With a yip and a yank, the internet connection crumpled, and my online bill-paying session fizzled to a halt. Danged dog. She’d done it again.
Beneath my desk stood our 11-year-old rescue Lhasa Apso, Snow Panda. She’d entwined the internet router cord around her legs, her body, and even her muzzle, and then plucked the cord from its socket while trying to break free. The apology in her eyes invited empathy. It wasn’t forthcoming.
That afternoon, a contractor began renovating our home. I barricaded myself and Snow Panda in my office, while I worked on a personal financial project. Snow punctuated each of the workers’ hammer blows with a piercing bark. Whenever the noise receded, she’d nap, while hurling waves of focus-shattering snores. My hoped-for project completion date sidled further into the future.
Snow Panda was an ever-present reminder that my journey through retirement, now four years along, was proceeding in a less-than-sterling manner. My blood pressure seemed headed for orbital heights. My attempt at a primary hobby—book-writing—had shown that endeavor to be an uncertain match for my skill-set. My final year in a church leadership role hadn’t gone as I’d hoped. My wife Linda and I had even shelved our much-loved, twice-yearly beach vacations—Snow, we felt, was too disruptive to take with us, and too psychologically fragile to be left at the boarding kennel.
Wallowing in discouragement, I resolved soon after to cease all unnecessary exertions during my senior season. I dubbed this strategy “dialing back.” I downshifted the rigor and duration of my exercising. I simplified the chord fingerings I used on my guitar. And there’d be no further attempts at writing, nor at any form of leadership—I’d tried them, and they hadn’t worked out.
In the end, though, “dialing back” served only to deflate my spirits further. And, with fewer enjoyable pursuits to distract me, Snow Panda was irritating me more now than ever.
***
We’d adopted Snow from a rescue group, at the dawn of my retirement. From Day One, she’d glimpsed terror in anything and everything and nothing—noises, people, animals, and movements—real and imagined. She’d bark at each of them, and her hair-trigger startle reflex would spawn additional barks. When not in fear’s grip, she’d mope about in a sadness-permeated fog—whether on walks, or meandering through the house or the backyard—oblivious even to megaphone-level commands from her humans.
Snow struck me as needy and clingy, with an obsession to keep Linda or me within eyeshot. Several times a day, she’d edge into my office, only to back away after sensing my indifference. She’d then trot downstairs to visit the more-welcoming Linda.
Snow was nosy, and was forever embarking on exploratory treks. She’d inspect the area behind the sofa, or a box of old stored stuff, or the inside of a closet or cabinet—all the while knocking things over, and, more often than not, getting herself stuck. And in that process, she’d sometimes generate enough static electricity that her fur frizz reminded me of a cartoon character with its finger in a live socket.
I was embarrassed by her barking, and by the zaniness of her behavior. I was abashed when others heard her unconventional name, and I’d hasten to credit it to her former humans. I was uneasy whenever friends would see her bizarre sleeping postures—imagine a furry pretzel twisted into a double-jointed contortion—and when they’d hear the blare of her snoring.
And then there were what we called her “conniption fits,” when, without warning, she’d leap to her paws and zip from room to room and 
floor to floor at maximum speed, all the while grinning maniacally. Her antics were forever forcing me to squelch my own priorities, in order to deal with her aftermaths.
***
Our three Lhasa Apso rescuees prior to Snow Panda had also arrived at critical points in my life. Moose had been an exemplar of courageous toughness, while I grappled with the decision to exit my corporate career and launch a tech startup. Lucy’s powerful personality had helped reignite my spirits, after the new company had toppled into a morass of setbacks. And Casey, with his soothing presence in my workspace, had allayed the stress which often zapped my productivity. Their lives with us had shaped Linda and me into Lhasa Apso devotees. Their impacts had, at times, felt near-magical.
Our experiences with Snow Panda, though, had seemed more akin to a hex, and had led us to consider her an anomaly among the breed. While Linda regarded her presence as irritating but tolerable, I considered Snow and me to be the poorest matching of dog and human imaginable.
My fifth year of retirement was soon to commence, as, with an autumn storm approaching, I trudged behind Snow through the backyard, imploring her to do her business. Without warning, she drew to a halt, spun around twice, and then careened through my legs. Only an improvised ballet pirouette saved me from a face-plant into the lawn.
