Cali made a lot of funny noises. When I got home from work she would greet me with a long arrrroooo noise. If I greeted another dog first, or even my husband first, she voiced her objection with a loud aaaarrrrrrrrooooo noise. When you rubbed her ears she would turn her head to that side and let out a big groan. Sometimes she would yawn, and at the end of the yawn would let out a trill to announce the big yawn. She could also howl like a coyote, and she did this when I started howling. She would join in with a high pitched howl, lifting her nose straight up to the sky. I thought this was a great trick, although every time Cali and I were howling, everyone told us to be quiet! She also made little scolding rrooo noises when her dad was laying on the couch, giving him gentle reminders that she was there waiting (not so patiently) for her invitation to get up on the couch with him, where she would lay on him and demand continuous petting. She also made the regular doggie noises, such as barking when the doorbell rang. The other dogs we had while we had Cali, a Labrador retriever and later two German Shepherds, didn't think to bark at the doorbell, but once Cali started barking at it, they would realize that they should be barking and start in with her. She also barked when you threw the ball for her to fetch. She got so excited over chasing the ball and she would bark at the ball thrower as soon as she let go of the ball, barking orders to "throw the ball already"! Then she would run lightning fast after the ball, and when she was running back with the ball, she made another funny noise - loud snorting noises like a pig.
Cali was a headstrong little girl. When she was young, she would wriggle out of her halter during walks, or make an escape when the front door was opened (hard to catch something moving so fast so close to the ground), and we would have to chase her all over the neighborhood. I never did get her to walk calmly beside me on the leash - she was too willful and I was too lazy to fight her. Fortunately as she matured she stopped trying to run all over the neighborhood. We could let her out and she would just stroll around the court and always return to the front door, giving out a little yelp to be let back in the house. As for obedience training, I was similarly lazy with that. Not that she wasn't smart enough to learn -- I just wasn't smart enough to teach her much. One day I taught her to lie down, and to bark. I did this using treats. It took about 5 minutes to teach her that. From then on, whenever anybody had treats or anything that Cali wanted to eat, she would lie down and bark. My husband complained that I shouldn't have taught her to bark for treats -- that barking is something you teach your dog not to do, and anyway who teaches their dog to bark? I also taught her to come over to me when I knelt on the ground with one knee up, and put her front feet up on my knee and stand up and give me kisses and get scratched. He asked why I didn't teach her useful things like sit and stay. I thought barking and standing up on my knee were useful. ïŠ
Cali grew up with a Labrador retriever named Mac. He actually stood his ground with her -- he warned her away from his food, and would not let her share his bed, even though it was a twin mattress and we told him that "two doggies can sleep on one bed". Mac died at the age of 15, when Cali was 5. She was an "only dog" for a while until we got a 2 year old male German Shepherd, then six months later we got a 6 year old male shepherd mix. Cali was the alpha dog with the shepherds. When she finished her food she would (if we didn't intervene) walk over to them and give a little growl and they would step aside and let her eat their remaining food! If they ever dared to approach her bowl, she didn't even look up -- just gave one short little throaty noise and they left her alone with her bowl. And when we opened the back sliding door to let the dogs outside, the shepherds would wait until Cali had gone outside before they would go outside. They wouldn't dare pass her in the doorway. It was so funny -- occasionally she would step partly across the door threshold and then stop and look up and back and "check" them to make sure they were waiting until she got all the way outside -- they would be falling all over themselves trying to stop until she continued on. After Cali was gone, her dad remarked "Cali was much better at controlling the shepherds than we are". She was bossy and she was our little watchdog also -- her favorite places to sleep were next to the front or back door, so she could keep an eye (and an ear) on things.
When Cali was about 4, she suddenly became crazy over chasing a tennis ball. The summer she was 5, my mother was staying at our house for a few days, and during the day while we were working, she was at home with Cali and Mac. Every time she went out to the backyard, Cali would bring the ball and bark and demand she throw it. My Mom was offering to do something around the house and said, "I need a job around here. Other than throwing the ball!" The summer she was 6, her dad taught her to fetch the ball from the pool. Then when our son Daniel was home from college with his friends, they encouraged her to jump in the pool straight from the side instead of using the steps. It took very little encouragement before she was jumping straight in, even from the high side of the pool, reaching out her front legs and pointing her back legs out behind her. Gutsy, gung ho, daring, fearless, confident, dominant, these are all words that described Cali. Also obstreperous, headstrong, and independent. But also sweet, affectionate, and adorable.
