her doggy door, or maybe it was just to keep from going out to satisfy mom that she knew how. When I went to grab her, she went one way as I was going the other and I went down and broke the ramus in my pelvis in four places. That gave me my first ride to the hospital in an ambulance and during my recuperation at home I wrote my first book.
When I had to go into the hospital for heart surgery Sash and I had never been separated. At the time I had a stroke victim that was paralyzed on one side staying at the house for a while. He said she cried at the back door so long and so loud that he got down on the floor with her to try to comfort her and he finally picked her up and put her in bed with him.
Sash and I were also mentally compatible. I always knew what she wanted from me. She always knew what I wanted from her. She was a tease too. If I wasn’t paying enough attention to her, she would go into my bathroom and get my puzzle book, which was bigger than she was, and I would see this streak go by as she would go flying down the hall with my puzzle book.
It broke my heart the day I took her to the Vet and they told me she had a very enlarged heart. When she didn’t want to play or be bothered, she would go off by herself some place and lay quietly, sometimes for several days. I would feel so bad for her that I would get a blanket and go wherever she was and lay down beside her just to be with her. She didn’t mind. She would go back to sleep. If she was ready to die, I didn’t want her to die alone.
She gradually did get worse. One day in particular, she was hurting so bad she couldn’t lay down. She was restless and didn’t know what to do or where to go. She kept talking to me, telling me she couldn’t handle the pain anymore.
It was rare for Sash to talk to me. She was always a smiler, a tease. I knew she had to really be hurting for her to be talking to me.
She would go outside and start to go around behind the palm tree and then see me watching her from the patio door, and she would turn around and come back to me and talk some more. Finally, I asked Frank to take her to the Vet and I hugged and kissed her.
I knew the minute she was gone. I knew the Vet would put her to sleep, but I didn’t want to believe she was gone. It was like she ran back home to me. I heard the wailing from a distance and knew it was me, but I couldn’t stop. Even now, I can’t stop. I cry every time I think of my little fur friend.