“Snow Panda,” I bellowed, at cul-de-sac disrupting volume, “what the Sam Hill is wrong with you?”
As a neighbor peered out her backdoor at us, a revelation struck: Unraveling that question would be essential to the enjoyment of my remaining years, several of which would likely be Snow-laden. Snow was now a senior dog, but she offered not a hint of impending decline or demise. And rehoming her was not an option: Linda and I had long agreed that any dog we adopted would always be welcome with us. “Once here, always here,” we’d said. Even Snow Panda.
But what, indeed, was her problem? We’d suspected that a traumatic situation or event might have pummeled her psyche. If so, behavioral training might ease its effects. But we surmised that we first needed to know what had happened. And that would require our finding her prior set of humans.
***
We began, later that week, with a clue: a single-page summary of Snow’s veterinary records, which we’d been given by the rescue group. It showed the name of her former primary human, Titus Barr. And it included a phone number, which proved to be out-of-service.
We used online tools to check out the addresses at which Titus had lived over the years. None seemed current. And we found a directory’s worth of phone numbers in his name, but none were active. We’d apparently reached a dead end.
Linda struck pay dirt, though, when she asked Snow’s previous veterinary office if they’d had an alternate phone number for her humans. They did, and, following our explanation, they shared it with us. Linda tried it, and found herself talking with Titus Barr’s mother-in-law. Titus was ailing and in a nursing home, she explained. He was suffering from a vein disorder, diabetes, obesity, and a plethora of other ailments. She’d ask his wife, Gleema, to contact us instead.
When she called the next day, Gleema seemed a pleasant and soft-spoken lady, likely of middle age. She and Titus, she told us, had purchased puppy Snow from a local breeder. A plague’s worth of human health problems had later forced them to place her with the rescue group.
Gleema thanked us for having brought Snow into a safe and caring place. She’d be mailing us dog photos, along with Snow’s registration papers, within the week. She appreciated our offer to bring Snow for a visit, but felt it wouldn’t be best, at that time, for either Titus or Snow.
Snow Panda, Gleema assured us, had spent her years with them in a happy, stable environment. Gleema posited herself and Titus as the embodiment of a devoted, loving couple. But, for reasons they’d never understood, Snow’s eccentricity level, even in her early years, had always surged above flood stage.
Drat. Our hope that behavioral training might ease Snow Panda’s angst was now severely diminished. We supposed that Snow had simply been born the way she was, and that nothing further could be done. Linda and I thanked Gleema, we wished her well, and we considered the matter closed.
***
It wasn’t. Less than a week later, Gleema called again, asking specifically for me. She felt in need, she told me, of someone outside her life to whom she could talk. It couldn’t be her therapist, who was focused only on her psychology. It couldn’t be Titus, now fully engrossed in his own health issues. And it couldn’t be her mom or her brother, who tended to disrespect Titus whenever they spoke.
Gleema had concluded that my voice reminded her of her late, adored father, a teacher who’d been dead for a quarter-century. Talking to me as her father’s proxy, she said, would comfort her, and lessen her stress. And I’d not need to concern myself with replying to whatever she said—she needed someone to talk to, not someone to talk with.
I sighed. I had neither the time to do this, nor, frankly, the patience. Gleema’s need, though, seemed urgent and genuine, and—trying to be a nicer guy than I normally would be—I tacitly consented. Gleema said she’d call me within several days, and so she did.
I’d barely said “Hello,” when Gleema launched into a high-velocity, vastly disjointed, whiplash-inducing conversational concoction. Titus had been given a new medication at the nursing home yesterday, she said. Snow had adored her soulmate Twitch, a Schnauzer who’d died prior to Snow’s rehoming. Gleema’s dad had taught her and her brother to read, before they even started school. Jarvis, the dog she’d bought after Twitch died, had certainly been cute.
Twitch had been at the vet, constantly, near the end of his life. Titus had nearly gotten into a fist fight today with a male nurse. Gleema’s own health issues were causing frequent hospitalizations. Snow Panda and Jarvis were never as close as Snow and Twitch. Gleema had trouble measuring the liquid dosages of her primary med. Her Aunt Carmen had been nice to her while she was growing up. Most of Titus’s work career had been spent in fast-food and farming.
