When our boxer Xena died last year I was devastated. Xena and I had a very close bond, and I didn't know how to get over the loss. She was a special dog to me, and will always occupy a special place in my heart.
When my now wife and I got Xena over ten years ago we didn't live in the same city nor was our relationship longstanding. We had a plan to eventually live and be together and getting Xena was the first decision I made towards a plan of us living together soon. Getting Xena was also the first time I can remember taking on major adult (aka take care of something) responsibilities seriously, and from the first time she sent pictures to my Gmail I wanted to make the dog as much a part of my life as possible.
At first I didn't want a boxer, as I always grew up with dogs with more pointed snouts. Lindsey was convinced on how great they were as a breed based on experiences with boxers she previously knew, and so I did research and decided that despite some downsides (like a short lifespan and health issues) I would be willing to give boxers a chance. After meeting puppy Xena I was hooked on boxers, and pretty much decided from then forward I would always want one as part of my life if possible.
One thing I will forever be a little sad about is that I didn't get to see very much of puppy Xena. She lived with Lindsey the first few months of her life in Denton, and in retrospect I only got to see her three times before she came to live with me as a more grown dog. One of those times was when I first saw her and it snowed in Denton. I can remember little prissy puppy Xena disliking the snow and trying to hop through it instead of walk. I visited one other time for a night without any snow, and when the weather got warmer me, Lindsey, and Roscoe all went on a trip to Port Aransas and then Odessa where I got to spend the most time with little Xena and which was a formative influence on my life.
That trip was one of the first I ever took without family or to see family, and we stayed at a seaside resort that we would see again much later in life. I can remember the trip well, I can remember buying all this stuff to barbecue when it would have been cheaper to eat out, I can remember Lindsey smiling at me while we walked, or puppy Xena playing on the beach in her pink leash. During this trip we listened to the last Harry Potter book together, and we made plans for our lives together. I can remember Xena fitting in the small passenger floorboard of Lindsey's 2008 Jetta, and her getting carsick in that arrangement. I can remember deciding that I wanted this mix to be my family going forward.
When Lindsey moved to Odessa to live together in an apartment we went through some rocky times at first, and in some cases our relationship got so strained that I remember thinking that Xena was one of the few threads holding it together. But we got through it and by the time we moved into a duplex together less than a year later me, her, Roscoe and Xena were a family like I wanted. I proposed the next year and we got married the year after. Xena officially was the start of my current life, my adult life as I know it. I loved her so much that initially I pushed to hold off getting her spayed just in case I wanted a puppy from her, as I was desperate for anything at first to give me a chance to keep this dog longer than the nine-ish years I learned boxers lived on average when we got her.
Xena was a pretty brown boxer and she knew it, she was very demanding of treats and time and attention. Yet she wasn't very personable or nice or even positive towards physical contact. She saw her primary job to be a guard dog, and in that permanent role her favorite form of contact was touching part of her leg to yours as the straddled it while facing away and assessing any possible threats. She was quick to bark at noises and wasn't very friendly to stranger animals or people. But she loved me and Lindsey more than her own life, and made it clear that even though the world outside of our family was one she didn't trust we were people she always trusted. She would obey every command I gave her, even if reluctant, and was ready any moment to rough play with me or try to sneak a lick into me or Lindsey's mouth. Her barks and smells dominated our household for a decade almost. She was our dog with 100% of her soul.
When she first moved to live with me I forced her to lay in the bed with me, as I love having a dog cuddle me and she was the biggest dog for a while. She hated the close contact at first, but within a while she grew to love getting to lay in the people bed and began to see it as a job or task that she was required to complete properly. Cuddling with me in the bed was something that we bonded over her entire life thereafter, and towards her later years I nicknamed her "the professional" for how good of job she did. I remember thinking a few months before she died that some days, many days, my favorite part of the entire day way that early part when me and her laid in the bed. I wondered if that was why I was so unproductive in the morning, and feared what life would be like without that special thing I loved so much in it. Lindsey also talked for years about fearing what would happen to me if Xena died, knowing the close bond I had with the dog.
Xena was always a two way street, with me demanding her lay in the bed and listen while she demanded treats and playtime. One of the big motivations to get Luna back towards the end of our lives in Odessa was because Xena would sometimes whine over and over that she was bored and wanted to play, and so we plugged that hole with an even bigger boxer. Despite Luna's eventual larger size Xena was always top dog in the house, and would basically tell Luna when she could eat (which created a binge-eating weight problem) and would demanding all the best pieces and treats for herself. Xena loved having a buddy to play with, but got very offended that we asked of Luna the same tricks we once asked of Xena as if she wasn't good enough anymore. To her credit Xena never wanted a shortcut though, and if I even tried to take her side in a play session vs Luna she would quickly turn on me as if to say "I don't need your help human!!"
Xena also got to be involved with parts of our lives that dogs otherwise wouldn't be. Early on she would go to "daycare" which was just my dad's house. Before mom moved back in Xena was my Dad's main object of attention, and I remember how much they bonded and how dad kept trying to tell me how smart she was. Xena was also forced to be a fan of my favorite team- the Saints. We got her a Saints jersey that she loved, and I will always cherish the fact that they won a Super Bowl while she was alive. My getting excited because "her team" did well was always something she responded to.
