Tag Archives: Chihuahuas

Tallulah

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Not long after Lulu died in September, my mother got anxious to get another dog for “company.” The fact that I am staying with her full-time now doesn’t seem to count.

A neighbor took it upon himself to find Mom a dog and started forwarding regular posts of dogs needing to be rehomed. Most of them were no-go. Too young. Too old. Too male. Too big. Finally, Luna popped up. She was advertised as a three-year-old chihuahua, affectionate and calm. Her family was letting her go because their two youngest children didn’t know how to play with a dog. I texted that my mother might be interested and showed my mom the photo and description. Mom was interested and the phone rang soon after.

The woman said that they loved Luna and hated to let her go. They had gotten her from another lady who decided she didn’t need a dog. Luna had been with them for seven months and “we’d love to keep her …” She sang Luna’s praises and said we could come meet her that day if we wanted to. She lived about an hour away. I asked Mom if she wanted to meet the dog and she said yes without hesitation. I was pretty sure we’d be bringing a dog back later.

After an hour-long drive, we met the woman and Luna at a city park. Mom stayed in the car as she petted Luna’s head and I asked what I hoped were the right questions about food, house training, shots. The woman wasn’t sure about many things. Finally, I took a deep breath and asked if the dog had been spayed. Not sure, but she thought she’d had a litter of puppies at some point. I was sure the dog hadn’t been spayed. I looked at Mother. “Mom, she probably hasn’t been spayed.” The response was immediate – “We’ll get her spayed.”

I already knew the answer to my next question. “Do you want to take her?”

“Yes. I like her.”

Luna rode with us back to Mother’s house and was a perfect, well-behaved passenger with no signs of anxiety. I called the vet, told them Mom had adopted a new dog and we needed to get her checked out. Told them she likely needed to be spayed. Made an appointment for Saturday morning. Luna seemed to adjust to the house quickly but was hesitant to go outside without me. As she explored, I noticed that she was spotting blood. I tried to check her underside but she wasn’t having it. Finally, I let Mom know what I was seeing.. “She seems to be bleeding a bit. Do you think she’s in heat?”

Mom assured me that she was not and that I should take her to the vet the next day. Early the next morning, after cleaning up little bloody spots on the floor, I called the clinic and asked if they might work her in that day. I explained the problem and the receptionist said, “She’s in season. See you Saturday.” They’re calling it “in-season” now.

Thus began my training to be a canine gynecologist. I found out about the four phases of female dog heat and saw that Luna was in the first phase. I bought a wrap to keep the bleeding in check but Luna was having none of it. In the meantime, Mom, whose first response to the news had been “What have I done?” was becoming attached to her new buddy. “What have I done?” became “Poor thing, she can’t help it.”

The name, however, was a problem. Lulu had been “Luna” before Mother changed it. And now she had another Luna. She has some sort of aversion to that name and vowed she’d get used to it this time, but it kept causing her trouble. She wanted to say “Lulu” or “Lula” or anything but “Luna.” Finally, she decided to rename the dog but agreed that a new name should not be too far removed from the one Luna had been used to for three years.

Inspiration hit. Not long ago, I reviewed a book about the Bankhead political family of Alabama. An offspring of that family was Tallulah Bankhead, an acclaimed and colorful actor of the early twentieth century stage. Tallulah was prone to outrageous and unfettered behavior and, in a movie magazine interview, she lamented how long she had been without a man. “I need a man!” she moaned. Her Aunt Marie, back in Alabama, wrote a letter to her niece, scolding her for her outbursts and accusing her of the “yapping of a hot canine …”

“I have a solution,” I said. “You have a hot canine – name her Tallulah and call her ‘Lula’. She’ll have a name you’re more comfortable with and I’ll have a story.”

So “Lula” it is. The vet declared her healthy, gave her shots, and will schedule surgery after her current situation has passed. I am learning first-hand about the second stage of heat as I follow Lula around with a damp rag to wipe up the tiny bloody spots. The female’s tail takes on a snaky life of its own. Based on my canine gyno training, this is her way of signaling that she, in Tallulah’s words, “needs a man.”  And, as the Persian proverb says, “This too shall pass.”