Cali was also a good hunter. She had good hearing and eyesight (despite the beginning of cataracts), and beautiful white teeth. She could run surprisingly swift for such short little legs, could turn on a dime, and of course was right down there in "rabbit level". One evening she was out in the yard and did not come in when I called her. She was out in the grass and seemed reluctant to leave where she was. I got a flashlight and went out to investigate. She had a full grown rabbit next to her, dead. She looked up at me tentatively as if to say "Am I in trouble?" I didn't scold her because after all she was just being a dog and doing a doggy thing. I was horrified to see that the top of the rabbit's skull was gone and it was empty! Ewwww. This reminded me of what she did with stuffed squeaky toys -- she would make a tiny incision with her teeth and extract only the plastic squeaker. After this first rabbit kill, we started calling Cali the rabbit neurosurgeon. In the last summer of her life, she caught her last rabbit. Cali and our two German Shepherds were chasing a rabbit all around the yard. The rabbit tried to go under the fence, and when it couldn't fit under the fence, it tried to jump and wiggle through a hole in the fence to the left and a few inches off the ground that had been chewed by a rat. The dogs heard the noise of the bunny's new location, and ran over to investigate. The rabbit went limp when the dogs approached, with its hind quarters sticking out on our side of the fence. The shepherds were fooled and preoccupied with sniffing the fence bottom where the rabbit had been trying to go under the fence. After a couple minutes they gave up and walked away. Cali however was not fooled. She could smell the rabbit and knew it was still close by, playing possum. She kept sniffing and following her nose to the left, then up, until she was nose to tail with the rabbit. Then Chomp! She dragged the rabbit out of the hole in the fence and applied her neurosurgery skills to immediately kill it (this involved shaking her head back and forth super fast, something she practiced regularly on stuffed toys). She then proceeded to prance around the yard, showing off her hunting skills to the German Shepherds. The rabbit was a large adult rabbit, and since she was so short, she had to hold her head way up high to avoid tripping over the rabbit as she pranced around.
Cali was a big faker. If you tried to pick her up and she didn't want to be picked up, she would cry out as if in pain. If you tried to push her somewhere she didn't want to go, she would yelp out like you were doing something horrible to her! Once she was limping and crying and favoring a paw, and I couldn't find anything wrong with it. I took her to the vet and he x-rayed the paw and there was nothing wrong with it. Right after that, no more limping. She would also cry out and carry on at the vet anytime he tried to even examine her. She really knew how to get her way!
Cali loved to go on walks and outings and got very excited when we put on white shoes and got out the leash. On walks in the canyon where the dogs could be off leash, Cali always stayed close by us -- she never wanted her people out of her sight. Even at dog beach, she would stick close by me. If she ever got distracted and ran off or I walked away, I would see her stop and look around for me. When I called and waved she would come racing back to me and stayed by me once more. Whenever we went away and left Cali in the care of someone else, she was always ecstatic to see me again. She would run over to me and jump on my knees when I knelt down, constantly giving little fast barks of excitement and trying to lick my face.
On the evening of September 20, 2007, I noticed two lumps under Cali's chin. They seemed to have grown overnight -- I scratched under her chin every day because she liked it, and they were just there one day out of nowhere. After a day they were still there, so I took her to the vet. He examined her and showed me a couple more lumps farther down her chest that I had not noticed. He took two needle aspiration biopsies and told me to call the next day for the results. I asked him what it could be and he said that something was causing inflammation and swelling in her lymph nodes but he did not want to elaborate. I asked him if dogs got lymphoma and he said that was one of the possible diagnoses that he had to consider. I think he strongly suspected it but did not want to tell me until he was sure. The vet tech told me as I was leaving that she would keep her fingers crossed for us. I knew then that it was going to be devastating. When I called the vet back, he said it was not good news, that Cali had lymphoma. We brought her back for blood work and x-rays to see how widespread the tumors were to get an idea what we might expect. Her blood work looked normal but there was a mass in her abdomen that was pushing her intestines out of place. We researched the chemotherapy treatments for lymphoma and decided against them, as they generally induce a remission that lasts only 6 months and then the dog succumbs to the lymphoma anyway. I did not want to make her last few months unpleasant with the side effects of the chemo just to get a little more time with her, even though without chemotherapy her life expectancy was only 1-2 months. We decided to just love her and make whatever time she had left as good as possible. The vet gave us steroids and antibiotics which would decrease the tumor size temporarily and make her feel better. At first, this shrank the lumps to the point that we could not feel them, and it worked well for about a month, and then the tumors started growing again. She had 6 full weeks of feeling good, taking lots of walks, going to the beach, eating heartily, and enjoying a lot of extra attention. We bought chicken and cooked it and pulled it off the bone and she had chicken everyday. Also cheese, cookie dough, anything she wanted. I took her to work with me once and she got lots of extra love, attention, and spoiling.
