Mego's Tribute

My trainer called to tell me I was going to get a black Labrador guide dog.  “I don’t especially like black dogs,” I thought, but had sense enough not to say.  On Friday of Memorial Day weekend 2002, the trainer, Kathryn, delivered nineteen-month-old Mesaad (pronounced meh-sod) to my door.  He had been born in Florida and was raised by a fourteen-year-old as part of a 4H project.  My now retired eleven-year-old Golden Retriever, Holly, was spending the next two weeks with my friend Margaret so Mesaad and I could get acquainted.

“You don’t look like a Mesaad to me,” I told the new black dog.  “The first thing I am going to do when the trainer leaves is change your name.” And I did.  (We will call him his real name, Mego (pronounced mee-go) from now on. 

Probably if somebody had told Mego he was fixing to get a fifty-something-year-old owner he might have thought, “I really don’t especially like older women.” 

So we spent our first weekend together.  We didn’t fall into instant love like sometimes happens with dogs, but we decided to see what happened. 

What happened was that on the very first day we were to go to work, I held his harness in my hand, stood a second, then put my left foot out and said, “Forward.”  He stood his ground.  I tried again, no movement.  After three tries the trainer said, “Pop the leash.”

“What?” I thought.  “He doesn’t like me and now you want me to correct him?”

“Pop the leash,” the trainer corrected me.

I did as instructed and Mego started walking as if he was going to the vet. 

It took almost the entire two weeks of training to get him to walk at a nice pace, do what he was told, and at least pretend to like it.  Then Kathryn left us.

Mego seemed to perk up when Holly came home, and I knew at least he had a friend to love as we got used to each other.  Every day we went walking and walking and walking.  Mego did everything I told him to do perfectly, yet something was wrong, and it wasn't with the dog.

One morning I took Mego outside and in the bright sunlight I looked into his eyes as closely as I could and believed I saw something in there, something sad, and it broke my heart.  I felt tears in my own eyes as I realized I had expected him to be just like Holly.  “You can’t help it that you are not Holly,” I told him.  You don’t have to be.  You just be Mego and we will just see all the things Mego can do.”

Some of the things Mego could do: 

Clear a bed in one leap as he chased my grandchildren through the house or hotel room;

Make Polly Pockets disappear;

 Open a loaf of bread with a single claw in a straight line from top to bottom,

Eat all the bread almost as quickly as I could get from one room over to stop him;

Dance on his hind legs when I told him to do the Mego dance;

Unzip a suitcase and pull out his food, or find any other dog’s food anywhere;

Understand and jump up because church was over when the pastor said “Amen”;

Part the waters of over a thousand souls and get me out of church so quickly I didn’t have to speak to anybody—whether I wanted to or not;

 Shred a rope toy and swallow the shreds until he had to have surgery;

Open any door just slightly opened, or push it open if it was going his way;

Open every trashcan I owned, until I bought all of them to work with a pedal;

Find my purse no matter where I might have put it down;

And put up his ears when I said the word “Listen.”

Mego and I grew closer than Forest Gump’s and Jenny’s peas and carrots.  It never occurred to me to second guess him when we walked.  Once we were at a shopping area and I was lost in the large circular space in the middle.  Streets, cars, stores, sidewalks, and people were in all directions.  Literally I found myself going in circles.  Finally, in desperation I said to Mego “Just FIND something!”  I knew if we got to any store in that area I would have an idea where we were and could get anywhere else.  He definitely took me to find something…  PetSmart.

I taught him places in the gym, such as “weights” for the resistance training, “tread” for the treadmill, and “my machine” for the elliptical.  I would go down the weight machines making comments at each one.  There is one in which you raise your hands up over your head lifting the bar, which is the hardest for me to do.  Several times I called it a “nasty machine.”   One day we went to the gym and everything was changed around.  I was surprised when Mego could still find the treadmill and the resistance training area, although the machines were not in the same order.  “I wonder what they did with that nasty machine,” I said almost under my breath.  Mego started pulling me as though I needed to hurry and get out of the way of something.  He stopped at the machine with the heavy bar to lift up.  He was named “Super Dog” at the gym and often at other places by people who watched him work.