She was quick to whine and demand nice things, and quick to bark if she thought someone threatened her house or people. One time when my mom watched Xena for us instead of boarding her she commented that Xena whined for us so long that she swore the dog was breastfed. She actually could communicate a lot in those whines, and I would sometimes have small conversations with her about how I wouldn't take her on a walk or how I don't care that its unfair that Luna got in the bed and she couldn't jump up there when she got older.
One morning in particular in late 2016 I remember she came into the bathroom while I was showering and demanded at the shower door to be let up on the bed because Luna jumped up there. Of course I couldn't help her in the shower, and after some time she stopped whining and I figured she gave up. Instead I went out the bathroom only to see her in the bed somehow - a jump she couldn't easily make anymore- giving me a angry look of "thanks for nothing human!"
Throughout her life Xena didn't have many health problems outside of a few growths and one issue with her eye that boxers are known for. I would often joke that compared to the other dogs she was actually earning her keep, or had a positive ROI, as her serious defense of the house made it so I rarely thought of getting an alarm system. Her real payment was when we gave her what she really wanted- the ability to leave the house and go for a walk, go to the lake, or go to the dog park. She had a personal strict code of conduct she invented for time on a leash, and she wouldn't even pee while it was on her. Also she invented a game of biting at long grass as we walked that Luna loved to also play, and often it made the walks when we tried to take all three dogs quite frustrating as they would explode all over the nearby grass on each other within the first few blocks playing Xena's made up game. While in Odessa in the months after we got Luna we would often load them up to drive to a park on the west side of town that was shaded for a long trial, and they would spend the whole walk trading who was the worst dog as they ran towards shade.
When we moved to Leander, it was a huge upgrade for us in regards to space and location. The neighborhood was full of trees and friendly people, and it barely had any car traffic making it perfect for dog walks. The neighborhood was big enough to make for a satisfying walk without doing circles, and had enough cross streets that I never got bored of the route we took. Early on all three dogs could walk the entire stretch of the longest part of the neighborhood, and when we got going together it was quite a circus to the point where Lindsey would get very upset about the dogs' behavior. Eventually when we got bored with the main neighborhood we were in they built a new sidewalk to connect our part of the neighborhood with another part built around the same era (1990s). When Roscoe got too old to do long walks the other three of us would walk up hundreds of times through the different parts of the neighborhood and soon the streets and that sidewalk became a single blended memory of some of the best times in my life.
When I got into running in 2016 sometimes I would take just Xena on a run either through the streets or down that new long sidewalk along the main road. I could trust her to behave off the leash while we ran, and she loved being apart of an activity with me. I can remember one time in particular as we ran up the inclined street one over, her prancing and smiling as I pushed myself on the last leg of a run. When I fell out of running I still tried to take her for separate walks every now and then. I would start off the walk with my head grinding on whatever I was into that day, but then every time before it was halfway through I would remind myself that Xena wouldn't be around forever and that I needed to enjoy her presence and those walks for what they were- bonding time with my favorite dog. Within a year I had built up a pile of memories of just me and Xena walking those same streets, and I began to plan a ten year birthday party for the dog to be held at the end of 2017 to celebrate a decade of Xena.
I eventually somewhat took Xena for granted during that decade. With Luna it was all different. Luna unfortunately had a bad poisoning incident when she was a puppy that almost killed her and affected her entire life. When Luna barely survived the incident I made sure to appreciate her every day I could, and not expect a long lifespan out of the dog. Luna was also more in-your-face and worked hard to be around you so it felt like it was easy to get quality time with the dog. Meanwhile Xena was very independent and would sometimes lay in a completely different room than the rest of us. Other than our morning time and the amazing and excited greeting I would get from her when I came home, I would sometimes have to go out of my way to have interactions with Xena during a day. But she seemed in good health and we both expected her to beat the boxer odds and live into the teens. I had plenty of time to do special things for her when she was a senior dog, I thought. As with Roscoe's long decline where I was spoiling him with a nice retirement plan for years, and I expected to do the same with Xena. Her 10th birthday party was meant to be a start of that final stage rather than some sort of goodbye for a breed of dog that I knew before I got her only lived around 9 years.
The first signs of Xena's aging was her face. It whitened greatly over time, to the point where the last two years of her life it was basically all white. Yet health-wise she never seemed to falter until around 2017 when she was slow to get up and less active when playing with Luna. I held off giving her dog meds for this issue until I couldn't ignore it anymore, as the golden retriever from my childhood Ruby was eventually taken down from side effects of long term usage of the medicine and I didn't want the same for Xena. But mid 2017 I figured that she had at best had a few years left (I expected at least one or two), so I finally relented to give her the medicine after our vet did some rounds of testing to make sure it would be fine for her. X-rays showed how bad her arthritis was, and I didn't want her to be in pain anymore just for my peace of mind.