On Saturday, November 3, Cali ate her chicken breakfast but then threw it up. This had happened a couple other times in the past month and I thought she might feel better later. She wanted a walk, so I took her on one, but she stopped and lay down on a lawn and could not make it home. I sat with her for a while to rest and encouraged her to follow me home, but she was too weak. I went home and got the car and picked her up and brought her home. Once in the house, she went in the downstairs bedroom and lay down behind the bed. This was very uncharacteristic of her -- she always lay by the front or back door to guard us. I knew then that it was the beginning of the end. From that point on she was listless and lethargic. That evening we had plans to have dinner with friends, and we went out, and when we came home there was Cali at the door to great us, but the dinner she had eaten before we went out was on the carpet. I made plans to take a mattress downstairs to sleep with her but much to my surprise she came upstairs to the bedroom herself to sleep with us up there. Sunday she did not want any food, and did not eat any more before she died. She drank water but was throwing up whatever water she drank. She lay around and we would carry her outside to urinate, and then carry her back in. She stayed wherever we laid her, in whatever position we put her in. She never cried as if in pain when we were picking her up and carrying her, so I don't think she had any pain at that point. She was very weak. Sunday night I slept with her on a mattress downstairs. She seemed uncomfortable all night. On Monday morning as I was showering she came up to the bathroom. This was something she did almost every day, but I was shocked that she had found the strength to climb the stairs that day. I cried that she had gone to so much effort to do that simple normal act to be with me. I went to work and her dad stayed home and looked after her. I came home around noon and she was still lying in the same place on the bathroom tile, she had not moved at all. I lay with her on the tile and slept with her for a while. That night I slept downstairs on the mattress with her again. She walked down the hall once that night, and was vomiting water and generally miserable, and had some small seizures where her eyes were jumping rapidly up and down. I carried her back to the mattress and she was fitful and panting and could not sleep. She kept changing positions, laying her head on my arm, then my stomach, she was restless. I stroked her head and told her she was a good girl and we loved her very much. I told her that if she needed to go, that it was OK to go and I would see her on the other side. She got up and tried to stand and was very wobbly. She tried to drink but seemed to have lost motor control of her tongue and could not drink any more. She was also stumbling and could not walk properly. She started retching again although there was no more water in her stomach, and I held her little chest to support her while she was doing this. It just broke my heart. She took a few steps and sort of collapsed on the floor and started panting loudly. She was so miserable and I could not stop crying. I felt awful that I had not taken her to the vet that day to be put to sleep, but I just could not part with her and had not taken her that day. The result was this miserable night she endured. I knew the end was near then, as she stopped keeping her tongue in its correct spot, and it was just falling to the floor out of her mouth, and she was panting and drooling a lot. I kept watch over her as she seemed to be loosing consciousness. Then she started having a bigger seizure and I ran upstairs to wake her dad. He came down and by that time she had stopped breathing. Her heart was still beating and she was gasping and trying to breathe but unable to manage it any more. The seizure ended and she was still. Both of us were with her, touching her and talking to her and being with her as she went. It was over at 1:30 AM on November 6, 2007. My baby was gone. I stayed for a while with my face buried in her neck so I would never forget her smell. We put her body in a safe and comfortable place for the rest of the night.
We had Cali cremated and ordered a dark red granite stone. We buried her ashes in an impervious container, with a fluffy squeaky toy, right next to her old friend Mac in the back yard. Her stone reads:
2001 -- 2007
Cali
Sweet and Bossy
Always Loved
She was my sweet little girl, my Cali Ann, my puppy girlfriend, and I was her mommy. I loved her like I had never loved any dog before. I will never forget her sweet face, the noises she made, how she smelled, the softness of her little head. I miss her and think about her every day. But I know that I will see that little girl again. In this universe, we are all connected to those we love that have gone before us, and when it is time, we will be together again. No matter how long that may be from now, it will ease my passing to think that I will see Cali and be with her once again, and she will be healthy and whole.
Life is eternal
Love is immortal
And death is only a horizon
And a horizon is nothing
Save the limit of our sight
California Anniversary Angel
4/15/2001 to 11/6/2007
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