Joel On The Road

PEPPERMINT PATTI

PEPPERMINT PATTI: AUGUST 24, 2005-DECEMBER 2, 2019

Joel Thurtell

December 4, 2019. Middle of the night. Sleeping deeply. I hear a dog bark. It is Patti. She wants to go out. I get up, normally, and let her out to pee and poop. But not this time. It was her urgent bark. Meaning, “I need to go out NOW!”

I was hearing that particular bark a lot the last few days. Normally, Patti would not do her sharp, urgent bark. She would know that I was sitting on a couch not three feet from the door where she was standing on the patio steps on the outside wanting in. She would know that I was nearby, because she had hopped down from the sofa minutes before to be let out. She would have been lying with her right side pressed against the side of my left leg. She knew right where I was, so she would not bark. She would make a soft, almost cat-like mewing sound. I would hear, stand up, go to the door and let her in. However, if I failed to open the door in a timely way, she would increase the volume until I got her meaning. The loudest, shrillest and most insistent barking I ever heard from Patti happened in Canada after she harassed a full-grown black bear up a pine tree. The bear sat on a limb growling angrily as our white bullet raced back and forth below, treating the bear as if he were nothing more threatening than one of her backyard squirrels.

But in the night, what I heard was not Patti. It could not have been Patti, because Patti died suddenly in the vet’s office about 10:30 Monday morning, December 2, 2019. She was having an x-ray after an exam that showed her seemingly normal health except for that intestinal bug for which the vet was about to prescribe medication.

I was waiting alone in the exam room while staff did the x-ray. Suddenly, a different vet burst into the room and told me that while Patti was being made ready for the x-ray, she collapsed and her heart stopped. They had intubated her, were giving her oxygen, and trying to revive her. I was stunned. The vet left and I sat by myself in the exam room. A few minutes later, the vet who examined her came in and told me they had gotten her heart to beat weakly, and then it stopped. She could not be brought back.  Patti was gone. She was 14 years old. She was my flop eared little dog with the plume tail and purple belly. She was, as I often, often proclaimed, the best of all the dogs. Best of all possible dogs.

I met Patti in spring, 2006. My late wife, Karen Fonde, announced that her mom needed a dog. Karen said she had found the perfect little dog at the Humane Society. Unlike other dogs we’d had, this one was small enough to sit on your lap. Karen grew up with dogs that were lapdogs. The Fonde family favorite was Sisi, a miniature poodle. I might have wondered for whom was she getting this dog. But her mom was a dog lover and this dog would be perfect. The only hitch was that someone else had signed up to get her. Karen had put her name down, but was second in line. Her mom could use a dog’s company. She was taking care of Karen’s dad, who had Alzheimer’s Disease. Karen really wanted that dog. She would stop at the Humane Society on her way home. Soon, her persistence paid off. The woman whose name was first did not come back. Karen pounced. Her mom got a dog.

In theory, a dog would be great company for Edith. It is true that Edith loved dogs. However, Hank, Karen’s dad, was not a dog lover. With dementia, Hank needed watching. Patti was less than a year old. She barked. She barked a lot. Her energy level was amazing. If she got loose, she would run and run and run with no thought of where she was going. She was a stray for a reason. She was a chewer. She liked to chew on underwear. She gnawed furniture. Nothing was too disgusting for Patti to ingest. Nonetheless, Edith was delighted. She named this little stray “Peppermint Patti.”

