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When we met her, she was standing in a cake pan filled with water, stretching to take a drink. She was just 13 weeks old, with hair the color of Lucille Ball's and Dumbo-sized ears we hoped she'd grow into one day. She was the leftover in a litter of golden retrievers-not chosen, according to the amateur breeder, because the bigger, square-headed males went first, mostly to hunters. And she was somewhat aloof-more like a cat than a dog--which is not a good act when you're trying to get picked for a team.
We named her Hannah. But we called her Banana. And Upton Girl (after our street). And Red. As a pup, she chewed one shoe, one glove, one sock from each of my favorite pairs. Quietly feasted on a wool rug on Thanksgiving Day. Pawed through open suitcases in our guest room, then trotted proudly around the house with my mother's bra in her mouth. And gave us the only spotted lawn in the neighborhood.
She loved early-morning walks, and swimming out to fetch sticks we tossed into Lake Har-riet. If we were too slow getting out of bed, she'd nudge our Big Ben alarm clock with her paw, then pace around the bed, huffing. She loved rolling in fresh snow, snapping up popcorn we lobbed in midair, sitting beside men with deep voices. And sleeping on her side in the sun. That was bliss.
She adored our son. When we brought him home from the hospital, just a few days old, she was 4. He, an intruder. But she delicately sniffed his head, licked his tiny feet, and wagged her feathery tail in her signature circular twirl. And every time he spit something out, dropped a Cheerio, or walked carelessly around with a cracker, she appeared.
As she matured, quirks and eccentricities emerged. She'd freeze suddenly on slippery floors--and she refused to walk past the oven, because it had once set off the smoke alarm. She barked at her food before she ate, and she turned around and around and around, then repeated the pattern in reverse, before lying down. She hid whenever we lit a fire in the fireplace. And she always turned her back for petting, never willing to look
love in the eye.
Her face began to gray at age 8. Around 10, warts appeared, fat deposits accumulated on her side and belly, and her eyes got a little cloudy. But as an old lady, she had a dignity about her, an air of grace. She also had the tolerance so typical of her breed, allowing us to dress her in round eyeglasses and a cape on Halloween and call her Hannah Potter.
Every August until she was 13, she performed her trademark trick: eating sweet corn right off the cob, moving her head neatly and horizontally like the carriage of a typewriter, never missing a kernel. Then her teeth began to hurt, we think. Rawhides lost their appeal, even canned dog food.
In fall 2003, she began losing weight. Tests at our vet's office showed an alarmingly high white blood cell count. We were referred to an emergency veteri-nary hospital, where we spent an entire Saturday in the waiting room. Hannah had her belly shaved. X-rays. Ultrasound. Tumor. Aspiration of fluid. Lab work. And finally the C-word: cancer, an untreatable type. They told us she'd been a "good kid" throughout the long work-up, cooperative and stoic, and that she had about two months left. We paid the $1,200 bill and took her home.
That's when my husband became a chef.
Coming home from work a few days later, I found him standing over the outdoor grill, tending pork chops. "Mmmm, those look good," I said. "They're for the dog," he replied.
In the coming months, so were the scrambled eggs, the toast, the grilled chicken breasts, hamburgers, and beef kabobs.
Hannah hung on stubbornly through one more round of trick-or-treaters, one more family Christmas, one more sloppy Minnesota winter. We carried her up and down the stairs of our house so she could sleep in our bedroom, lounge under the desk--just be wherever we were. When she collapsed on a walk and couldn't get back up, my husband carried her home.
She died later that day, March 21, 2004, at the age of 14. Our grief was instant, fierce, incomprehensible.
As our family walked through the neighborhood that night for the first time without her, my 10-year-old son looked at the sky. "I just know Hannah's up there, watching over us," he said. "And she's wearing a white dress.. .with wings." And, I like to think, there were dozens of cobs of sweet corn nearby, cooling out of view
By Sandra Hoyt
Remembering Corn Dog!
"Money will buy a pretty good dog but it won't buy the wag of his tail."
-Henry Wheeler Shaw
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Contrary to popular belief, dogs do not sweat by salivating, they sweat through the pads of their feet.