When he was two or three-years-old he went with my son’s family and me to Disney World.  He sported a pair of Mickey Mouse ears all through the park and never complained.  He rode with me through the haunted House, and sat in the front row of Indiana Jones, never fearing when the explosions and heat seemed to be very real.

As Holly grew weaker, Mego could often be found lying beside her, washing her face and cleaning her feet.  After she left us, he always did a little crooked step every time we passed a Golden Retriever on our walks.

He rode on the floor at the bulk head of the jet when we flew to New Mexico, leading me to and through the terminals as though he might be the pilot.  On vacation once, he knew where his water and food were and he could find our room from anywhere.

One Christmas he wore a Santa Claus suit for the children at church.  Another Christmas he wore angel wings and laid at my feet as I sang in the Christmas cantata.  Every Christmas he waited for the family to leave and then stood at the closet door where he knew Santa had put his Christmas gift.  Before gifts were placed around the tree, his place to sleep was on top of the tree skirt. 

More than anybody Mego loved me, but he also loved Dr. Berry, the vet who took the rope and other things out of his tummy.  He loved all my friends and knew which ones he could count on for a stolen bite when we went out.  He loved all my family and especially my mom, who I could never get to stop feeding him fries. He was always ready to jump up quickly when he knew we were going somewhere, or even if he just thought I was about to move to get up.  Although he loved people, he always acted like he was just with ME when entering anywhere, never trying to steal the show, yet it always happened anyway.

If I watched TV he laid on the hearth in the summer time or against the couch in winter, just so he was close by.  When I worked he laid against the side of my computer desk.  At night he slept on the foot of my bed for over ten years, until arthritis set in and he could not jump up anymore.  We had to stop taking long walks then, but I always took him when I went with someone in a car.  Finally people noticed his limping and told me I was being mean to my dog.  Dr. Berry recommended a medication to try, and that medication gave us two more years of limited walks together.  I had put in for a new dog so he could retire and rest when he was twelve, but I worried because I knew he would never be happy being retired.  He was fourteen on October 19, 2013.  He was beginning to have a lot of stomach issues.  In December this got much worse and Dr. Berry and I did all we could so he could enjoy Christmas.  He fell right into the season, claiming the Christmas tree skirt for his favorite resting place, and going to Lexington to see Mom on the 31^st.  I found out that I would be getting a new guidedog on January 4, 2014.

Vivi came into Mego’s and my lives on January 4, 2014, about 2 PM.  It was a Saturday.  Mego had not done the Mego dance in months, but he did it then.  Vivi is as white as Mego was black and they did seem to fall into instant love.  However, in just a day or two after her arrival Mego began being sicker than ever with his stomach.  Ironically, Vivi began vomiting.  On the night of Tuesday January 7, Mego became so horribly sick I had to get him back to the vet first thing Wednesday morning.  Vivi’s trainer was in town and I was supposed to be training with the new dog.  I had watched Mego lie beside Vivi’s kennel every time she was put in there and wondered just what kind of conversations dogs might be able to share. 

To make the story less painful than it was, just let me say that Mego had a large tumor on his spleen and on Thursday I went with him to the vet for the final time.  I felt like a traitor, a murderer, and most of all heart-sick and grief stricken.  My trainer realized this and went to work with other people while I tried to heal.  Tears still fall as I visit the time.  If Mego were lying beside my computer desk right now he would come over and lay his beautiful black head on my lap to let me know everything is all right.

…

Vivi comes over from lying beside my computer desk, licks my leg from ankle to knee, arm from elbow to hand, then turns around and gets a toy to put in my lap.  You may not believe it, but the toy she chooses is the last one I gave Mego, his Santa Claus from last Christmas.

Mego smiles down at me from his picture.  His ears are up, his eyes are shining, and he and I do the Mego dance in my heart.   

…

“And we’ll fly across the mountains past the skies to Heaven’s doors;

Only God can find a way to make a heart as beautiful as yours.”

(From Holly’s, and now Mego’s, guide dog  song Find the Way).