Tallulah

 

Lulu

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  Lulu longed to talk more than any dog I’ve ever known. She watched carefully and would look me in the eyes and make this low guttural sound. I realized she was trying to talk. It reminded me of when I was a kid and tried to imitate foreign accents. I didn’t know the words, but I would talk gibberish and strive to get the sound right.

Over time, when Lulu needed to talk, I would just sit and have a chat with her. She’d make her sounds and I would respond. She tilted her head to the side and listened and when I stopped, she’d make her sounds again. It was usually a very serious discussion. When she was satisfied, she’d lean over and lick my hand or jump down and lick a toe if I was barefoot, wag her tail, and move on to the next thing.

Lulu was my mother’s dog, but I have been with her almost nonstop for the past three and a half years – and frequently for five years before that. We had to let her go Wednesday night. Her vet, who assured us her practice didn’t do this service for other patients, brought her home. Mother held her for a while and then I held her, sitting in her favorite chair with her favorite stuffed toys and people she loved and who loved her around – Mom, me, and the vet, who had come to love her, too.  I talked to Lulu through two final injections about the squirrels she’d chase, the crows she’d run away from the bird feeders, and what a good girl she was. And she was.

She had her eyes focused on me and they did not close when she went on to the next thing. It was peaceful. It was horrible.

She was a happy, active chihuahua until ten days before she died. One morning, she had an accident in the house and when I was cleaning it up I saw that it was mostly blood. She went to the vet who tested her, said it was treatable, and began treatment. A few days later, Lulu was recovering nicely. On the morning of the day we were going to bring her home, she had a stroke. They say strokes in dogs are rare but that some make a full or at least partial recovery. We got a couple of promising daily reports and then Lulu began to decline. By Wednesday, the vet decided it was time. And it was.

Chihuahuas get a bad rap and I used to be guilty. I worked with a director once, a short guy with a bad attitude who yapped constantly. I nicknamed him “Chihuahua.” I regret that and apologize to the entire Chihuahua community. Lulu would yap when she got excited, usually when she was happy about something, but most of the time she was quiet. Once, Mother almost fell and a visiting neighbor jumped up to help her; Lulu misunderstood what was happening and made a mad and excitable dash for the neighbor. I appreciated that Lulu was coming to the aid of her person but the neighbor, a cat lady, never returned. And I will never disparage another chihuahua – the three that my parents have had – Pepe, Clover, and Lulu – were fine, smart, and noble creatures.

If Lulu heard lightning, or if it rained hard, she would wander around the house until she found a haven, usually in a closet or bedroom. She never sat and ate a meal. She would nibble delicately throughout the day. If she was going out or for a walk, she would grab a few bites of kibble in her mouth, delicately place them on the floor, and eat them one by one. She had a keen sense of smell and would roam the backyard, following the scent of creatures who had wandered through – a rabbit, a raccoon, an opossum, a runaway ferret one time, a tortoise, the neighborhood cat who taunted her from the fence post. She knew there was a chipmunk who lived under the storage shed in the backyard and never went out without sniffing at the place where the chipmunk burrowed under. On walks, she would stop and sniff anything with a scent. The jasmine at a mailbox down the street was a particular favorite.

She was a bit of a snob with other dogs, especially other small ones, but she developed the occasional crush on big dogs that lived in the neighborhood. She had raised a litter of puppies not long before she came to live with Mother. We always suspected that she missed her puppies, especially the one they called “P.J.” that had stayed with her until she was given to Mom. One day, on a neighborhood walk, she spotted a chihuahua puppy in a yard and pulled on her leash until I took her over. She gently nuzzled and licked that puppy for several minutes. I had a hard time getting her to leave it. I suspect she was remembering her own lost pups.

Lulu hated me at first. She would have nothing to do with me. In her mind, she thought I was the person who took her away from her people and puppy. She wouldn’t let me near and would bark fiercely if I approached. Somewhere along the way, she decided I was okay, and we were close from then on. She was an intuitive girl. If voices were raised, even if it wasn’t in anger, she would quietly leave the room and seek shelter in a cozy corner; I suspected that might have been a holdover from her previous owners. When I was down or upset, she seemed to always know and would climb up and lay her head in my lap and stroke my hand with her paw.

She’s gone now and Mom is already talking about getting another dog. I’d prefer to give it a break for a while, but it’s her house. Lulu came to think of it as Lulu’s house.

And it was.

Lulu and the Tortoise