Yesterday I finally donated all of Indiana’s toys to the shelter. He’s been gone more than 16 months and all I had been able to do before now is put them in a box and shove it in a closet. His bed had stayed untouched in my bedroom floor until yesterday. 

I have wanted to write this tribute to him since the day he died I just couldn’t face it. I am sobbing now. He’s been gone for more than a year. I have gotten used to life without him. Long after his medication alarms stopped going off at 8:30 on the dot, morning and night, my body just knew what time it was. 

If you’re one of those people who thinks pets are just animals then this blog probably isn’t for you. 

That doggie was my child. My savior. My confidante. A lot of days, my reason to function. I went to work so I could afford his treats. 

I found him on Craigslist in 2008. I was married to my first husband and living in Nashville. My ex had two beautiful labs that he took hunting with him almost every weekend. I decided I wanted a little dog who would stay with me. When I talked to my ex about it, he said, and I quote, “yeah, you probably need a dog so that when you leave me, you won’t try to take mine.” He wrote it in an email and I wisely saved it. It became useful later. 

The puppy on Craigslist was named Hershnilla, a portmanteau of Hershey and vanilla. He had a Boston terrier mother and a chihuahua father. A young mom had gotten him for her five year old daughter (who graced him with the name) but the little girl lost interest and the mom didn’t have time to take care of him. In the Craigslist photo, he was four pounds with a little blue tshirt on. His ears were so big and floppy they almost brushed the ground. I can picture the look in his little eyes to this day. I emailed her and paid 200 dollars I didn’t have for him. She met me in a Publix parking lot and handed me the tiniest ten week old puppy wrapped in a plush Care Bears blanket. He was buried in that blanket. 

He was shy and scared for half a day, then he burst out of his little shell like a cannon. I named him Indiana, at the time my last name was Jones. For years instead of calling his name, we just hummed the Indiana Jones theme song and he would come tearing into the room and up onto your face to announce his arrival. He was raised by those two big dogs who took such good care of him. They taught him how to climb the play set in the backyard. One day I came home from work and he was racing up the ramp and sliding down the slide over and over again. 

We moved to Houston in the fall of 2008 not long after hurricane Ike. He and I were home alone late one Saturday when someone rang the doorbell claiming to be the pizza guy. I hadn’t ordered pizza. Pind knew something was wrong. He went ballistic at the door which, fortunately, was solid wood so the creeper couldn’t see that he was just six pounds of puppy. 

Pind. His name was Indiana, Indy for short. But I learned early on that a name that begins with a vowel is hard to yell in mom tone. So it became Pind. Pindy. Pindy Pie. Piebear. He was the dog of a thousand names. 

I got to watch him gain control of those enormous ears. First one came up and locked into place so he was cockeyed for a few months. Then the other one stood up too. His ears looked so huge when his body was tiny. 

He’s the reason I got divorced. Things were falling apart with me and the ex and I knew I was in a situation I didn’t want to stay in but I was 24 and not sure what do to about it. I moved to the guest room and cried myself to sleep most nights. The ex didn’t care when I cried but that little dog did. He would hop in the bed and lick the tears off my face, keeping his warm little body pressed up against mine all night. He taught me what unconditional love felt like. 

I took him and moved out. I filed the paperwork without an attorney and tried to work with my ex to sign the papers. He threatened to take Indiana from me and I dropped the email declaration in his lap. He signed the papers, I went to court alone and closed out that chapter of my life. I’ve never seen him again. 

Indiana and I moved into our own apartment. He was sitting in my lap when I got nail glue in my eye. Before I panicked about myself I checked him up and down to make sure he was ok. Another lesson in unconditional love. 

The first time Rudy and I had lunch he asked me to tell him something about myself. I said I love my little dog. At that point, he was my whole life. Indiana being mine was written into our prenup, it’s the only stipulation I asked for. Rudy used to say I loved that dog more than him. I used to say, “well I’ve known him longer”. 

Before we moved, we lived in Houston and came out to the ranch in the hill country every other weekend. We called him the littlest ranch dog because that’s exactly what he was. He could keep pace with the ATVs, herd the deer up, and chase the ball all bloody day. We had one of those tennis ball launchers and Rudy would fling that thing a hundred plus yards into the creek bed. Pind would take off after it. We’d get maybe 30 seconds of peace before he was dancing back and forth in front of us yapping for someone to throw it again. If you didn’t throw it far enough, he would scold you and take it to someone else. 

I lost count of the number of dead things he proudly dragged up onto the porch, where he would gnaw on it and guard it like treasure. He was actually a great tracker dog, he just had no intention of alerting anyone to anything. Finder’s keepers.

He was definitely mama’s boy until we got out to the ranch. The moment Rudy cranked the Kubota, he would appear as if by magic on the seat next to him. They would fly down the dirt roads, wind in his ears, Pind barking at every bush and tree that whipped by. Sometimes he’d snap at them, get snatched out, and have to chase the Kubota down. I was convinced that’s how he would die. 

He once fought a porcupine. Came back to the house with a face full of quills. I held him down and pulled them out gently one by one. The literal second I put him on the ground, he took off back to the same tree and came back with 50 more quills in his face. 