Once she was taking the medicine, which I had to sneak in Kabocha squash to get her to take it, we got to see prime time Xena once again. She was quick to jump on her feet and was more ready to play with Luna. We took her to the dog park soon after and she hopped across the grass when there in a way I will never forget, like she did in the years before we even had Luna. I thought maybe this would give Xena a new lease on life, maybe my dream of her living into the teens wasn't crazy. Little did I know that she wouldn't live another month past that trip to the park.
The day Xena died for some reason I cuddled her for extra long that morning. I didn't have a bad feeling or anything like that, I just really wanted some bed time with her and so I did just that. I can remember reading my phone some and her not liking that, and then I can remember me just cuddling her the best I could for a 15-20 minute period for what would become the last time I would do that in my life. I remember when I asked her to get up that day so I could leave she was slow to do so, as if the medicine wasn't working anymore. But I didn't have any other cause for concern, so I left for work and told all the dogs bye for the day. I would deal with it later.
When I got home I got the big greeting Xena always gave me, and nothing seemed wrong. I was in another room when Lindsey called for me to come see quickly less than an hour later. Xena was acting weird and fell over. We rushed her to the emergency vet in Round Rock, and along the way we were both in such shock it never occurred to me that would be the last ride I would take with her. I sat in the backseat with her at at the very last mile for some reason decided to thank her for everything, as if I knew what was coming. When we get to the vet we hear the bad news that her heart has a massive issue and she was dying. We signed up for her to have an emergency procedure to maybe save her for a massive cost, and before they started we demanded to see her one last time. What we saw was a shell of Xena that couldn't recognize her people in the oxygen tank, she was gone. Within minutes they said her heart stopped, and within 20 minutes we saw he dead body lying on the table. I hugged her one last time and said goodbye, and we left in such shock that I didn't even get her harness to remember her by. That night we laid in bed together and cried and shivered in shock, our world was turned upside down.
In the week after I couldn't function. I didn't shower because the first day after she died I tried to shower and the self reflection showering usually imposes on me lead me to the hardest crying I would do after her death or ever. In the day and days that followed I did everything I could to soak in and pack down all the recent memories of her that I had, to try to remember what it was like to hug her or hear her bark. I didn't want to let go, and I didn't know how to move on. The grieving process would go in stages and last months, but eventually I found a way to turn a corner and move on.
The first stage was just the sadness of her being gone, and the shock of how suddenly it happened. My whole morning routine involved her so waking up every day was painful. Also the large greeting I used to get from her when I got home haunted me by its absence every time I came home from work. Once I was done trying to hold onto memories I learned they weren't done with me. In stage two of my grieving I wondered what I could have done to prevent it, wondering if putting her on dog medicine the month before is what lead to her death. I tried not to dwell too long on it, but we did end up switching vets afterwards just in case, and got the new vet to test the two existing dogs almost any way he could.
Stage three of grieving had little to do with Xena, and more to do with me. After I got over the shock of her death I realized that despite my expectations she lived exactly as long as the average indicated she would. I realized that meant an boxer lived an entire average life within the years I was a real post-college adult, and that even by the most liberal definition my "youth" was over. The year she died I turned 35 (aka halfway in the 30s to 40), I got turned down for a job promotion, and I was facing a little trouble on the domestic front. Xena's death not only signaled the end of me "growing up," but showed me that grown up me wasn't in the best place in life when some perspective was applied. This stage and revelation lead me into the worst depression of my life that would last months and overlapped all the grieving I would go through.
Stage four came about a month after her death, when I decided to collect every picture I could find of her from the many different sources we had and combine them into a memorial video that I could watch in the following years as a compact reminder of Xena. What I found was we didn't really have many great pictures of her, as neither my wife nor I are great photographers (she is working on it now) and Xena had a tendency to always keep moving which made her out of focus in the pictures we did have.
It was obvious going back through the pictures that every time we got a new smartphone or before that point-and-shoot camera there would be a burst of dog pictures before another big gap before the next device. Thanks to early point-and-shoots I had some good pictures of puppy Xena, but it was in the later years when Luna stole more of the show when we would go long periods of time without taking pictures. At the end of the day I found enough to make a video and even for Lindsey to get and frame an actual in-focus picture of her Note 4 smartphone took by chance. But the realization that Xena's early years was documented better than the later ones inspired me to soon get a new phone after her death, and do better about taking pictures of the dogs we had left with its superior camera.
During all of this grieving which lasted months I tried to be a person but it was hard. I felt like after a while I had to keep it in, as being so sad about a dead dog months after her death simply isn't normal for most people. For over a month when someone would give me any sympathy I would lap it up like Luna does water on a hot day, and I found some silver linings (namely all the weight Luna lost) that I tried to cling to to try and feel better about her loss. But nothing really worked, and I just kept getting lost in the depression.
