[Dailydrool] Lola ATB

[Sherrilyn -]

Yesterday, 2/22/22, Lola made her way to the Rainbow Bridge.

I knew my time with her was getting short--she was 14 and had kidney disease--but I wasn't expecting to lose her without warning. Unfortunately, Lola bloated yesterday. By the time we got to the vet, her stomach had torsioned. We had just been there over the weekend to repeat bloodwork to see how she was doing after a month of treatment for a UTI and sub-q fluids for her kidney disease. When the vet came to talk to me after the x-rays, he brought along the results of the bloodwork, which showed that the UTI was still raging and several of the kidney function numbers had deteriorated drastically. It was clear that the kindest decision for her misery was euthanasia. That's how it was with Jacques and Isabella, too: they were motoring along okay until they suddenly weren't, and I had to make an immediate decision to let them go.

Gosh, darn, it was hard. Of all my dogs, Lola was the most infuriating, willful, stubborn, and destructive. She also worked SO HARD to overcome her abusive beginnings and become the sweetest, smartest, funniest, most loving and loyal dog.

I adopted Lola in December 2009 when I was living in Mexico. I'd moved there in September of that year with Isabella, who came to me from Daphneyland via Auntie Suz, who lived in San Antonio at the time. The vet where I had boarded Isabella a few times called me to let me know that one of Isabella's friends from boarding, another basset hound, was in need of a new home. I thought about it a long time, because moving from country to country with one dog was complicated enough, let alone taking two. But I decided to take Lola. She was skinny, had a dry, rough coat, and, I found out, bit and snapped at the least provocation. It became clear that the story that the family couldn't keep her because their son developed allergies, was a ruse. And then I found out that she had been with 3 families before she was 2. As I got to know her, it became clear she had been hit with a broom enough times to make her fearful and aggressive. I imagine all the families thought that bassets were docile and lazy and they just didn't know what to do with a high-spirited puppy. But I had 8 years of reading the Daily Drool under my belt, and I was sure that I would be able to handle the hound.

That first year with Lola was something else. I was sure one of us wasn't going to survive it. But with lots of help from the top animal behaviorist in Mexico, along with plenty of puppy Prozac, Lola became a little less wild. She responded very well to the "nothing in life is free" training and to repeated reinforcement that the pack order was 1. human, 2. Isabella, 3. Lola. But boy, she and Isabella were a tag team of destruction and mayhem. Neither one was very reliably housebroken. Fortunately, they had a maid/dog nanny taking care of them all day in Mexico and open-door access to a back patio, but when we moved to Maryland, I had to shell out for a dog walker to come every day because they were so unreliable.

No matter what I did to basset-proof the house, those two always managed to find a way to thwart me. I think Isabella was the instigator, and Lola was the muscle and brains behind all the nefarious operations they carried out. Lola especially had a taste for the religious. She chewed up an olive wood Christmas ornament from Italy, she ripped up the first 80 pages of an old hymnal, and she managed to chew up the baby Jesus from one of my nativity sets not once, but twice! It was a fabric nativity made by Guatemalan artisans, and I was so upset when she destroyed it. But then I found a website where I could purchase a new one, so I sent away for it. When it arrived, I put it on the sideboard in the dining room until I got around to putting it away, and she somehow levitated up there and managed to destroy baby Jesus #2! I wrote to the company explaining what had happened and inquiring whether I could buy just baby Jesus or whether I needed to order the whole set again. Fortunately, the request must have struck them as unusual enough that they sent me a replacement baby Jesus for free! Thereafter, that cloth nativity set was always placed on a very high shelf.

After we moved to Maryland we went to various basset rescue events. Isabella always made friends wherever she went, but Lola spent all her time pacing the perimeter of enclosures and merely tolerating all the hounds and humans. I think it was the Michigan Waddle in 2012, where they had a pet psychic. I figured a "reading" would be an amusing way to waste some money, so I signed up for a time slot. The woman talked to me about a number of things that could be pretty generic to every hound. And then she said, "Lola wants to know if you think she's pretty." I gasped and covered my mouth! Up until that point, I had always​ said that Isabella was the pretty one (but dumb as a box of rocks) and Lola was the smart one. After that, I never again made that comparison, and we always made a point to tell Lola how pretty she was. The psychic also told me that Lola liked to make me laugh, and she said that Lola showed her how she accomplished that. And then the woman stood up and did the funny little dance that only Lola did! After that, I didn't scoff quite so much at the idea of psychics.

When Isabella died in May 2018, several things happened. First, on the afternoon of the day she died, Lola and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. A couple of ladies were outside talking as we returned home, and they waved and inquired as to where my other dog was. So I went over and explained to them that Isabella had died that morning. Lola was sitting by my side, and one of the ladies leaned down, held her face, looked into her eyes, and said, "I'm so sorry you lost your sister. That must be very hard for you." At which point, Lola let out the longest, most mournful howl that I had ever heard. It was a heartbreaking sound that she had never made before and never made since. Second, Lola stopped destroying things. I always thought she was the naughty dog, but she almost never did anything naughty after Isabella died. And third, she stopped barking whenever the letter carrier walked by or whenever anyone came to the house. Isabella must have been the bell hound, because Lola stopped all the annoying barking and jumping.

The past 3 years as an only hound, Lola seemed to blossom and become much more secure with herself and her place in the world. It was lovely to watch her become so content and lose the last of her insecurities. I almost--not quite, but almost--missed the naughty version of herself. In fact, last Friday, two dogs that had gotten out of their yard found their way to our house, and my partner and I went outside to check their tags, call their owner, and put them in our yard. When we came back inside, I actually commented that Lola had really lost her touch, because in the past half-eaten sandwiches left unattended on the table never would have still been there when we returned.

I'm going to miss that sweet little brown dog. RIP Lola.

Sherrilyn
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