Remembering Heidi
Yesterday me and Kelly said goodbye to our very best friend for the last 11.5 years, our dog Heidi. This is the story of the adventures that were her life with us.
Heidi was born on my 27th birthday in a village north of Sheffield in England. We first met her on Jan 2, 2010. Kelly had to really convince me of the merits of getting a dog, and at this stage I still needed some final convincing. I was not sure how to pick out a puppy, but Heidi seemed to take a bigger interest in me than her brothers and sisters, so I settled on that she had picked us instead.
The day we arranged to collect Meadow Lane Marlene (this was her Kennel Club registered name before she became Heidi to us) from her breeder was the day I interviewed at Sheffield Hallam University, with me thinking that even if I did not get the job at least it was an efficient way to get the dog. Armed with a cat carrier and two train tickets (we did not have a car while we lived in London) we set about getting her home.
The first couple of months with us Heidi lived in suburban London. She made friends with dogs at the park, even her first boyfriend Archie. She would travel on the tube with Kelly to visit me at work and enjoyed all the dog appropriate sights. But that job in Sheffield had hired me and we were about to embark on a big adventure.
Finding accommodations in Sheffield with a young puppy was tricky. Landlords were generally not down with pets, and we soon found that our choices were limited. We wanted to see places before we settled on them, but we now had a new puppy who needed dog sitting every time we wanted to view rentals. On one trip our puppy care plans fell through at the last minute, so I appealed to my colleagues at RADA for someone who might want to watch Heidi. Sue had been thinking of getting a dog of her own so volunteered. We dropped her the dog and supplies at the office and returned to pick her up a couple of day later. A rambunctious GSP puppy for a weekend was enough to convince her that really, she did not want a dog right now, but we were delighted to return and take Heidi home.
We moved in March, leaving my childhood home for pastures new that nearly all my London focused colleagues had told me was grim (up north). Heidi cried pretty much all the five hours from London to Sheffield, packed in the back with some of our stuff with the movers driving. We were heading to the only rental we could find that would let us keep a dog, in the village of Loxley, on the edge of Sheffield bordering the Peak District National Park.
The rental was not all that great, but the location was a revelation. Within minutes of walking out of our front door to explore our new surroundings we found ourselves deep in the country surrounded by animals. This was a place a dog like Heidi was designed to be.
We did a lot of exploring. After work strolls, weekend hikes, seeing a new public footpath sign and going to take a look. The Loxley Bottoms were a favorite, and then the Wadsley Commons, and then further afield. Unless there was livestock or traffic everything was off leash, all the dogs were, and these were good, socialized dogs, who taught Heidi how to be a good, socialized dog. And when she was not socializing, she was running, and running, and running. This was a dog that could run, and out run pretty much any other dog she met.
At home she was a different animal. She had started out with her accommodations being a crate in our dining room in London, and we transitioned the crate to Loxley. The house was set up with baby gates and there were strict rules that Kelly enforced due to her reading of Cesar Milan on where the dog could and could not be and what she could or could not do. As we let down some of Cesar’s rules, we found she was a great cuddler and with Kelly being out some mornings due to a renewed rowing hobby, it seemed most prudent to cuddle her in bed. I always told Kelly that Heidi had figured out how to unlock the baby gate, she was not that smart, I just didn’t want to get in trouble for defying Cesar’s rules. Kelly would come home from practice to find me asleep with Heidi in our bed on the weekends.
In September we bought our first house and Heidi got her first taste of home renovation projects. She was less helpful in those days, often interrupting work by escaping the house to take herself for a walk. When she wasn’t doing that, she was happily tearing up cushions, shoes, and once even a brand new pair of leather knee high boots Kelly had bought from Selfridges on a trip to London.
On the village green in Loxley, we found a dog obedience class. It wasn’t very formal, but it’s probably one of the only dog training classes in the world where your backdrop is picture perfect views of a national park. From Heidi’s first class where she literally broke not one but two leashes in her exuberance, she progressed to finally achieving a silver obedience award from the Kennel Club.
As time passed, we slowly explored further from our house. We would go on long hikes many weekends and Heidi was a constant companion. When Kelly landed a job after a protracted search, we also took on a dog walker to ensure she got out every single day. Russel became one of Heidi’s best friends.