As part of a coping mechanism the day after Xena died I took Luna for a walk around the neighborhood, and I did that every day for over a month hoping that I could find some happy memories left to be made on those walks even without Xena. But after years of walking around the neighborhood with Xena I found that the daily walks with Luna only made me feel worse as every path just would remind me of when we all walked down it all together. There wasn't a place I could go, a route combination I could do, that wouldn't remind me of Xena, and often I would return home after our walks more sad then when I left. I didn't know how to move on, and as weeks turned to months I felt like I was never going to find a way to get past my pain.
Then one day the week after Thanksgiving I went for a walk with Luna into the part of the neighborhood that they connected years ago that at that time I rarely ventured to. I hoped that going to a place I barely walked with Xena wouldn't overwhelm me with memories, but as we headed there I was still haunted by memories of going down every street or sidewalk with her. Then once I got to the corner of the neighborhood I looked down a street that I technically never took Xena walking on because it seemed like a dead end. A dead end wasn't appealing, but I was drawn down this street for some reason, as I thought even just a street of a new memory would be a relief. And sure enough when we got to the end of the street Luna and I turned a corner that changed my life forever.
What we found at the end of the street wasn't a dead end, at least not anymore. Maybe it was a dead end when we first moved to the neighborhood, when I first decided to not walk down that path with all the dogs in tow. But in the years we lived on Laurel Lane the world around our neighborhood's bubble changed and where a dead end once was was now a street leading to a new neighborhood full of new houses that I had never seen before.
Walking down this new street next to new houses gave me the genuine new experience walking Luna that I was after, and the mental clouds that lifted for the first time in months as we walked down that path showed me that there was hope for me in a post-Xena world. I walked Luna that day as far as she could in that new neighborhood, and then we went back never to return. My life had changed, and I knew what I needed to do.
Not long after I 100% got behind us moving to a new house, knowing that whatever neighborhood we went to would be full of new experiences. More importantly I realized that move could help me move on my with life, and focus on what I still had namely Lindsey, Luna and Roscoe. Within a month of that walk with Luna I began the process to improve my life, to put my everything into the move and to try and reinvent myself in the process.
I threw away a ton of my stuff that I didn't need anymore but I wasn't ready to let go of until then. I put together a plan to organize everything I kept for the first time in my life, and worked as hard as I could the months before and after we moved to execute that plan. I also worked on new life building plans- to get the house setup like I wanted, to improve my health and diet, and to get in the habit of taking Luna for more constant walks than before Xena died without grief driving me.
It is now six months after we moved to the house and I can say that I have improved myself more in the last six months than any other similar time period in my life. I am a more complete and more independent person than I was before Xena died, and in a way her last gift to me was the motivation to finish the process of maturing I started ten years ago when we first got her and turn into the fully functional adult I knew I needed to be.
The move and the follow up plans consumed so much of my energy that it lifted me out of depression if only because I was too motivated to follow through with my plans to avoid backsliding into 2017's funk. I told myself that I needed to finish all my plans within the first six months of moving to the house because after moving out I saw how quickly things can stagnate once you get settled in, plus I figured for some reason that in six months I would have new goals in life and these plans would be in the way. Sure enough here at the six month mark Lindsey is now pregnant and we are looking at a totally new life coming up soon and I am hatching new plans to prepare for that era. I can look back and say Xena's death was the start of that.
With all that said, I don't feel like I shortcut the grieving process after we turned that corner. Before we closed on the new house we went on one last walk in the old neighborhood, me Luna and Lindsey, and instead of fighting ghosts we talked about what we enjoyed about the old neighborhood and why we were excited about going to the new one. It was a perfect bit of closure for that era in my life.
Also the day before we closed on Laurel Lane I went over to the house one last time and I smelt what was probably the last remnant's of Xena's natural smell that somehow got locked in the upstairs carpet there. I stood in the doorway one last time and tried to remember her greeting me. Instead of it being a ghost chasing me I was chasing the ghost one last time, saying goodbye before my access to that entryway was restricted for evermore. I thanked the house for what it gave to us, and I thanked Xena for guarding it. And then I left ready to move on with my life in a positive direction.
When Lindsey got Xena all those years ago she gave me the email address for the woman that we bought Xena from. I archived this address on my server so I couldn't lose it, with the possible intention to maybe get another dog from her one day. In the last year of Xena's life I found that email, and I considered sending the woman pictures while thanking her for the wonderful dog she gave us. I knew it maybe wouldn't be seen by anyone, but I liked the idea of a decade later follow up.
After Xena died, and after me and Luna turned the corner, I felt like this email was no longer just a cute idea, but a needed token of appreciation for a woman who gave us my all time favorite dog. When she actually responded back "thank you for the pictures and I sorry for your loss" I felt like Xena's life had come full circle. I cried that night the last tears I would shed for my favorite dog, and I move on in my life with a song in my heart that her death had silenced all those months.
I will never forget Xena, or completely move on from her death. In many ways I see her as my first kid, and silver lining from her death is she never had to share a spotlight with our son like Luna will. With that said I always wanted to see Xena interact with a baby again, or be motivated to defend a new member of the family. She would have done a good job I bet, like she always did.
Now its up to me to keep living, to be the good dog owner she knew I could be.
