Until We Meet Again, Sweet Mullie-Girl

There is an old saying out there about our pets and, most particularly, our dogs, "To you your dog is part of your life, but to your dog you are their whole life." This has really been true for our two dogs, Mulligan and Birdie, who had been apparently dumped along the road by a nearby cemetery at the age of about eight weeks. Wandering the nearby field, they found me along the road where I had stopped to visit with my Aunt Verna as she made her way to the cemetery I was just leaving. They came running out of the standing soybeans and just jumped on my legs, so happy to see somebody, anybody, who might take care of them.

I guessed they had run away from a neighbors home, so I put them in my truck and drove them to the home, knocked on the door and asked the gentleman if they were his. He just laughed and said, "No, they are yours!" He then went on to say that there had been five of these puppies dumped near the flooded creek just below us and his son had found them and taken three to his place, but had no room for all five. These two were the runts, so he left them there at his Dad's home. The Dad was leaving that day for an extended trip, so when he said they were mine, he meant it. In his words, "Either take them with you or let them run and the coyotes will take care of them. We've done what we can . . ." and that was that.

To make a very long story short, I called Nancy who said we needed a family meeting to discuss this. I told her we were having the family meeting at that moment and that I would like to bring them home. She thought for a lllllooooonnnnnngggg time, then finally said, "Okay, here is how we will do it: If you can get them into a vet this afternoon before bringing them home, you can bring them home. If you can't get them into a vet, don't bring them home."

I called the Mascoutah Animal Hospital where we were regular customers with our older dogs, told them the story and asked if they could get them in - and, as it turned out, they had just had a cancellation for that day. "Bring them on in!" they said, and I did. Then, from there we went home, the Wagner family had expanded by two.

Black Lab and bird dog mixes, we think, for the last twelve years these two have been an amazing part of our family. In a home which is incredibly public, they were calm and loving. When people would panic around them, they made friends. With children who were shy around them, they offered a quiet kinship which invited even the most timid to love them. Mullie and Birdie were as much a gift to our family as we were to the two of them and some would argue that they were even more so to us.

They survived multiple family transitions, a home transition and the constant milieu which is pastoral life in a parsonage. One of them was picked up by a stranger intending to walk away with them until, gratefully, a neighbor saw the encounter and told them to put the puppy back down. They both took great pleasure in testing my fences and forced me to design a fortress that kept them from going out over or under the fence . . . Oh, they were not trying to get away, just get out. Mullie would then explore all around, eventually coming home, and Birdie would just sit outside the fence barking that her sister was on the loose and I should find her. 

Heaven help us all if we humans should take off on foot without the two of them on a leash! Birdie would just yipe and bark, but Mullie had the most mournful hound dog howl you ever heard - and the neighbors all knew when we were on a walk without our puppies. In a way it paid off for them though because the ladies in the nearby bank would always send treats home for the girls every time I walked to the bank to do business, but didn't bring the puppies along - even at the bank you could hear them howl. Yet, as much as they were a part of our family, do not ever forget that they were sisters, first, always.

They slept side by side, ran side by side, walked the yard side by side, chased off birds in the yard side by side, laid in the family room side by side, waited at the door for me to walk in side by side, well, you get it. They have been a matched set from that very first day I met them - and both of them have made it abundantly clear to everyone else in the family that, though they loved our whole family, I was the one who picked them up from the field . . . and they first slept together on the seat of my truck as I brought them home. They loved me and I loved them.

A week and two days ago this idyllic scene changed drastically. Mullie had developed an infection about a month earlier and it seemed that no matter what we did, what treatments we used or how we tended to her, she just did not seem to get over the hump. She would be better some days than others, but never completely cured. Dr. Beth and the staff at the Mascoutah Animal Hospital were great, working with us, exploring, testing, caring in every way they could, but whatever was going on in her body was just not going to leave. Then, a day before she died, she had a seizure, came back from it, then had another the next morning. It was just too much. Mulligan went Home.

I cannot write these words here without tears which, I guess, is why I have not said anything until now. I simply couldn't. My heart, Nancy's heart, all of our hearts, have been terribly wounded and filled with grief in these days.

In the picture above, Mullie is the one whose head is up, looking alertly into the sky. Ever the watchful one, ever the one taking care of Birdie, ever the one who never let anything get by the both of them, ever the one who would post herself at the edge of the pool when our kids and grandkids were there swimming (No, she never went in just for the fun of it), she always was taking care of her family, even as I suspect she took care of Birdie in those days after being dumped out in the country. Now, Mullie is watching over us from a much higher vantage point.

I have read the poems about the Rainbow Bridge, heard and spoken all of the comforting words which one person says to the other in such times yet, right now in these moments, they all seem to be just words, echoes of compassion bouncing off of empty walls in the room where once we all had laughed and loved together. As I watched her pass from this world into the fullness of God's heart, even knowing and believing as I do that she was no longer in pain or struggling, still I could not control the tears or the sorrow. Such is the inevitable cost of loving deeply, I suppose, but oh what a cost I would be willing to pay all over again to receive such a gift as we had in our shared journey together! Mullie made our world better and now she waits on the other side of Heaven, attentively watching until we arrive at the Door, as well.

If such parting is this hard on us, how hard is it on God in all of our lives, in all of our days, in all of our journey together? How hard was it on God to come to us in Bethlehem in the Son, only to know what twisted fate awaited Him for simply keeping the faith and loving as He was Loved? Only God knows such things, yet of this I am certain: Even as I watch Birdie check every fence, continue to scout out my truck in which Mullie took her last ride and walk around the inside of our home each day, desperately hoping I think, to find her sister, so it is with God in that moment when we turn away. God will always keep looking for us and death will never be a barrier for the truest of such Love. The empty tomb is our assurance of that.

Thank you, my dear Mullie-girl, for sharing your whole life with all of us. Yours is the kind of love for others of which poets dream and lovers aspire. You continue to live in our hearts precisely because you allowed us in your heart all your life long. Tell Licorice and Trajan hello from our family and know you will be missed. Until we meet again, Sweet, Sweet, Mullie-Girl . . . .