Karen was happy. She had done a good turn for her mom. We were driving north on I-75 heading for McGregor Bay in Canada, where Karen’s family had an island cottage. My cell phone rang. It was Edith. “Can I talk to Karen?” Karen was driving. I handed the phone to her. I could hear the stress in Edith’s voice. “Do you want a dog? Because if you don’t, I’m taking her back to the pound!” Before I could say anything, Karen said, “Don’t do that! We’ll be back in a week. If you can keep her that long, we’ll take her.” Her mom agreed. I did not. Karen signed off and handed me the phone. I said, “We already have one dog. We don’t need another! This is nuts!” A week later, we took Patti to our house – her new home. We had two dogs. Toby, a terrier mix also from the Humane Society, was old and feeble. He seemed to borrow some of Patti’s energy. He enjoyed watching her frolic in our backyard. Patti assigned herself the duty of squirrel suppression. Keep those nasty bush tails in the trees! Karen bought a battery-powered bark collar that emitted high-pitched sound when it detected a dog’s bark. We went through a lot of batteries. You had to watch Patti every minute. The watchfulness is so ingrained that I still ask whether the yard gate is closed, and I pull the front door shut so that Patti, who no longer is eagerly pursuing me, will not follow me to the mailbox. We were mindful of how she wound up at the Humane Society. Our little stray.

Late that summer of 2006, Edith had a stroke. Karen’s dad couldn’t be left home alone, so we took him into our house. In those days, I came to understand why Edith felt she couldn’t keep Patti. It was not just that she chewed on clothes and chairs. Patti had been out in the rain. When I let her in, I wiped off her feet. Hank was nearby, watching. He had some advice: “Get rid of it!” I wonder how often Edith heard those words. Karen and her sisters moved Hank into an assisted living facility. We did not get rid of Patti.

I told Karen in no uncertain terms, “No way is Patti going to sleep on our bed!” I was out of town one night. The following night, I watched Patti leap on the bed. She did it so adroitly that I sensed she’d had some practice.  “I thought it would be neat so see how it worked,” Karen said. Oh well, it’s a queen-size bed. Karen was a bed hog. So, it turned out, was Patti. But soon – I mean right away – I missed Patti if she was not on the bed. In the last few weeks, as the nights turned cold, Patti would wake me to put her on a couch in the living room. Our bedroom is cold, sometimes in the low 60’s. I figured maybe it was too chilly for our senior citizen, Patti.

Patti was a stray, so staff at the Humane Society had no papers to show how old she was or what breed. They made up a birth date gauged by her size – August 24, 2005. They guessed at what kind of dog she was: “Bichón mix.”

Whatever her pedigree was didn’t matter. Patti was elegant. She kept her white plume tail erect with a little forward curve. Her tail was a flag. On the island in McGregor Bay, she would chase critters into their holes. It was her policy not to come when she was called, unless it served her purpose. I had looked all over for her, but she was concentrating on the job at hand – terrorizing some chipmunk, digging away at its refuge hole. She was ignoring me, but I found her when I saw a white flag waving in the woods.

Patti seemed to be smiling. She had a way of letting strangers know that she loved them on sight. She was a happy dog who signaled her happiness to people. Children were her special interest. She would spot a kid or kids a block away and head straight for them. It was her duty to bring joy to little people. I would be walking her in our neighborhood, and people would say, “What kind of dog is that?”  I would give them my rap – Humane Society, no papers, Bichón mix, et cetera. I would end by saying “whatever her breed, she’s the best of all possible dogs!” Last year, Linda Kurtz solved the mystery. She took a saliva swab from Patti’s mouth and had a DNA test done. I can tell you that Patti was one-quarter cocker spaniel, one-quarter miniature poodle, one-quarter Bichón frisé, and one quarter unknown.

Patti had been living with us for six months when I wrote about her in the Detroit Free Press. The headline said, “CALLING THE ER VETS.” The subhead said, “PEPPERMINT PATTI IS A 14-POUND BALL OF FLUFF WITH AN APPETITE – FOR TROUBLE.” We used to wonder if Patti had a death wish. She lived dangerously. My story began, “She’s our $1,000 dog.”