She landed in Chicago where Kelly picked her up after watching her pass-through customs. She was now officially an American dog - a much easier process for her than for me. A couple of months later we were reunited in Cincinnati when I moved over. And then preparations started for another big move to Columbus for Kelly’s second year at Ohio State.
We found a rental in Clintonville with a decent sized back yard. That would be our home for the next three years as Kelly finished vet school. This was a very different lifestyle from back in England with Kelly not having much time, studying late into the night often. Heidi and I would hang out, pretty much constantly. We would walk the neighborhood, watch TV, do house chores, and she’d sit next to me while I put in job applications.
I had worked every day since I was 20, so spending months when I first arrived in the US looking for a job was tough. I wrote over 100 job applications, went to dozens of interviews, and tried to network as best I could. And through this tough time, Heidi was there constantly. She was one piece of normalcy in my life with Kelly’s focus being vet school. Heidi helped me get through this most difficult of times as she did through every difficult time.
While I was having trouble adjusting to American life, Heidi fit right in. The Clintonville house was two-family with a shared yard, and in the next-door unit were two human housemates along with their two canine friends. Heidi became best buddies with Marley, a tiny, unathletic, white, fluffy dog; and Waylon, a young, athletic, match for her, was not her preference. Heidi was an opinionated dog. Occasionally she would end up in the neighbors’ unit or we would end up with extra dogs wandering around ours. And sometimes Heidi would wait for Marley outside her door, or we would find Marley outside ours.
When I finally started working it was in Cincinnati and a lot of
the time Heidi stayed with me. I lived with Kelly’s parents, and she became a
fixture in their house alongside her uncle Louis and with her boyfriend next
door, Gus. The lady who lived next door was not too pleased with her young
children watching Heidi and Gus “play” together in the back yard, but Heidi had
a grand time. She
was sometimes a difficult guest as she had strong opinions about everyone who
came in the house, and was far more demanding than the Labradors Kelly’s family
had been used to – but this was something we loved about our opinionated dog.
In December 2014, I bought a car of my own instead of sharing one with Kelly and near constant commuting between Columbus and Cincinnati started, often with Heidi in the back seat. We took up an Audible subscription and listened to hours of novels as we drove the two hours back and forth a couple of times a week. Sometimes when there was time, we would stop for a walk mid way and explore somewhere new. Heidi always enjoyed exploring new places.
By 2016, we were preparing for Kelly to graduate and working out where we would be long term. I was still working in Cincinnati, so it seemed logical to move back there. For the first time in her life, Heidi became an apartment dog - a one bedroom place shared between me, Kelly, Heidi, and our lizard Amira who Kelly had acquired.
Apartment life dictated a new routine. At least twice a day Heidi would get a walk, but now mostly back on sidewalks as we settled into the suburb of Oakley. There was not too much running, but Heidi had settled down a lot since her younger days.
Another change in Heidi was thunderstorm anxiety that had started when we were in Columbus and had just got worse and worse over the years. Heidi was terrified of precipitation when she was indoors and would shake and cry and scream as soon as she sensed some might be coming. It was hard, there were lots of nights of little sleep, and even during the day if I saw bad weather on the forecast I would rush home if I could to give her some drugs to calm her.
The day before Christmas Eve 2016, Kelly was befallen by an occupational hazard as a vet. She returned home to the one-bedroom apartment with a rather unattractive rescue cat called Doug. Heidi had wanted a pet cat since her Loxley days when she had taken an interest in a very friendly marmalade cat of our neighbors’ and she had even very briefly had one in Columbus, but now there was a cat right there with her sitting on our couch. Heidi’s first interaction with Doug was not the greatest, she went to sniff him, he slapped her in the face, and she cried like her eye had been clawed out. And that was pretty much how their relationship as best frenemies went on. Doug was always in charge, and sometimes, and only sometimes, he would let Heidi get in a good sniff of him. Our temporary rescue cat that was just for Christmas finally left us a couple of years later and hopefully greeted Heidi when she arrived back with him.
In 2017 we bought our first house in America, a fixer upper but Heidi got a back yard again. This time around our now older dog was a lot more tolerant of days spent on house remodeling and she became a great helper, whether covered in dust, or covered in paint, or just digging holes to help when a job took me outside.
