Rest in Peace, my little peanut

That’s what I called Cassie. At least when I wasn’t accidentally calling her by my daughter’s name. She seemed like a daughter. She also had hair the color of Donald Trump’s (no political commentary, just fact). She passed away yesterday – I had to put her down. She had a brief battle with cancer, but aside from a few moments of listlessness towards the end, she was jumping, hopping, and running, ready to eat any kind of food that might come her way.

She came to me as a rescue. My mother, who was 91 at the time, had always had a dog. In fact, a friend of mine said she wanted to come back in her next life as my mother’s dog, because every dog my mother ever owned was pampered and was constantly at her side being petted. When I was a kid, we had wire-haired dachshunds, so when my mother lost Jennie, a lab/German shepherd mix she acquired because my now ex-husband’s dog had an unplanned litter of TWELVE puppies, I found Cassie on a website devoted to dachshund rescues. She had been on the streets of Midland in West Texas. She was transported to the Houston area by helicopter through a program created by several oil companies to transport dogs for “humanitarian” purposes. From the moment I saw her, it was love at first sight. She stood on her hind legs, as she would always do, and pawed the air, as if to say TAKE ME!! I knew she was the one.

She was a notorious attention whore. If anyone dared to pet Cam (my other dog, her brother in spirit if not in blood), or God forbid take him into their lap, Cassie would jump in or worm her way in between them. Petting Cam was not allowed in her world. She was the princess! And she demanded all the adoration.

Cassie had a full and adventurous life. Not only did she travel on transatlantic flights, including one in which she managed to unzip her carrier and run down the aisle of the plane towards the crew area where the food is kept, but she visited France many times, and even walked (and pooped) along the Seine in Paris. She hiked in the mountains of Switzerland, where she drank water from a beautiful waterfall. She stayed in hotels and AirBnB’s across Spain and France; this past summer she stayed with me in a fancy hotel on the grounds of Chambord castle!

Along with the good times, there were the not-so-good times, including when she ate 1/2 of a brick of chocolate and spent two nights in the hospital. Or the time she ate 1/2 a jar of peanut butter and I had to administer charcoal medication to get her to poop it all out. Not to mention when she ate a good portion of a baggie full of melatonin chewies the day before flying back to Spain, and I didn’t know if we’d make the flight! Oh, and the time she either jumped or fell from the balcony of my apartment here, a pretty healthy drop, and then turned up at the front door! But during all of those crazy times I was never afraid she wouldn’t pull through. She had a constitution of steel! She was iron-willed and she was never deterred! I thought she was invincible…

Cam and I must carry on. He has always been looking over his shoulder to make sure she was near. One time she managed to get herself locked in a friend’s pantry closet. As we looked everywhere inside the house and out, Cam was on my heels crying loudly until we found her. He was beside himself. I always said if the tables had been turned, she wouldn’t have noticed he was gone, or she would have shrugged her shoulders and said oh well! They did play well together, chasing each other around my beach house in Galveston or my apartment in Spain. But she was always the Alpha and she never let him forget it. I think he was afraid of her and kept his distance especially if she was eating or had a treat. Who will hoover up all the crumbs in the kitchen or under the dining table now? That was her job.

Although Cam and I are bonded, it is different. He was the second to arrive in my life and always seemed the second in command. He is more aloof, or as I always describe him, contemplative and deep. She was not contemplative nor enigmatic, but “out there” bursting with personality. PET ME CONSTANTLY was her motto. She was something! And she was lovable, or “amorosa” as a Catalan friend called her. What an endearing bad girl she was!

Cassie was well loved by many and will be well remembered. That is some consolation to me. It’s the end of an era. It’s just me and Cam now.

This is one of my favorite photos of the two of them, keeping an eye out for danger in the neighborhood.

I’ll write something a little more uplifting next time. Until then, here is a photo taken from the garden today of our first snow of the season in the Pyrenees. I think it fell for her…