Millie Girl
I miss Millie. Millie was a dog, just a dog, just our dog. It’s been over a year and it is shocking to me how much I miss that dog, like it’s getting ridiculous. She was about 15 when we had to put her down, she had cancer and was already arthritic and on a bunch of pain meds. It was time. Neither of us doubted that it was time, but I miss her. I cried like a little kid, snot running down my nose, I can still feel her fur in my face as I cried and cried. I’m crying now.
Every once in a while, we still find ourselves doing something for the first time without Millie, the first trip to a park, or the first walk down a particular trail without her. We scattered her ashes in a few places special to all of us: in the headwaters of the Savage River (the Savage River Lodge was her favorite place, she’d be absolutely trembling with happiness when we got out of the car); the Shenandoah National Park, and a special park she loved (the park eventually banned dogs and we reached out to see if there was a compromise, maybe set it up so that people with dogs could pay dues, but they didn’t even respond, so anyway, good luck finding her ashes guys).
Millie had a complicated relationship with water. She was part chow, part Labrador retriever. Water was appealing to her, but when she got to it, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it; kind of like me and women’s bodies when I was younger. Basically, Millie’s favorite thing to do was to stand in a stream up to her chest and look at minnows, it’s not that far from wade fishing and on some days we both caught the same number of fish. Before my wife was fly fishing, we would take Millie with us and they’d hang out on the bank while I flogged the water. A couple of times I caught a fish and showed it to Millie and she was duly impressed, like I had pulled off a magic trick.
We’re talking about getting another dog and I know that when we do, I’ll love that dog too, but it’s still hard to fathom loving any dog as much as I loved Millie. I’d feel like I was cheating on Millie with the new dog. I’m sure it would be weird doing things with the new dog for the first time that we did with Millie, the first trip to the Savage, the first hike in the Shenandoah Park, the first fish. Anyway, I miss that dog.
First Fish 