In Memoriam: Our Dog Del

By Ed Rogers

Del was a rescue puppy from Costa Rica, where Helene Wirt, a wonderful lady from Austria, operates a rescue kennel – Dogland – in the mountains outside of San Ramon. She found Del on the streets of San Miguel shortly before my wife and I visited Dogland in search of a puppy, in 2014.
    Janie and I had been in Costa Rica for two years, and for Mother’s Day, I wanted something special for her. I’ll never forget her asking me, “How will we know if it is the right dog?” I told her we were not going to pick out a dog, the right dog would find us.
    Helene keeps around 230 dogs at Dogland at any given time, and all of them are craving attention. Inside one of Dogland’s larger pens, I sat at one of five or six concrete tables that dot the yard. The dogs swamped me. They were on the table behind me, pushing to get around in front of me to be petted.
    I felt something on my leg. I looked down at her white head with the big brown spot on the left side. She pushed none of the other dogs away, she just laid her head on my leg and looked up at me with the saddest eyes I had ever seen. My heart melted and I knew she was the one. Her name was Del.
    Helene came to our house the next day to be sure it was a safe place for Del. She told us we could come and pick her up the next day. It was one of the happiest days of our lives. It was as if she had been waiting for us forever. I have had many, many pets in my life, but I have never known one like Del. She was the most loving dog I ever saw.

Christmas 2014

    In all the years we were together, I never heard her bark, except when she was asleep and dreaming. And she never growled at a soul. She loved everybody, especially children – and double-especially little girls. Everyone who met Del fell in love with her.

A couple of years later, Janie had to come back to the States for health reasons, and I was left to close out our life in Costa Rica. The previous January the airlines had changed their rules for transporting pets. Before that, pets could travel as baggage on the same plane as the owner. But now pets had to be shipped by a pet agent, which would cost much more. But to top that off, the pets would only be shipped to hubs of the airline. Memphis was not a Hub for any airline. I tried everything, but in the end, Helene had to take our Del back. That was the first time my heart was broken over loss of Del.
    Once in the States, I contacted Helene and we began to work on a plan to ship Del to Houston, Texas, on United Airlines. The day she was placed on the plane heading to Houston, I took off from Hernando, Mississippi, where Janie and I were staying temporarily with her daughter and her husband, to pick Del up. It was a seven-hour drive in a rental car, and I got there about the same time as the plane. My wait for Del was only about fifteen minutes and I’m not sure which one of us was the happier. It took all night to drive back (ten hours), because I had to detour on account of road construction.
    At about sunrise, I parked in front of my daughter- and son-in-law’s garage. I had bought a large pet pillow and Del was on it next to me. I put my arms around her and said, “You’re home and I’ll never leave you again.”

Not long after that, Janie and I moved into our own house in Hernando. It had a large fenced-in backyard that Del made her Kingdom. To Del, its most important feature seemed to be that we were at the center point of a cove with children on both sides of us.
    At first, Del was happy just sitting in the back of our SUV and watching, but the sight of all those kids playing was too much for her – she had to be a part of the fun. She was curious and had to smell everything and everybody. I guess she could tell where you had been by the scents on your shoes or clothes. I don’t pretend to understand, that was just her thing. Anyway, she learned how to slip out of her collar, and that ended her staying outside alone.
    In the afternoon at about 3:00, we would go out, and while she was sniffing every spot in and around our adjoining yards, I would pull her pillow from the back of the SUV and put it on the driveway near my chair. When Del was satisfied that nothing had been in her territory, she would lie down and wait for the kids to come along the street on their way home from school. I knew that if I weren’t out there, she would run out to meet them.

    I guess the sight of an old man with a beautiful, friendly dog sitting in his driveway was kind of like a painting by Norman Rockwell. We attracted people, who would come and sit with us while their kids played in the cove. Del was in heaven on those days and would stay out as long as anyone was there. She loved to be in the middle of her peeps and would run out to greet them when they got close to the driveway.

As I have said before, she never barked, and neither did she whine. When she wanted something, she would stare at you as if you could read her mind. We would let her out into the backyard to go potty, and when finished she would come to the door and stand there looking in until Janie or I noticed her and opened the door.
    Or I would be sitting in my chair and start feeling strange. I would turn my head and be face-to-face with Del standing beside me just staring. Normally this would happen close to 3:00, and I would know she was ready to go out front.

    Del was mostly my puppy – that is, until she felt bad or there was a thunderstorm. Then she wanted her mommy. She was never a huggy puppy. As long as I was sitting in a chair she would come up to me and burrow her head onto my leg wanting to be loved. But as far as someone lying on the floor and hugging her – she wanted none of that.

Three years ago, the first sign of cancer showed up. I took Del to the vet, and she removed a growth from Del’s belly. It was skin cancer and there was little to be done but to remove the growths as they came up. The vet also removed Del’s milk glands.
    Del had two more operations before the vet said there was too much of it to remove. Throughout all that Del was dealing with, she never changed. She would go out into the backyard and forget how bad her rear leg was and take off after a squirrel. In all the years she chased them, she never did catch one.
    The last night before I took her to the vet, we were out front and everybody came to see her. One of her legs had a growth the size of a baseball, and it had split and was bleeding. With the help of a dear friend, we placed gauze over the split and she stayed outside with us, still walking from one to the other of us.
    We came in that night and she lay in the middle of the living room instead of on her bed, which was against the wall. I lay beside her and she placed her head on my leg; it was like the first time we had met, and I hugged and petted her for hours.
    Sometime after Janie went to bed, Del got up and wanted outside. I let her out and when she came in she went upstairs to what had been my office but over time had come to be her room. Her blanket and all her toys were up there – it was as if she were saying goodbye. The next morning we took her to the vet.

Del is buried in the backyard
– her forever Kingdom –
and she is forever in our hearts.

Something I have noticed since this final loss of Del: While an old man with a beautiful dog attracts people, a lonely old man sitting in his driveway alone does not. Del took the laughter with her.

Copyright © 2021 by Ed Rogers