Thank you for everything Xena, my all time favorite boxmoo.
When my now wife and I got Xena over ten years ago we didn't live in the same city nor was our relationship longstanding. We had a plan to eventually live and be together and getting Xena was the first decision I made towards a plan of us living together soon. Getting Xena was also the first time I can remember taking on major adult (aka take care of something) responsibilities seriously, and from the first time she sent pictures to my Gmail I wanted to make the dog as much a part of my life as possible.
At first I didn't want a boxer, as I always grew up with dogs with more pointed snouts. Lindsey was convinced on how great they were as a breed based on experiences with boxers she previously knew, and so I did research and decided that despite some downsides (like a short lifespan and health issues) I would be willing to give boxers a chance. After meeting puppy Xena I was hooked on boxers, and pretty much decided from then forward I would always want one as part of my life if possible.
One thing I will forever be a little sad about is that I didn't get to see very much of puppy Xena. She lived with Lindsey the first few months of her life in Denton, and in retrospect I only got to see her three times before she came to live with me as a more grown dog. One of those times was when I first saw her and it snowed in Denton. I can remember little prissy puppy Xena disliking the snow and trying to hop through it instead of walk. I visited one other time for a night without any snow, and when the weather got warmer me, Lindsey, and Roscoe all went on a trip to Port Aransas and then Odessa where I got to spend the most time with little Xena and which was a formative influence on my life.
That trip was one of the first I ever took without family or to see family, and we stayed at a seaside resort that we would see again much later in life. I can remember the trip well, I can remember buying all this stuff to barbecue when it would have been cheaper to eat out, I can remember Lindsey smiling at me while we walked, or puppy Xena playing on the beach in her pink leash. During this trip we listened to the last Harry Potter book together, and we made plans for our lives together. I can remember Xena fitting in the small passenger floorboard of Lindsey's 2008 Jetta, and her getting carsick in that arrangement. I can remember deciding that I wanted this mix to be my family going forward.
When Lindsey moved to Odessa to live together in an apartment we went through some rocky times at first, and in some cases our relationship got so strained that I remember thinking that Xena was one of the few threads holding it together. But we got through it and by the time we moved into a duplex together less than a year later me, her, Roscoe and Xena were a family like I wanted. I proposed the next year and we got married the year after. Xena officially was the start of my current life, my adult life as I know it. I loved her so much that initially I pushed to hold off getting her spayed just in case I wanted a puppy from her, as I was desperate for anything at first to give me a chance to keep this dog longer than the nine-ish years I learned boxers lived on average when we got her.
Xena was a pretty brown boxer and she knew it, she was very demanding of treats and time and attention. Yet she wasn't very personable or nice or even positive towards physical contact. She saw her primary job to be a guard dog, and in that permanent role her favorite form of contact was touching part of her leg to yours as the straddled it while facing away and assessing any possible threats. She was quick to bark at noises and wasn't very friendly to stranger animals or people. But she loved me and Lindsey more than her own life, and made it clear that even though the world outside of our family was one she didn't trust we were people she always trusted. She would obey every command I gave her, even if reluctant, and was ready any moment to rough play with me or try to sneak a lick into me or Lindsey's mouth. Her barks and smells dominated our household for a decade almost. She was our dog with 100% of her soul.
When she first moved to live with me I forced her to lay in the bed with me, as I love having a dog cuddle me and she was the biggest dog for a while. She hated the close contact at first, but within a while she grew to love getting to lay in the people bed and began to see it as a job or task that she was required to complete properly. Cuddling with me in the bed was something that we bonded over her entire life thereafter, and towards her later years I nicknamed her "the professional" for how good of job she did. I remember thinking a few months before she died that some days, many days, my favorite part of the entire day way that early part when me and her laid in the bed. I wondered if that was why I was so unproductive in the morning, and feared what life would be like without that special thing I loved so much in it. Lindsey also talked for years about fearing what would happen to me if Xena died, knowing the close bond I had with the dog.
Xena was always a two way street, with me demanding her lay in the bed and listen while she demanded treats and playtime. One of the big motivations to get Luna back towards the end of our lives in Odessa was because Xena would sometimes whine over and over that she was bored and wanted to play, and so we plugged that hole with an even bigger boxer. Despite Luna's eventual larger size Xena was always top dog in the house, and would basically tell Luna when she could eat (which created a binge-eating weight problem) and would demanding all the best pieces and treats for herself. Xena loved having a buddy to play with, but got very offended that we asked of Luna the same tricks we once asked of Xena as if she wasn't good enough anymore. To her credit Xena never wanted a shortcut though, and if I even tried to take her side in a play session vs Luna she would quickly turn on me as if to say "I don't need your help human!!"
Xena also got to be involved with parts of our lives that dogs otherwise wouldn't be. Early on she would go to "daycare" which was just my dad's house. Before mom moved back in Xena was my Dad's main object of attention, and I remember how much they bonded and how dad kept trying to tell me how smart she was. Xena was also forced to be a fan of my favorite team- the Saints. We got her a Saints jersey that she loved, and I will always cherish the fact that they won a Super Bowl while she was alive. My getting excited because "her team" did well was always something she responded to.