I responded with an occasional “Uh huh,” and tried, with limited success, to keep my mind off the personal project on which I’d been working when she called. Throughout, though, and with no particular idea as to why, I scribbled notes about what she was saying. Once the call ended, I questioned which was hurting worse—my head or my wrist. I had no precise idea of what I’d just heard, or what I’d written, or what, if anything, it all meant. I stored my notes in a folder I labeled “Gleema,” and which I sub-labeled, with regrettable sarcasm, “The Sentence Salad Diaries.”
Gleema established a pattern of calling me every few days. She—and I—were grateful that the calls were providing comfort for her. But she remained frustratingly difficult to follow, and many of her sentences were baffling topic continuations from earlier calls. Rarely did she ask anything about me, or Linda, or even Snow Panda.
Based on what I could discern, my suspicion began growing that Snow Panda’s apartment-based existence had differed vastly from what Gleema had first told us. I recalled our puzzlement that, of the dozens of dog photos she’d mailed to us soon after our first contact, Snow and her packmates had looked unsettled and sad in literally every one.
And so, beginning with the next call, I raised my attention level toward its maximum setting. And I continued, with heightened care, to jot down the things Gleema was saying. My motivation for the calls had now expanded. Before, I’d been doing this to assist someone who’d seemed in need. But now, I realized, the calls also were an opportunity to obtain invaluable and in-depth insights into how Snow Panda had spent her first seven years.
***
Following several more weeks of our conversations, Gleema told me that Titus had decided to leave the nursing home, and return to the apartment. His vein disease, the diabetes, and his other ailments, she said, were still rampant. His 300-plus-pound frame remained as immobile as ever, and he required extensive and specialized daily care from the nursing home staff. Those responsibilities would now become Gleema’s.
“Titus has had it made in the nursing home,” she said. “But they won’t let him smoke in there. So he thinks nothing about making me take care of him, just so he can lay around and puff his cigarettes all day.” Few insights into Titus’ character could have been more telling.
And she said that another potential problem loomed. Titus had originally agreed with her on the decision to rehome Snow and her remaining packmate. But now, he was alleging that Linda and I, abetted by the rescue group and by Gleema herself, had “stolen” Snow Panda. He’d commenced plotting, Gleema said, to deliver our comeuppance, and to “steal her back.”
Given Titus’s immobility and health issues, I’d not be fretting about him dropping in for a visit. But I did suspect that he’d put a rapid end to Gleema’s calls to me, just as quickly as he learned of them. Sure enough, and without explanation, the calls soon stopped, five months after they’d begun.
The time had arrived for deciphering what they’d all meant. The strands of disjointed conversation which had flashed through my ears during those months had left little doubt that life in the apartment had skewed greatly awry. But, to turn the shapes and shadows of those impressions into images of reasonable clarity, I’d need to unravel the notes I’d made of Gleema’s “sentence salads.” I’d first reorganize them into logical topics, and then augment them with any memory factoids which hadn’t made it into the notes. Then, I’d review them, and consider them, and—hopefully—reach a set of conclusions as to how Snow Panda had become the way she was.
***
During an earlier call, Gleema had made a rare emergence from soliloquy mode, to ask a seemingly incongruous question.
“Have you ever watched that old movie, Misery?” I told her I’d not.
“Well, watch it sometime. It’s from a book by that Stephen King guy, who writes horror stories. The two main characters, the man and the woman, that’s Titus and me. They carry on and argue a whole lot like we do. And that actress that plays the lead—it’s like she’d gotten into my head to learn how to do the part.”
I’d given little thought to her remarks at the time. But now, as I prepared to process my conversational notes, the film beckoned as a must-see place to start.
I’ll admit I’d never envisioned—even in a movie—a woman hoisting a sledgehammer to break the ankles of a man she’d imprisoned in her home. Or a man killing a woman by crashing an iron statue of a pig into her face. Or the toxicity of the hatred one human being could feel and express toward another.
