Eulogy for a Heart Friend

By Succubyss



At some point in my life, I decided I liked animals more than most people.  And I knew I liked having a dog more than I liked having a husband.  When I found myself the single parent of two toddlers living in the ghetto, I determined it was time to get a dog.

Getting a dog was NOT the most practical decision I could have made at that particular time of my life.  With two kids under the age of 6, I was living in very small apartment on the second floor of a building that had no yard.  It was a corner building, and across one street were elevated train tracks and across the other street was a shabby strip mall.  On a typical weekend, someone would get beat up in the garbage area of the strip mall and I was lucky enough to have a birds-eye view from my living room window. I called the cops a couple times, but gave up when they never came.



My upstairs neighbor was a pimp. Ok, maybe he wasn’t, but he might as well have been. He had people coming and going at all hours, and bad porno music thumping over my bedroom on most nights.  He knocked on my door at least twice a week, wanting to borrow something or to see if I wanted to “party”.  I knew he couldn’t be trusted when I answered the door one Saturday night, my hair pulled back, no makeup on, in puke- and food-stained sweats and he said “Baby, you’re so fine, can I come in this time?” 

That was the weekend I decided to get a dog.  A big dog. 

Sunday mornings were my little time to myself. Before the kids woke up, I used to go across the street to the strip mall and buy myself a coffee and a Sunday paper to bring home and read in peace and quiet. The night before, after my pimp friend went away, I had decided I was going to check the classifieds for a dog.  I didn’t know how I was going to pay for one, or if my landlord even allowed them, but I aimed to find out. So, that Sunday morning, I settled in with my coffee and my paper. I went to the classifieds, found the pet section and my eyes were immediately drawn to one particular ad:

“Free To Good Home.
One year-old shepherd mix.
Smart and well behaved.
Please call.”

Are you kidding me? I asked the universe for a dog, and the universe sent me one.

I called the number and made arrangements to go see the dog that same day. When the kids woke up, I told them we were going out later to meet a dog, and if we liked him, we were going to bring him home to live with us.  You can well imagine their reaction. I was the best mom in the world that day.

So off we went to check this dog out. We arrived at the address I was given over the phone and I was immediately a bit leery. The house looked really run down. It sported an overgrown yard and sheets over the windows.  The screen door was hanging off one hinge and there was no doorbell.  Somehow, I had envisioned a perfect little house, with MY dog sitting on the porch, wagging his tail and waiting anxiously for me. I knocked on the door and heard a plethora of dogs barking madly inside, yet no one answered. I grabbed the kids’ hands and walked around to the back. The backyard looked like an Appalachian trailer park; a car on blocks, various large metal objects and two chickens running around.  Chickens!  In an inner city yard!

I was not about to pick my way thru that mess, so off we went back to the front again. I’m telling the kids that maybe we aren’t getting a dog today, when some lady sticks her head out the door and screams “What are you doin’ back there?” I explained that I had called earlier about the ad in the paper and that I was supposed to come by to see the dog in question. “Oh, yeah? Well, why didn’t you knock? Come on in.”


I drew a deep breath and grabbed on to two little hands. “Alright kids, be quiet, stay by me and let’s go see that dog.” Into the house we went. It’s dark and cluttered and there were actually three dogs barking at us madly. The house was full of people. I introduced myself to whoever acknowledged my presence and the lady said “Well, that’s Hondo, he’s the dog we want to get rid of.” She gestured towards the couch and there, crammed as far back in the corner as he could get, was a scrawny dog, barking his head off at me. He was definitely a shepherd mix, but he looked about two years old, not much puppy about him at all. Someone yelled at him to be quiet and he cowered for a second before barking up a storm again. So much for the “well-behaved” part.  And there went my daughter, running up to him with her hands out. I yelled her name and the lady said “It’s ok, he likes kids”. Before I could respond, my daughter was petting him and Hondo’s licking her face, with my son sitting on the couch right next to him.


