Schatzi

(also a big F U to the a-hole who chided me for saying a soulmate HAS to be a romantic interest/relationship. I never liked you anyway)

Anyone who met her found her just as unforgettable as I do. Her sass. Her intelligence. Her unapologetic nature. Her commanding presence. I’m talking of course about my soul-dog Schatzi, a Miniature Dachshund who left this often rotten world for greener pastures five years ago this past March.

Every Dia de Los Muertos, I create an ofrenda not only for Schatzi but for Suzi, Jaime, and most recently, Biscuit. But it started with Schatzi because well, everything started with her.

It was 2013 and my niece’s grandfather had passed leaving behind a local celebrity: Schatzi, the girl who saved and blessed his life for seven years. I’ll never forget the first time I took her to the beach, how someone recognized her and immediately asked, “Is that Larry’s dog?!”

After Larry died his son initially planned to keep her. But he asked me go dog sit for a long weekend while he went out of town. In the first fifteen minutes I knew we belonged together and so did she. I can’t explain it. I would call it mind reading, but I think the closest I can get is soul knowing, or spirit speak. We both just knew she wasn’t going back.

Sure enough, when the son arrived to pick her up, he admitted that he wasn’t in a position to care for her and asked if I wanted to keep her. I’ll never forget that feeling. That year I was recovering from a series of a events that turned my life upside down and not in a good way. I had just moved back to my chosen home, having left behind a job and community I loved. But in that moment I felt a reconnection to myself, to my intuition. Meanwhile, Schatzi looked at me from the passenger seat of the car with an expression that said, “Well, duh, bitch. Of course I’m coming home with you. Where’s my cheese?”

I took Schatzi with me everywhere. To work. Into stores. On trips. People just assumed if I was visiting, so was Schatzi. A friend of mine reminded me of how one time I picked her up and told her she had to sit in the back seat because Schatzi INSISTED on riding shotgun. (God, I’m so embarrassed!)

Schatzi hated kids and other dogs. She loved cats. She loved me most of all. But her love came with bite and I don’t mean literally. Schatzi treated me like a puppy who needed correction and boundaries. She modeled confidence and self-assurance. Two things I have never really had and still struggle with.

While living near Port Towsend (I’ll be writing about “home” later), our favorite thing to do was to go to a local beach together. Schatzi climbed all over the driftwood sniffing and investigating and if I caught her looking out for me as I waded in the freezing Puget Sound water, she looked away, as if, she didn’t want me to know.

One time at the beach I was sitting cross legged with her on my lap when a woman showed up with two unleashed, large pitbulls. They ran straight towards us and I froze…Schatzi however did not. I am a freezer and a fawner, and that day I found out what I should have already known: She was a fighter.

I don’t think I can ever mimic the sound that came out of her tiny 10lb body. It was gutteral and primal. All this to say, the moment the two dogs were within a foot of us, she went ape shit and they went running back to their mom, literally with their tails between their legs and crying. Their mom said, “Oh yeah, watch out for my viscious pitbulls.” And maybe I should have been embarrassed. But I wasn’t. I was in awe. To be so little and so fierceless. It was just one of dozens of examples of her courage, strength, and protective nature.

Schatzi was full of surprises. Like, the time we had a mouse in our trailer and it ran over my daughter’s cat’s paws (now THAT was embarrassing) and Schatzi immediately chased it, shook it, and sent it to its next incarnation. She looked at all of us as if to say, “Want something done you gotta do it yourself.”

I don’t want to write about the day I lost her. All I’ll say is that she lived to be almost fifteen, I held her in arms till her last breath, and I have missed her every single day since.

The last couple of years have been so brutal. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like with her. I think she would have been disappointed in me a lot, as I have disappointed myself in devastating ways. But, I also know she would never stop steering me in the right direction, one towards self-respect and self-love, even if it eluded me every single time.

Schatzi’s been on mind the last couple of days because on Monday, before the end of March, the same month she died, I was finally able to go back to our beach. Before that I had sat up above a grocery shop and written a poem for her, sobbing in front of a room full of strangers. I wrote about what I was going to do at the beach: write our names in the sand, “Schatzi and Kristy were here.”

When I actually went to the beach and started writing a dog came out of nowhere, trampling over my name. The owner follow behind. I told her what I was doing and I instantly got choked up. “We will leave you be,” she said. And I wondered if this was another stick it to you moment from Schatzi since it was my name that got erased.

But later, as I sat on the driftwood on the part of the beach we so often spent time, I read her poem out loud and to the sea, and the sky. A man with a dog walked past and I thought about stopping, but I didn’t. I kept reading the poem out loud with tears streaming down my face.

The man’s dog, a Husky mix with piercing blue eys, started to pull hard towards me. I asked, “Can I say hi?” The dog dad seemed hesitant, “He’s not really good with strangers. He’s very timid. He doesn’t go up to people.” He said this as his dog pulled so hard he finally got to me, wagged his tail and sniffed me.

“He never, ever does that. He doesn’t like strangers,” the man said, “there must be something about you that makes him feel comfortable.

I told the man what I was doing. We both agreed Schatzi sent his dog, Tosh, to let me know she could hear me.

His dog had saved him too, after his friend died of cancer.

“Love is a four legged word,” he said, then, “Take care of yourself, okay?”

I nodded. It was time to go.

I know there are people who will never, ever understand what it is like to love a soul like this, one that just happens to come in stocky, feisty little mini dachshund. There are people who don’t understand the love of a dog, or any other animal, and how it changes you for the better. This is not for those people. This is for you. The reader who knows soulmates come in all shapes, sizes, and species.

Here is my poem to Schatzi and some pictures:

Here Again

I can’t say that you were glued to my ankles,
but I can write that you never left my side.

I can’t say that you didn’t scold me when I
got home late, that you didn’t stand in the doorway
not letting me in until I heard all about it.

But I can write about how you let me wipe 
the tears off my face with the velvet of your
ears, and even though minutes later you’d
let out a heavy sigh, as you plopped down a 
sharp distance from me, you also knew 
when to stay close.

I can write about the beach that was just ours,
it was just ours because you watched from the
driftwood while I waded in the near freezing
waters of the Puget Sound, pretending you weren’t,
until I called your name and you shed your aloofness.

I can’t write about how often you visit me 
in my dreams, because you don’t visit often
enough, and when you do, you’re always in such
a hurry, rushing back, I think to the old man
whose life you blessed for seven years.

But I can write about how I hold onto 
the image of your silhouette as you leave me
once more and when I wake, I hold the dog
beside me closer to my chest. 

I can tell you how I’ve made room on my
lap for a Pekingese, a Pomeranian, a YorkiePoo,
a Doberman and even several cats.

I can’t say that any of them have replaced
you, no matter how much I carry them like
children, no matter how often I kiss them,
curl my body against them, and sob, 
imagining the day I will lose them, too. 

You were never my child, but my mother.

Your soul has never come back to me, 
dressed in a different breed. 

Lately though, I think about the blonde dog 
of my youth, the one my parents cruelly ripped
from my arms.

Maybe she came back to me, through you,
older, wiser, strong enough to nurture me 
back into myself, so I could forgive the little girl 
powerless to save her. 

Maybe she wanted me to know I was
worth returning to.

Maybe. 

Or maybe you were just you:
bossy, intolerant, moaning at the
insult of being called more human than
dog, knowing full well who wins
at that game.

But today I stand on our beach again.
I pick up rocks and driftwood.
I let the tears fall for you, as
they have for years, as they will forever.

I tattoo our names in the wet sand:
Schatzi and Kristy were here.
We still are.