She was quick to whine and demand nice things, and quick to bark if she thought someone threatened her house or people. One time when my mom watched Xena for us instead of boarding her she commented that Xena whined for us so long that she swore the dog was breastfed. She actually could communicate a lot in those whines, and I would sometimes have small conversations with her about how I wouldn't take her on a walk or how I don't care that its unfair that Luna got in the bed and she couldn't jump up there when she got older.
One morning in particular in late 2016 I remember she came into the bathroom while I was showering and demanded at the shower door to be let up on the bed because Luna jumped up there. Of course I couldn't help her in the shower, and after some time she stopped whining and I figured she gave up. Instead I went out the bathroom only to see her in the bed somehow - a jump she couldn't easily make anymore- giving me a angry look of "thanks for nothing human!"
Throughout her life Xena didn't have many health problems outside of a few growths and one issue with her eye that boxers are known for. I would often joke that compared to the other dogs she was actually earning her keep, or had a positive ROI, as her serious defense of the house made it so I rarely thought of getting an alarm system. Her real payment was when we gave her what she really wanted- the ability to leave the house and go for a walk, go to the lake, or go to the dog park. She had a personal strict code of conduct she invented for time on a leash, and she wouldn't even pee while it was on her. Also she invented a game of biting at long grass as we walked that Luna loved to also play, and often it made the walks when we tried to take all three dogs quite frustrating as they would explode all over the nearby grass on each other within the first few blocks playing Xena's made up game. While in Odessa in the months after we got Luna we would often load them up to drive to a park on the west side of town that was shaded for a long trial, and they would spend the whole walk trading who was the worst dog as they ran towards shade.
When we moved to Leander, it was a huge upgrade for us in regards to space and location. The neighborhood was full of trees and friendly people, and it barely had any car traffic making it perfect for dog walks. The neighborhood was big enough to make for a satisfying walk without doing circles, and had enough cross streets that I never got bored of the route we took. Early on all three dogs could walk the entire stretch of the longest part of the neighborhood, and when we got going together it was quite a circus to the point where Lindsey would get very upset about the dogs' behavior. Eventually when we got bored with the main neighborhood we were in they built a new sidewalk to connect our part of the neighborhood with another part built around the same era (1990s). When Roscoe got too old to do long walks the other three of us would walk up hundreds of times through the different parts of the neighborhood and soon the streets and that sidewalk became a single blended memory of some of the best times in my life.
When I got into running in 2016 sometimes I would take just Xena on a run either through the streets or down that new long sidewalk along the main road. I could trust her to behave off the leash while we ran, and she loved being apart of an activity with me. I can remember one time in particular as we ran up the inclined street one over, her prancing and smiling as I pushed myself on the last leg of a run. When I fell out of running I still tried to take her for separate walks every now and then. I would start off the walk with my head grinding on whatever I was into that day, but then every time before it was halfway through I would remind myself that Xena wouldn't be around forever and that I needed to enjoy her presence and those walks for what they were- bonding time with my favorite dog. Within a year I had built up a pile of memories of just me and Xena walking those same streets, and I began to plan a ten year birthday party for the dog to be held at the end of 2017 to celebrate a decade of Xena.
I eventually somewhat took Xena for granted during that decade. With Luna it was all different. Luna unfortunately had a bad poisoning incident when she was a puppy that almost killed her and affected her entire life. When Luna barely survived the incident I made sure to appreciate her every day I could, and not expect a long lifespan out of the dog. Luna was also more in-your-face and worked hard to be around you so it felt like it was easy to get quality time with the dog. Meanwhile Xena was very independent and would sometimes lay in a completely different room than the rest of us. Other than our morning time and the amazing and excited greeting I would get from her when I came home, I would sometimes have to go out of my way to have interactions with Xena during a day. But she seemed in good health and we both expected her to beat the boxer odds and live into the teens. I had plenty of time to do special things for her when she was a senior dog, I thought. As with Roscoe's long decline where I was spoiling him with a nice retirement plan for years, and I expected to do the same with Xena. Her 10th birthday party was meant to be a start of that final stage rather than some sort of goodbye for a breed of dog that I knew before I got her only lived around 9 years.
The first signs of Xena's aging was her face. It whitened greatly over time, to the point where the last two years of her life it was basically all white. Yet health-wise she never seemed to falter until around 2017 when she was slow to get up and less active when playing with Luna. I held off giving her dog meds for this issue until I couldn't ignore it anymore, as the golden retriever from my childhood Ruby was eventually taken down from side effects of long term usage of the medicine and I didn't want the same for Xena. But mid 2017 I figured that she had at best had a few years left (I expected at least one or two), so I finally relented to give her the medicine after our vet did some rounds of testing to make sure it would be fine for her. X-rays showed how bad her arthritis was, and I didn't want her to be in pain anymore just for my peace of mind.