The first place we took Hondo, before going home, was my mother’s house.  She had a big yard and I wanted a place to interact with him before we got back to the apartment. We played around in the yard a little, feeling each other out. He was very responsive to me and great with the kids. He knew his name, so we decided not to change it. He came when he was called and knew how to sit when he was told. So far, so good. At one point we went in the house, I think to get something to drink, and left Hondo in the yard alone for a few minutes. We came back out and he was gone.  GONE!  The yard had a four-foot chain link fence and the thought that he would escape had never even crossed my mind. In a panic I called him, running out the front gate and looking around frantically. And there he is, sitting in the front passenger seat of my car. Apparently, he had decided he’d had enough of my mother’s house (as had I) and that it was time to go.  Any dog that wanted to get out of my mother’s house was a smart dog indeed!



We took Hondo home and began to get to know each other for real. From his markings, we determined him to be a shepherd/rottweiler mix, which was later backed up by the vet. We learned that he didn’t like to be left alone; he followed me everywhere. My friends called him my seeing-eye dog, because from the very beginning he never left my side. He didn’t like when the kids rough-housed with each other and would bark and try to get between them. He did like my best friend Greg, but he did not like the pimp upstairs. Good dog…


He never really did learn to walk on a leash. Off-leash, he’d stay right by me, but as soon as I put a leash on him, he was the dog from hell. When I walked him, I had to have the kids go into the hall and make sure no one was coming in or going out, so we’d have a clear pathway for him to hurl himself down the stairs and out the door. Once we got him beefed up a little, Hondo weighed in at about 90 pounds, and most of it was muscle in his upper body.  Being pulled down four flights of stairs, three times a day, by a maniacal dog is quite the work-out. Once we were out, he wasn’t too bad. Unless he saw a squirrel. Then it was all over. All I could do was hold on to the leash for dear life and hope to get in one piece to whatever tree the squirrel would use to escape Hondo’s frothing wrath. We were out walking one day when my son BEGGED to hold the leash. I knew it was a mistake, but he so desperately wanted to walk the dog. The minute I handed the leash over to my son, a squirrel ran across the alley.  Before I could grab the leash back, Hondo dragged my son about 50 feet before the damn squirrel ran up a utility pole.  I had been screaming the whole time for the kid to LET GO OF THE LEASH!  He didn’t want to let go because he didn’t want Hondo to run away. Of course that was my fault, because I had explained to him before handing him the leash, how important it was to hold on tight. I can’t win.

Hondo never really learned to like men either. When I started seeing someone that I actually brought to the house, I introduced him to my dog.  Chuck meet Hondo, Hondo meet Chuck. I wasn’t sure how much I liked this guy, he was kinda stupid, but he had great hair and was a guitar player in my friend’s band. It was good enough for me at the time. Not for Hondo.  When I left the room, Chuck decided to get up and go to the bathroom.  Hondo decided that Chuck should stay in his chair. I guess he figured if I could tell HIM to sit and stay, he could make people he didn’t know sit and stay. Hondo sat in front of the chair Chuck was in and even let himself be petted and scratched with no sign of aggression. Until Chuck made an attempt to get up. Then Hondo would sit up straight, stare right in Chuck’s eyes and growl. Chuck’s mewling whine to call off my dog made me re-think the whole stupid guitar player thing, and that was the last time he came over.
On the other hand, Hondo loved my husband from the get–go. After some initial barking, he rolled over and that was it. I always tell my husband that if Hondo hadn’t given his approval, we never would have gotten together. I always trusted Hondo’s instincts for people. If truth be told, both Hondo and I could have been labeled fear-aggressive, but as long as we agreed on which people to be aggressive to, I was ok with that.

Hondo was my “heart-dog” from the minute I took him out of that house.  He knew me and forgave all my transgressions. Even when I got too drunk to come home and let him out, he didn’t hold it against me. When I yelled at him because my job sucked, and I was tired and pissed off about something the kids did and wouldn’t play with him, he still loved me.  When I laid on the couch and cried about bills or relationship problems, it was his head under my hand. When I ditched work, it was Hondo who went walking on the beach with me.
The day came when walking wasn’t so easy for him anymore. He was getting older and slowing down. The vet said he had arthritis in his back and hips. That was ok, I knew he was fine. We all get older, no big deal. One day he refused to eat, and I panicked and brought him to the vet. Turns out he had an abscessed tooth. He had to have surgery to have that tooth and several others removed. It was no big deal, but it was the first time I considered that he might not be with me forever.

