What I Haven't Told You...

I wanted to take a moment to address something that I’ve been hearing a lot during the last month or so.  While I have greatly appreciated all the kind comments and praises that I’ve received for going to such great lengths to save Lexie’s vision, and eventually her life, I feel that if everyone knew exactly what Lexie, Jocie, Sam and I have been through together, they wouldn’t think that I was just being a good pet owner, they’d understand that there simply was no other option when it came to saving my Lou.  Therefore, for the sake of painting a more complete picture, I have decided to share an important part of our past.  (I haven’t shared this story before now because, well, it’s kind of a downer, and I also didn’t want people to think that I was just pulling out all the stops to gain sympathy, especially when I had to ask for donations a few weeks ago). 

My girls and I experienced a horrible tragedy in August of 2009, when my husband of 7 years, Chris (whom I had been with for 14 years), chose to take his own life.   He made this decision after a long struggle with alcoholism and failing physical and mental health (pancreatitis and possibly early schizophrenia, although he was never officially diagnosed).  Chris and I had always planned to have children someday, but until we felt the time was right, Jocie, Sam, and Lexie were our children. (It was actually Chris who insisted that we adopt Lexie, despite my reservations about owning three dogs at the time, because he wanted to have a least one dog he was confident would protect me whenever he was away.)  

It’s impossible for me to give a Cliff’s Notes version about everything that happened leading up to Chris’ suicide because it was (to put it very mildly) a giant, complicated, five-year-long mess.   The bottom line is that his gradual, almost unnoticeable at first, downward spiral of mental illness took a sudden plunge in the last few months before his death.  At one point, after we had eventually separated, he had uncharacteristically threatened to shoot me, shoot the dogs, and then shoot himself.  For this reason, when he showed up at my house on that warm, summer night almost three years ago, I initially struggled when he tried to push his way through the front door because my first instinct was to protect the girls.  However, when the towel he was carrying fell to the ground and revealed that he was holding a gun, I knew I just had to get away from him as quickly as possible.  To this day, I still wonder if he had actually come to the house that night with the intention of shooting me and the girls, as well as himself.  I guess I’ll never know, but I will be forever thankful that he let me go and allowed all three of our girls run out of the house before he took his own life in the living room.

Needless to say, it was an extremely traumatic experience for all of us.  Jocie became reclusive, Sam lost almost all the fur off her back, and Lexie wouldn’t let me out of her sight for the month or so that we stayed at my Dad’s afterwards.  Finally, after I was unable to find a new place to live that would allow me to keep all three dogs, I made the very difficult decision to move back into my house.  I wasn’t sure if I would be able to survive in that house, which was so full of wonderful, horrible, and now tragic memories, but the night we moved back in I knew I had made the right decision for my girls, as I hadn’t seen them so relaxed or happy in a very long time.   

Jocie, Sam, and Lexie all comforted me with their unconditional love during that very difficult grieving period, but it was Lexie who actually motivated me to keep moving forward.   It was hard for me to stay sad or depressed for too long when inevitably Lou would bring me one of her stuffed animals and try to entice me off the couch for a game of chase.  It was also hard to feel lonely when Lexie would always insist on laying her head in my lap every time I watched TV, talked on the phone, worked on my laptop, etc.  She even helped me run the household, so to speak, by making sure that I and her sisters stuck to a strict feeding and bathroom schedule (her internal clock is pretty impressive).   In fact, watching all three of my girls fall so easily back into their daily routines and carry on with their lives, thanks to Miss Lexie always cracking the proverbial whip, greatly inspired me to pick up the pieces of my own life and move on.

The bottom line is that Lexie is the one who deserves all the praise for saving me.  She helped me survive when I needed her most, and so I will never do anything less than the same for her.