Gleema had never mentioned physical violence within the apartment, and I presumed there’d been none. She’d rattled me, though, by equating the relational dynamic of herself and Titus to that of the savagely warring couple in the film. And Gleema had proclaimed her identification with the female lead—a character who, the movie made clear, was brutally unstable, and had operated as a serial killer since childhood.
Snow Panda had spent her first seven years in a front-row seat at that apartment-turned-theatre, observing and listening as her humans played out their own real-life version of Misery.
***
With the movie as a prelude, I commenced analyzing my notes and memories. Few spy decoding missions can have been as convoluted as the deciphering of those scribblings. My brain was soon wobbling from the overload of information, and from the rigor of organizing and assembling this mishmash of a verbal jigsaw puzzle.
When I’d finished, I felt that I’d succeeded in my mission, and that I now understood the paths by which Snow Panda had become as she was. I summarized my conclusions as follows:
Rather than living the marital idyll of a 1950’s family sitcom, as Gleema had initially implied, the Barrs had waged marriage-long warfare of Visigothic ferocity. Titus would utter troubling allusions to the pistol lurking in his nightstand drawer, followed by assurances that his words were intended in jest. Gleema characterized their default communication mode as “raging conversations.” And, from their wedding day forward, Titus had carpet-bombed Gleema’s self-esteem, by addressing her as “Thelma”—the name of his second ex-wife.
The battered decorum of the Barr household had been further besieged by Herb and Wanda Stein, the combative pair next door, whose battle sounds rattled and raged through the porous walls. Inter-apartment feuding had added to the fray, as Team Stein jousted with Team Barr.
Even those with constructive intentions had compounded the havoc. During Snow’s final two months with the Barrs, Titus had required four chaos-infused ambulance rides to the hospital, after his vein disorder began re-flaring. He argued and fought with the EMT’s during each trip, just as he’d been prone to do with his doctors back at the nursing home. One pickup, while Gleema was undergoing hospital treatment, and with the home-alone Titus unable to rise from his recliner, had required the emergency crew to crash through the apartment door.
Gleema herself had required five medication-overdose EMT visits during that same period. At least one of those, she implied, might have been a deliberate attempt at self-harm.
The saga’s weirdness quotient neared its peak with the revelation that Gleema regularly forced surrogate daughter Snow to wear little-
girl dresses. And to wear her ear fur in pigtails. And to walk upright on her hind legs—a skill we’d observed and puzzled over, soon after the adoption. “Snow Panda’s wardrobe was even bigger than mine,” Gleema marveled.
Gleema’s halo, to be sure, contained its own coatings of tarnish. With her surrogate mom aspirations curtailed by Snow’s perceived favoritism toward Titus, Gleema had concluded, somehow, that Snow’s personality “was a lot like Titus.” And, in what to me seemed an overt admission of abuse, she confessed to having spanked Snow whenever Titus irritated her—an occurrence whose regularity rivaled that of a clock’s hands.
I stitched together several summary quotes from Gleema: “Snow Panda was under a mountain of stress from inside the apartment. And there were always loud noises outside the apartment. We tried to keep her away from people, because she was so afraid of them all. Snow barked constantly. She barked at every person, and at every noise she heard.” Snow Panda had rarely been allowed outside the noise-infested apartment, even to pee or poop. The newspaper-covered laundry room floor had served as her business-doing address.
One revelation struck me as both jarring and moving. Titus had avowed his hatred even of God, along with, seemingly, every person and every creature on the planet. One exception had come through strongly in Gleema’s words, however, and that was Snow Panda—whom, she said, Titus loved dearly and deeply and consistently. And, considering his aggressive alienation of Gleema herself, and of all who’d once considered themselves within his orbit, Snow might well have been the only living being who still cared the slightest whit about him. Snow Panda had been, by all indications, the lone remaining conduit through which love could be channeled to and from the eminently unlovable—and unloving—Titus.
***
My soul ached with empathetic pain, as I contemplated the horror-movie tableau in which Snow Panda had lived and incurred trauma. And
my soul ached with guilt, at the massive errors I’d made in assessing what she was all about, and how best to live with her, and love her, and help her to recover.
As she did several times each day, Snow eased, with great wariness, into my office, and onto the carpet several feet from me. I stood and said “Come here, Snow Panda.” Her eyes awash with heightened trepidation, she inched toward me. I knelt, and I hugged her.