Another time he coated himself in cow poop and then rubbed his body all over my in laws house. They were thrilled. I was mortified. 

I heard him grunting and rolling on his bed one night. He had pulled underwear out of the dirty clothes and had somehow shimmied himself into them. (Pic below)

I left my breakfast plate for two minutes one morning. When I came back my strip of bacon was gone. He puked it up whole in the yard ten minutes later. 

On two separate occasions he hiked his leg and peed right on my foot. He was staking his claim to me around other dogs. Once he peed on a friend of ours but the friend had gotten sprayed by a skunk that day and Pind was trying to help. 

He did not approve when he rescued a cat but he was such a good big brother. That abandoned little kitten adored him. 

In January 2020, he had his first seizure. It terrified me and I thought he was dying then. We decided to delay meds and watch them for awhile. By the spring they had gotten frequent enough that we started phenobarbital. Two doses a day, 12 hours apart. A schedule we stuck to until the day the died. 

He had been on the meds just a couple of weeks when we noticed him getting super fat really fast. He looked like a football. I called the vet thinking maybe it was a side effect of the meds. She said to bring him in. By the end of that week he was having an emergency splenectomy. There was a softball size tumor on his spleen. We were prepared for it to be cancer but it was benign. 

We got home from surgery and spent the next few weeks in and out of the emergency vet trying to get a bad case of pancreatitis under control. Mr. Iron Stomach could no longer eat anything he wanted. We went on a diet of baby food and boiled chicken. I fed him by hand for weeks desperate to get him to eat. He was 12 and diagnosed with congestive heart failure that same year. We started a medication for that too. 

The next couple of years felt like constant blood draws, check ups, and medication adjustments. He would have a few good months and then go downhill again. The seizures never stopped but they were very mild for a long time. By 2022 I decided to stop dragging him to doctors and let him live the rest of his days in peace. He was nearly blind and almost totally deaf. The little dog with the radar ears that could hear thunder from a hundred miles away couldn’t hear me yell his name from across the room. He hadn’t been able to jump in years so we got stairs for the couch and I put him on the bed with me every night. Then on the floor again every morning.

Looking back it feels like he went from 90 to nothing puppy to broken down old man overnight but I know that’s not true. Watching him deteriorate the last few years, I’ve all but forgotten how much energy and life he used to have. 

He did ok most of 2022 but by early summer of 2023 he was nearing the end. He couldn’t hold food down and his little eyes were clouded over. The congestive heart failure made his breathing so labored. It was suffocating him. By that point even lying on his side in a dead sleep he couldn’t breathe easily. 

For years my prayer every night had been, “Lord please just take him. Please don’t let him suffer. If it’s his time, please just take him while we sleep. Don’t make me do it. I can’t do it.”

I didn’t think I could. Be the one to make that call. But I realized that was part of the unconditional love. It was my responsibility to do what was best for him. I took him to the vet. I had made her promise me years before that she would tell me when it was time. She saw what I saw. 

We spent a couple more days at the ranch. We took him on a last Kubota ride. I don’t think he could see anything but I held him tight in my lap and he could feel the wind on his face. I barked at the trees for him. 

We took him to town and got McDonald’s chicken nuggets before going to the vet. In his younger years, we had to spell the word McDonald’s because if you said it in the car, he bounced around like a pinball. For 15 years I never ate a whole nugget. 

I held him tight while they gave him the injections that would stop his pain and shatter my heart. I laid him in his dog bed and we drove back to the ranch. I realized how peacefully he was sleeping and how long it had been. 

He is buried under an oak tree up the hill from our house. He’s wrapped in his Care Bears blanket and his favorite toy is next to him. There’s a beautiful smooth white chunk of limestone marking his grave. 

I am sobbing just as hard right now as the day I said goodbye to him. I read once that there is no end to grief. Like sand in an oyster, it eventually just gets coated with enough time that it stops hurting so much. Sweet memories can even make it beautiful in a way. 

Some days my body still can’t believe I’ll never see him again. Sometimes I think I catch a glimpse of him walking around the house. Looking at pictures breaks me down all over again. I can feel my heart contract watching videos of him. I can’t breathe for sobbing right now but I wouldn’t change any of it. I’m so grateful I got to be there for him the way he was for me. Even if he didn’t recognize me at the end, he knew he was loved. I was his safe place and he was mine. 

He transformed me from a self absorbed child into an adult whose needs no longer came first. He was my baby. I depended on him more than he depended on me. 

Maybe it won’t always be like this but I now think of my life as before and after his death. It’s like an alternate reality with him gone and I am still struggling to find a new purpose in it.

If you’ve made it this far, I’m sorry I don’t have a good ending. Nothing poignant or meaningful to say even though he deserves something. Cherish those you love and let them know it. Always be looking for the goodness and love in the world. It is all around us even when it seems hard to find. Sometimes in the form of puppy kisses or a tennis ball. Indiana taught me more about life and what really matters in 15 years than I could have learned in ten lifetimes any other way. I can no longer hold him in my arms but he will stand on my heart until I go to my grave too. 

Indiana Jones

February 5, 2008 – July 6, 2023