Not long after that, Hondo got a bloody nose. This is not a fun thing with a dog. They don’t lie down and put their head up until it stops. They usually walk around sneezing, shaking their heads. The first time, we chalked it up to allergies, or maybe a bump to the nose that we hadn’t seen. Then it happened again. And again. After the third time, we took him to the vet again. X-rays showed a tumor in his nasal cavity. While that was bad news, the scary thing was, there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Due to the tumor’s location, and Hondo’s age, there were no acceptable treatments that didn’t pose significant problems. The vet helped my family decide that the best option was to do nothing. We would wait and watch and let Hondo tell us what to do. I realized that the end was coming and I said goodbye to him then. I told him how much I loved him and tried to imagine my life without him. I apologized to him for all the times I wasn’t the best dog owner and let him know that whatever happened, I would make sure he didn’t suffer.



He had a couple of more nosebleeds and then they stopped. He still ate like crazy, barked at squirrels and pushed the other dogs out of the way to get out, and he seemed generally fine. The tumor was still there, but Hondo wasn’t ready to go yet. Or maybe he just knew that I wasn’t ready to let him go yet.  I would like to say he was fine, but he wasn’t. I knew in my heart that this was the beginning of the very end.

The next year and a half I spoiled him like crazy. He got new, expensive canned food. I put runners and sandpaper stickies all over to help him get around.  I brushed him and petted him and talked to him.  Even though we had to stop going for long walks because of his arthritis, I took him on the leash out in front, because I knew he loved it. The last time we went out he tried to chase a chipmunk, but his legs went out from underneath him. I knew that his time with me was getting closer to ending.

Last month, I noticed a very small swelling on his hind leg. That same day, he had a particularly hard time getting up the stairs. I called and made an appointment with the vet for two days later.  And for the next two days, the swelling grew and it got increasingly hard for him to get around. It took both my son and myself to get him into the car to go to vet. I didn’t have a leash on him, thinking I’d just put it on him once we got there. I opened the car door and he actually JUMPED out and ran through a flowerbed before I could get him. I swear he looked at me and laughed, like he wanted me to remember him doing this. Finally, inside with the vet, she said the swelling was a growth of some sort and that they needed a biopsy. This was Friday morning and I wouldn’t have the results until Monday. In the meantime, she gave me some meds for various symptoms and told us to “hang in there”.

It went downhill from there.  I got him home and he slept all day. One of the things my daughter had said for the last year or so was that we were going to make sure Hondo had a bacon-cheeseburger before he died. My husband and I went out to dinner that night and I ordered a bacon-cheeseburger. When I came home, that’s what I gave him his meds in; a big, thick, bacon cheeseburger. Later that night, I couldn’t get him to eat anything.  He didn’t want to get up, he wanted to lay outside, so I slept in a chair on the patio with him.  By morning, he couldn’t get up at all.


I knew it was time.

The vet came to the house that morning, together with Hondo’s favorite vet tech. My son and my husband had left to go out of town, but said their goodbyes before they went. My daughter and her boyfriend were there with me. My daughter held Hondo’s head in her lap and I laid down beside him as the vet gave him the shot that ended his suffering. I felt his whole body relax completely for what was probably the first time in 2 years. I heard the words “It’s OK” in my mind.

And then he was gone.

My heart-dog now lived only in my heart.

About three weeks later, I summoned up the emotional fortitude to pick up Hondo’s ashes from the vet. While I was there, I asked for the biopsy results. It turned out that Hondo had a particularly nasty form of cancer and that it was a miracle he had lasted as long as he did. I know he stuck around until I was ready.

A week ago, I had a dream about my heart-dog.  In it, I walked into my yard and Hondo was there. He ran up to me and stopped, and then sped off into the yard with that same smile he had on his face that last day outside the vet’s office. The day after I was flicking thru the TV channels, when an episode of “The King of Queens” flashed by. I never watch this show, but I stopped on it for some reason. They guy was talking about a book of dog names.  He said, “I like Hondo”.

I think the universe is still trying to tell me something. And I’m still listening. 

Hondo, thanks for taking care of me. 

I’ll see you again.