The best of the pets

Celebrating the enduring loves of our lives

BY RACHEL STONE

My ol’ Mama Dog walked me all over Oak Cliff for nine years, and now she’s gone.

If neighbors don’t know me as Rachel from the Advocate, they’ve usually seen me. I was that lady always walking her dog around L.O. Daniel, where Mama Dog and I went around the block twice a day minimum in any weather and lived in the same apartment, slept back-to-back together, for nine solid years.

This is the ninth Advocate pets issue I’ve written and the first one since I lost my best friend this past May. In a way, having to put down Mama [my pet, not my mother — Mary is fine!] was harder than anything in my life so far. Which says something about how easy I have it, I suppose. Although I’ve suffered deeper loss, this one presented the hardest mountain to climb, emotionally speaking, because it is uniquely personal.

I’m the lone surviving insider to the bond between my protective cuddle bug of a cow dog and me.

You don’t realize how perfect love can be until it’s gone. You don’t know that your dog is part of your identity, that your life will never be the same without her.

This demanding dog that caught Frisbees and hated DART buses was holding my life together. I’m putting one foot in front of the other now, but I never dreamed losing a pet could be this hard. Naively, I thought I was a strong person all on my own, without the love of my dog.

Around the time

Mama Dog died, several of my friends also lost their longtime pets, a coincidence that felt like a dreadful trend.

Everyone who owns a pet loses a pet eventually. But when it happens to you, it happens to you.

The sorrow is real. It’s permanent heartbreak. That is the price of receiving the pure heart of a good, good girl.

And it’s worth it. 10/10 would adopt again, although not for a while. Let the poor heart mend a little.

In honor of all the pets we’ve loved before, these are the best stories we could find of beloved Oak Cliff pets surviving the odds, God bless ’em all.

Buddy The Smiling Pit Bull

When Buddy the Smiling Pitbull celebrated his 10th birthday at Ten Bells Tavern last year, 12 dogs and 25 people showed up.

“This year’s party is going to be epic,” says his person, Michelle Taylor.

That’s because Buddy, who is one of the most popular patio dogs in Oak Cliff and has helped Taylor foster more than 100 dogs in the past decade, is in remission from leukemia.

Taylor decided in December 2017 that she wanted to take a break from fostering and give Buddy some alone time. And then in February, she discovered what felt like marbles beneath the skin under his collar.

After tests confirmed leukemia, the vet gave him two months to live. Friends helped Taylor raise $10,000 for chemotherapy.

He took nine rounds of chemo. The drugs left him weak, and he had a couple of accidents, but otherwise, he handled it great, Taylor says. Now he’s in remission, and Taylor is keeping up hope that he has many more years left.

“Buddy has affected so many people. He loves to hang out at Nova and Ten Bells,” she says. “He’s just a charmer. He goes and works the crowd. He loves kids, loves to give kisses. He’s a big ol’ ham.”

EYE-POPPING PUG

Eva Creel found her puppy in the kitchen, pawing at the eye hanging out of her socket.

Then 3 months old, Onyx had been playing with a Labrador retriever they were babysitting. Who knows what happened?

She lost the eye.

“We took her to the vet, and she doesn’t know the difference,” Creel says.

Now 11 years old, Onyx is beautiful as ever.

And she has a 2-year-old brother, a Labrador retriever named Opie.

“That’s her best friend,” Creel says. “She keeps up with every bit of energy he has. She puts him in his place when she needs to.”

Onyx is now losing sight in her remaining eye, but she’s active as ever, enjoying hikes and running in the grass.

“She does walk a little sideways now and then.”