Saying Goodbye to Lola
Occasionally, I have the great privilege of placing a dog with someone who seems to have been custom crafted for just that single, unique, particular dog. Among dog people, we sometimes refer to that once in a lifetime dog as our ‘heart dog‘. I don’t really know of a better way to describe it – this is the dog who occupies a special place inside of our hearts. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that we don’t love all of our dogs, and it’s not even about loving that one dog more than we love the other ones (no matter how many other ones there might be). It’s something different – something ineffable. After a while, we you’ve seen or known those two beings together, they become so enmeshed that their names almost start to run together (CharlotteHammer, comes to mind, and for me I hope it’s CarolTessa).
In this case, it was MaggieLola, or since we had more than one Lola at the time, it was usually Maggie’sLola. That wasn’t the most accurate way of putting it, perhaps – I think maybe calling her Lola’s Maggie might have made more sense to most of the people who knew them. Technically speaking, Maggie and I ‘co owned’ Lola together (formal name, Bullmarket Chiquita Lolita), but there was never any question of who Lola belonged to (and certainly not in Lola’s mind there wasn’t). On the occasions when Lola came for a visit, she behaved something like Royalty in Exile – she knew she was better than this, and she knew that soon would come the day when she was returned to her rightful Kingdom, where her loyal subject (Maggie), was waiting to pay her homage (which she was).