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