It's been nearly a week since my tiny dog, friend and alter-ego, Lambchop succumbed to kidney failure. I fell head over heels in love with pictures of her on petfinder.com 9 or 10 years ago. She was captured by her foster mom, Inga, squinting in the sun while lounging out on her deck in the Catskills. I couldn't stop thinking about the scraggly tuft of hair on her impossibly teeny head or her elbows. Elbows! I mean, really! She was the kind of cute only I could love and I knew we had to be together.
We had a rocky start. Turns out she was hours from being put down at the city shelter due to "cage aggression" before Inga got her. And then she was adopted and returned by an old lady with a chihuahua who claimed she was allergic to her. Her loss, my gain.
After she made herself comfy in her new home, she decided that she was queen bee and was willing to get into a scrap to defend her title.
Time passed, she began to trust me and I fell in love all over again. Neighbors and friends who thought I was crazy for getting such a sickly-looking, older, and let's just say, um, "feisty" beast began to comment on how she was blossoming under my care.
I could judge a persons character by how they reacted to her the first time they laid eyes upon her. Whether they thought she was the most awesome creature they'd ever seen or the ugliest, she always elicited strong reactions from passers-by. Her proud, high-stepping trot had people calling her everything from a teeny pony to a "dr. seuss" dog. Old age and illness took away that awesome trot, but never robbed her of her pride. Her spirit was strong and beautiful to the end. She was my little daemon, and a part of me will never be the same now that she's gone.