With Kelly now working the long hours of a vet’s life, Heidi’s life changed very much again when I moved jobs to the Taft Museum of Art. My hours were longer and my days less flexible, so Heidi stayed at home alone more and got out the house substantially less. She had calmed in older age, and did not require as much time outside, although she still very much enjoyed it.
Heidi was initially delighted with our acquisition of chickens. It seemed like she was going to be great with them; she would sit and watch them in their little crate inside the house and came with them as they started to venture outside. All was going great until one day we saw her try to pick up Snooki in her mouth. Our dreams of the photo ops of a chicken sitting on Heidi’s head were dashed as she was still a dog designed for hunting birds. Keeping Heidi from the chickens became a constant concern. They would share the same backyard, each taking turns, and often Heidi would sit by the back door looking our wistfully as the chickens enjoy her space.
2020 came around and COVID hit. Heidi’s life changed once again,
on two fronts, we found out that we were expecting our first baby and my job
suddenly became home based.
Heidi became my office pal. She would lay on the floor next to me during Teams meetings and remind me when it was time to do something else. She explored new walking options with me as we sought quieter socially distanced locations to hang out. We fell into a pleasant routine where Heidi was my only face-to-face colleague and helper with everything else in my life.
As I processed my trepidation at being a father, Heidi was there with me as we walked and talked - although she let me do most of the talking. She would hang out with me as I cleaned the kitchen or folded the laundry or tried to finish up some more of the house ready for the baby to join us.
November arrived so did Basil. Heidi was the first family member I saw after he was born, I came home and told her about him and cuddled her in bed as I wondered what came next. She was the first family member to meet him when we returned from the hospital.
The adjustment to being a big sister was not an easy one for Heidi. This new creature made a lot of noise and took up premium bed real estate, and she ended up treating the baby much as she had treated Doug several years before. Heidi slowly transitioned from sleeping in our room to quieter spots in the house and hanging out by herself a little more.
At the end of parental leave, life kicked back in, and the time Heidi had once enjoyed was now shared with Basil. I got into the routine of dropping off and picking up Basil from daycare with Heidi in the car and would take her on walks most mornings.
Two Mondays ago, she was begging for tacos from our friends as we hosted our first get together since the start of the pandemic. On Tuesday, I noticed she had not licked clean a yogurt pot I’d put on the ground for her to finish up as we’d customarily done for more than a decade. By Wednesday she was diagnosed with cancer, and we knew she was dying.
Over the course of the couple of weeks we have spent as much time as possible with her. We took her for a picnic, Kelly made her her own cheesecake, and we have been on lots of off leash walks. Each morning she has enjoyed getting out the house but as her breathing became more labored, we made the decision to euthanize her at home.
On Friday June 18, we took her for a last walk. She got to run around a little, showing us glimpses of the dog who used to tear off after us and away from us and all around us on the commons in Loxley. She was still elegant and interested, but clearly a way off from where she was just a few weeks before. We let her guide our walk, showing us where she wanted to go, until she decided it was time to return to the car. We stopped off at Starbucks on the way home, and when we got back, she ate most of my breakfast sandwich. Then I made her another breakfast of steak, cheese, sour cream, and cheesecake. When the vet arrived to euthanize her, we fed her those favorite foods and she continued eating until she started to fall asleep. She fell asleep into my arms on her dog bed, and I cuddled her while she got her second injection of drugs to send her peacefully to rest.
We will never have another dog like Heidi. Those formative things that happened on her watch will not happen again; the first months of our marriage, a first house, a vet degree for Kelly, a new country, a first baby. I am a different man than the one who wasn’t sure about getting a dog all those years ago, for all of those things, and for Heidi’s companionship, tolerance, and love.
Heidi was a dog who had an opinion on everything and was not shy in sharing them. She liked who and what she liked passionately, but equally, there were lots of people and activities she had no time for. At the same time, Heidi was a dog for whom the command “cuddles” meant “jump up on the thing in front of you”; she loved laying with us and showing affection, even if getting her to jump on surfaces when out and about was little embarrassing as consequence. She was not the best trained or the most well-behaved dog, but she was a truly special dog for us.
I think I am a better husband because of a Heidi. I think I will be a better father because of Heidi. And if only just by a little amount, I am more open to doing those things that I am not so sure about because of Heidi.
I will miss her so much, but I hope I do not forget those ways her
being here made me better.
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