“I’m so, so sorry, Snow. I understand now. Things will be different from here on. I love you, Snow Panda.” She leaned into my hug. And I hugged her. And hugged her. And hugged her some more.
***
First came the sound of dog feet pattering up the stairs. Then, a tag jingled against a collar stud. I rose to greet Snow Panda, as she commenced the day’s first sojourn into my office. She half-ran and half-trotted, her tail oscillating at full speed, to meet me in the hug.
In the weeks since her humans had reshaped their attitudes toward her, much had gone as we’d hoped—only faster. She’d seemed to grasp almost immediately that she was now accepted, appreciated, and loved. We’d seen her fear give way to confidence, her sadness to joy, and her daze to high-engagement attentiveness.
We’d expected much of her “zany” behavior to fade and disappear as well. But we’d been surprised and concerned to see it increase, and substantially so. Her “conniption fit” rampages through the house, for example, were happening more often, and at higher speed. Her apparent “nosiness” had intensified as well, and her explorations of nooks, crannies, and niches were now marked by greater frequency and by effervescent enthusiasm.
But wait. We’d once considered Snow to be “needy,” what with her seemingly excessive desire to be around Linda and me. We’d come to
realize, instead, that she simply loved to be near her humans, just as much as she possibly could be. We’d reframed our thinking, and, suddenly, what had seemed a negative trait now shone as a positive. Might additional reframing be in order?
We took the word “zaniness” and substituted the phrase “unquenchable exuberance.” We watched as Snow flitted between floors and rooms in her latest “conniption fit,” grinning as if in some outer realm of ecstasy. Did the new phrase better fit what we were seeing? Yes, it absolutely did. And might the phrase “insatiable curiosity” better describe what we’d branded as “nosiness?” Indeed, it would. Semantic shifts were proving to be key tools in our reimagining of Snow Panda’s essence.
We were watching a dog in a later stage of her life—her twelfth year—choose to be as fully immersed in that life as if she were a puppy. For Snow, there’d been no “dialing back,” nor would there ever be. But, for one of her humans, the same could not be said.
That human, though, now recognized himself to be in the presence of a furry exemplar par excellence, whose example shouted to be followed. I brought my “dialing back” to a close. I reset my exercising to its original timing and intensity. I replaced the less-challenging chord positions on my guitar with those I’d used earlier. I seized a seemingly hopeless situation which cried for leadership, and I somehow made it work. And, who knew, I might even dabble again in writing one day.
Our Lhasa Apso rescue pantheon was now complete. Moose had been our exemplar of resilience; Lucy, the spry rejuvenator of spirits; and Casey, the master soother of stress and tension. And Snow Panda was now our exemplar of living and thriving, in fullness and exuberance, through the latter stages of this precious adventure called life.
***
“She knows she’s dying,” said Ingrid, Snow’s beloved groomer. “She was kissing me all over my face, the entire time I worked with her. She was telling me goodbye.”
Snow Panda had sailed into her fifteenth year in full stride, acing her annual physical, and showing declines in neither engagement nor enthusiasm. The first hints of trouble were puzzling, sporadic, and resistant to diagnosis. A large veterinary hospital in another city provided the unwelcome answers.
Snow had a cancerous tumor. No, it couldn’t be surgically removed. And, of the sub-types of that particular cancer, hers was of the worst 
possible variety. Even with the chemo treatments, her remaining life span could be counted only in weeks.
Snow devoured each of those weeks as if they were the most scrumptious of banquets. She exulted in chasing bunnies, going for walks, cruising to McDonald’s, zipping through the house, and even riding to and from the vet hospital. We’d awaken in the morning with Snow’s head on one of our pillows. She’d nap with her head on a stuffed toy, as if she were telling it goodbye as well.
As the vet’s needle neared its target, her eyes locked on mine for a precious last instant. And in that instant, I believe I glimpsed grief, gratitude, and a universe-worth of never-stopping love. And I realized that Snow Panda had given us a final and deeply appreciated gift.
She’d taught us how to die.
Note: Other than my wife and myself, names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people (and dogs) involved.