Once she was taking the medicine, which I had to sneak in Kabocha squash to get her to take it, we got to see prime time Xena once again. She was quick to jump on her feet and was more ready to play with Luna. We took her to the dog park soon after and she hopped across the grass when there in a way I will never forget, like she did in the years before we even had Luna. I thought maybe this would give Xena a new lease on life, maybe my dream of her living into the teens wasn't crazy. Little did I know that she wouldn't live another month past that trip to the park.
The day Xena died for some reason I cuddled her for extra long that morning. I didn't have a bad feeling or anything like that, I just really wanted some bed time with her and so I did just that. I can remember reading my phone some and her not liking that, and then I can remember me just cuddling her the best I could for a 15-20 minute period for what would become the last time I would do that in my life. I remember when I asked her to get up that day so I could leave she was slow to do so, as if the medicine wasn't working anymore. But I didn't have any other cause for concern, so I left for work and told all the dogs bye for the day. I would deal with it later.
When I got home I got the big greeting Xena always gave me, and nothing seemed wrong. I was in another room when Lindsey called for me to come see quickly less than an hour later. Xena was acting weird and fell over. We rushed her to the emergency vet in Round Rock, and along the way we were both in such shock it never occurred to me that would be the last ride I would take with her. I sat in the backseat with her at at the very last mile for some reason decided to thank her for everything, as if I knew what was coming. When we get to the vet we hear the bad news that her heart has a massive issue and she was dying. We signed up for her to have an emergency procedure to maybe save her for a massive cost, and before they started we demanded to see her one last time. What we saw was a shell of Xena that couldn't recognize her people in the oxygen tank, she was gone. Within minutes they said her heart stopped, and within 20 minutes we saw he dead body lying on the table. I hugged her one last time and said goodbye, and we left in such shock that I didn't even get her harness to remember her by. That night we laid in bed together and cried and shivered in shock, our world was turned upside down.
In the week after I couldn't function. I didn't shower because the first day after she died I tried to shower and the self reflection showering usually imposes on me lead me to the hardest crying I would do after her death or ever. In the day and days that followed I did everything I could to soak in and pack down all the recent memories of her that I had, to try to remember what it was like to hug her or hear her bark. I didn't want to let go, and I didn't know how to move on. The grieving process would go in stages and last months, but eventually I found a way to turn a corner and move on.
The first stage was just the sadness of her being gone, and the shock of how suddenly it happened. My whole morning routine involved her so waking up every day was painful. Also the large greeting I used to get from her when I got home haunted me by its absence every time I came home from work. Once I was done trying to hold onto memories I learned they weren't done with me. In stage two of my grieving I wondered what I could have done to prevent it, wondering if putting her on dog medicine the month before is what lead to her death. I tried not to dwell too long on it, but we did end up switching vets afterwards just in case, and got the new vet to test the two existing dogs almost any way he could.
Stage three of grieving had little to do with Xena, and more to do with me. After I got over the shock of her death I realized that despite my expectations she lived exactly as long as the average indicated she would. I realized that meant an boxer lived an entire average life within the years I was a real post-college adult, and that even by the most liberal definition my "youth" was over. The year she died I turned 35 (aka halfway in the 30s to 40), I got turned down for a job promotion, and I was facing a little trouble on the domestic front. Xena's death not only signaled the end of me "growing up," but showed me that grown up me wasn't in the best place in life when some perspective was applied. This stage and revelation lead me into the worst depression of my life that would last months and overlapped all the grieving I would go through.
Stage four came about a month after her death, when I decided to collect every picture I could find of her from the many different sources we had and combine them into a memorial video that I could watch in the following years as a compact reminder of Xena. What I found was we didn't really have many great pictures of her, as neither my wife nor I are great photographers (she is working on it now) and Xena had a tendency to always keep moving which made her out of focus in the pictures we did have.
It was obvious going back through the pictures that every time we got a new smartphone or before that point-and-shoot camera there would be a burst of dog pictures before another big gap before the next device. Thanks to early point-and-shoots I had some good pictures of puppy Xena, but it was in the later years when Luna stole more of the show when we would go long periods of time without taking pictures. At the end of the day I found enough to make a video and even for Lindsey to get and frame an actual in-focus picture of her Note 4 smartphone took by chance. But the realization that Xena's early years was documented better than the later ones inspired me to soon get a new phone after her death, and do better about taking pictures of the dogs we had left with its superior camera.
During all of this grieving which lasted months I tried to be a person but it was hard. I felt like after a while I had to keep it in, as being so sad about a dead dog months after her death simply isn't normal for most people. For over a month when someone would give me any sympathy I would lap it up like Luna does water on a hot day, and I found some silver linings (namely all the weight Luna lost) that I tried to cling to to try and feel better about her loss. But nothing really worked, and I just kept getting lost in the depression.
As part of a coping mechanism the day after Xena died I took Luna for a walk around the neighborhood, and I did that every day for over a month hoping that I could find some happy memories left to be made on those walks even without Xena. But after years of walking around the neighborhood with Xena I found that the daily walks with Luna only made me feel worse as every path just would remind me of when we all walked down it all together. There wasn't a place I could go, a route combination I could do, that wouldn't remind me of Xena, and often I would return home after our walks more sad then when I left. I didn't know how to move on, and as weeks turned to months I felt like I was never going to find a way to get past my pain.