“Patti likes to eat,” I wrote. “She will eat anything. She snatches trash from wastebaskets.” True enough. Her barking diminished. Over time, she learned to modulate her vocal expressions. She would not bark if a soft murmur would make her point. I wrote that Patti  would snatch “food off the table. Eyeglasses from a desk. She once devoured a batch of cookies. Yanked them off the dining room table. Ate cookies, plastic bag and all. But that’s not why we call her our $1,000 dog.” The thousand bucks referred to the emergency veterinarian bills we paid after she ate rat poison. I took her to a vet who poo-poo’ed my belief that Patti ate d-con. I was right. The ER vet confirmed it and saved her life. I ended the story by describing how she somehow leaped high off the floor to land a big chunk of high-octane chocolate, which can be lethal to dogs. Back to the ER. Her life was saved, again. Never mind that it almost killed her, Patti had found a taste for chocolate. We really had to be careful. I ended my story by noting that she was now our $1,500 dog.

Little did I know. One morning, Karen heard Patti give out a pained squeal. Examining her coat, Karen discovered a small slit on Patti’s chest with blood around it. Patti in those days would chase squirrels with so much energy that she would leap upward against the side of a big maple tree. On her way down, a fallen branch jabbed between her skin and her ribs. Emergency vet — again.

Patti managed at different times to tear both anterior cruciate ligaments. Surgery to repair the first injury cost $2,300. The second time, I chose to forego surgery. The knee healed just fine. In the summer of 2010, Karen and I were staying in our cottage in McGregor Bay. Patti developed a cough. We took her to our regular vet. He couldn’t diagnose the problem. Took her to a second vet. She took an x-ray and saw a white cloud around Patti’s lungs. Diagnosis: bacterial infection or maybe cancer. Prescription: antibiotics. The medicine made her worse. She was coughing. Oozing pus from around her eyes and getting sores on her skin. Back in Canada, we took her to a vet who instantly diagnosed blastomycosis. Blasto is a fungal disease that attacks mammals, including humans. In Killarney that summer, a man died of blasto. We bought human anti-fungal medicine from a pharmacy and saved Patti’s life. We also were given drops to put in her eyes to save her eyesight, because blasto colonizes to the eyes. Several years later, I learned that in 2010 the blasto destroyed the retina in Patti’s right eye. She compensated so well – chasing squirrels, jumping into and out of boats – that I didn’t catch on that she had lost the sight in one eye. What I knew was that Patti was our five thousand dollar dog and I had stopped tabulating her medical costs.

Karen was right. Patti was a lapdog. She loved to jump on the couch and lie on your lap. In recent times, she preferred to snuggle alongside my thigh. If I should get up, she would move into my spot. She did the same thing on the bed. She liked to take over the warmth I left on a bed or a couch. In the house, she kept track of me. She would lie near me when I wrote at the computer. I have a dog bed under each of the desks where I write.

In summer 2009, Karen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. Previously, she had been misdiagnosed with depression. I only found out after her brain was autopsied that in addition to Alzheimer’s, she suffered from Lewy Body Dementia. By June 2011, it wasn’t safe for Karen to live in the house. I placed Karen in an assisted living facility. When I visited Karen, I always brought Patti. The caregivers and other residents loved Patti. I spent evenings in Karen’s room. We would watch a movie, or I would read. Patti would jump onto the bed and cuddle with Karen. Patti loved to lick, and Karen enjoyed having Patti lick her.

It was very hard not having Karen in the house. I was in despair many times, and when I was in the pits, that little dog was there, lying on my lap or alongside my leg, sending warmth from her body to mine. I doted on her, but she doted on me. She was like a shadow, and whenever I came back to the house, she would greet me with great enthusiasm.

In the wee hours of March 1, 2015, Patti knew something was wrong. She lay on Karen and licked her arms and was still licking when Karen took her last breath. After Karen died, Patti was a living link to our common past – Karen’s mom, Karen, Patti, and me. Then it was Karen, me, and Patti. Always Patti. With Karen gone, I still had the dog she loved. Now what I have is the memory of that ball of fluff. And there was that bark I heard in my sleep that could not possibly have been Patti. Patti by then was dead.

I can see her, though, the white flag of a tail, the purple belly, and the flop ears. I can hear her murmuring through the door that she wants to come in. No worry, my sweet little Patti. You are already in.