Then one day the week after Thanksgiving I went for a walk with Luna into the part of the neighborhood that they connected years ago that at that time I rarely ventured to. I hoped that going to a place I barely walked with Xena wouldn't overwhelm me with memories, but as we headed there I was still haunted by memories of going down every street or sidewalk with her. Then once I got to the corner of the neighborhood I looked down a street that I technically never took Xena walking on because it seemed like a dead end. A dead end wasn't appealing, but I was drawn down this street for some reason, as I thought even just a street of a new memory would be a relief. And sure enough when we got to the end of the street Luna and I turned a corner that changed my life forever.
What we found at the end of the street wasn't a dead end, at least not anymore. Maybe it was a dead end when we first moved to the neighborhood, when I first decided to not walk down that path with all the dogs in tow. But in the years we lived on Laurel Lane the world around our neighborhood's bubble changed and where a dead end once was was now a street leading to a new neighborhood full of new houses that I had never seen before.
Walking down this new street next to new houses gave me the genuine new experience walking Luna that I was after, and the mental clouds that lifted for the first time in months as we walked down that path showed me that there was hope for me in a post-Xena world. I walked Luna that day as far as she could in that new neighborhood, and then we went back never to return. My life had changed, and I knew what I needed to do.
Not long after I 100% got behind us moving to a new house, knowing that whatever neighborhood we went to would be full of new experiences. More importantly I realized that move could help me move on my with life, and focus on what I still had namely Lindsey, Luna and Roscoe. Within a month of that walk with Luna I began the process to improve my life, to put my everything into the move and to try and reinvent myself in the process.
I threw away a ton of my stuff that I didn't need anymore but I wasn't ready to let go of until then. I put together a plan to organize everything I kept for the first time in my life, and worked as hard as I could the months before and after we moved to execute that plan. I also worked on new life building plans- to get the house setup like I wanted, to improve my health and diet, and to get in the habit of taking Luna for more constant walks than before Xena died without grief driving me.
It is now six months after we moved to the house and I can say that I have improved myself more in the last six months than any other similar time period in my life. I am a more complete and more independent person than I was before Xena died, and in a way her last gift to me was the motivation to finish the process of maturing I started ten years ago when we first got her and turn into the fully functional adult I knew I needed to be.
The move and the follow up plans consumed so much of my energy that it lifted me out of depression if only because I was too motivated to follow through with my plans to avoid backsliding into 2017's funk. I told myself that I needed to finish all my plans within the first six months of moving to the house because after moving out I saw how quickly things can stagnate once you get settled in, plus I figured for some reason that in six months I would have new goals in life and these plans would be in the way. Sure enough here at the six month mark Lindsey is now pregnant and we are looking at a totally new life coming up soon and I am hatching new plans to prepare for that era. I can look back and say Xena's death was the start of that.
With all that said, I don't feel like I shortcut the grieving process after we turned that corner. Before we closed on the new house we went on one last walk in the old neighborhood, me Luna and Lindsey, and instead of fighting ghosts we talked about what we enjoyed about the old neighborhood and why we were excited about going to the new one. It was a perfect bit of closure for that era in my life.
Also the day before we closed on Laurel Lane I went over to the house one last time and I smelt what was probably the last remnant's of Xena's natural smell that somehow got locked in the upstairs carpet there. I stood in the doorway one last time and tried to remember her greeting me. Instead of it being a ghost chasing me I was chasing the ghost one last time, saying goodbye before my access to that entryway was restricted for evermore. I thanked the house for what it gave to us, and I thanked Xena for guarding it. And then I left ready to move on with my life in a positive direction.
When Lindsey got Xena all those years ago she gave me the email address for the woman that we bought Xena from. I archived this address on my server so I couldn't lose it, with the possible intention to maybe get another dog from her one day. In the last year of Xena's life I found that email, and I considered sending the woman pictures while thanking her for the wonderful dog she gave us. I knew it maybe wouldn't be seen by anyone, but I liked the idea of a decade later follow up.
After Xena died, and after me and Luna turned the corner, I felt like this email was no longer just a cute idea, but a needed token of appreciation for a woman who gave us my all time favorite dog. When she actually responded back "thank you for the pictures and I sorry for your loss" I felt like Xena's life had come full circle. I cried that night the last tears I would shed for my favorite dog, and I move on in my life with a song in my heart that her death had silenced all those months.
I will never forget Xena, or completely move on from her death. In many ways I see her as my first kid, and silver lining from her death is she never had to share a spotlight with our son like Luna will. With that said I always wanted to see Xena interact with a baby again, or be motivated to defend a new member of the family. She would have done a good job I bet, like she always did.
Now its up to me to keep living, to be the good dog owner she knew I could be.
Thank you for everything Xena, my all time favorite boxmoo.
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