Michelle’s Thoughts About Coping With Daisy’s Terminal Cancer Appears In High Desert Dog Magazine

While I’m traveling to Canada and Washington, DC, here’s my article that appears in the current issue of High Desert Dog magazine, www.highdesertdog.com (page 45) about lessons learned from Daisy’s terminal cancer.

Hattie's 5th birthday and the debate over size of dog

Hattie is five years old today. It's hard to believe that five years ago this time we were finishing the remodel on the house and she was getting ready to survive Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi. A lot has happened in those five years as Ginger came to live with us for a short time (before flying to Chicago to be with Mom) just a few months later and then my dad died. I finished my doctorate and the list goes on. I'm not sure where Hattie is at the moment. I thought she was under the table where I'm working but I looked down and Gidget is to my left and Nestle is behind me. She's probably snoozing somewhere on a bed. She'll get one of her favorite dentastiks later and everyone else will get a rollhide bone. I was thinking about what might be interesting to blog about on Hattie's birthday and it occurred to me that there is one piece of information that was gleaned from my dissertation that relates to Hattie's size. She is our smallest dog– even at 36 pounds! She came to us at 6 pounds and just a few weeks old. Nestle is probably still the largest, hovering somewhere around 80 pounds although Gidget is almost a year old so we're not quite sure how big she'll get. For some reason, I've always thought bigger dogs worked for me although Joe told me that he wasn't sure if he would like having "such a small dog" as Hattie but he really began to appreciate her size since she can actually be a lap dog. The others would like to be lap dogs (I just typed "laptops"– the words that fall out of our fingers when we type...) but it's dangerous when Nestle lays on you and after a while you realize you can't breathe. When we were writing my dissertation survey, which reflected on if, how, and why people use dogs to help cope with human loss (by death), my chair, Dr. Virginia Shipman, suggested we ask a question about size to see if people prefer one size of dog over another. I had read in another study where they suggested studying fur length to see if one length was more helpful to people than another. When the 100-plus surveys had been analyzed, it showed that fur length didn't matter. Nor did the size of the dog. The reality is that we are unique people and we all like something different. I actually had asked Joe to bring me back a Golden Retriever from Mississipp but he found Hattie in a county shelter and picked her because she looked like a miniature Chaco. And here we are five years later.

Citation for my dissertation

For anyone who is interested in reading more about my dissertation that focused on how people use dogs to help them cope with the death loss of a human loved one, here's the link to the citation:

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=1606882881&Fmt=7&clientI%20d=79356&RQT=309&VName=PQD

It's hard to believe it's been two years since I finished it. I have been going through the huge stacks of articles recently for my new book about the same topic. And the information has continued to grow in this area. My hope is that we can continue see new ways to use dogs and other animals so that we can find many more of them homes.

Merry Christmas and remember our loved ones who have passed on

When I think about what the holidays mean to people, I believe there are two distinct pieces that make them difficult. One is the trauma of holidays past where it's not quite remembered in a positive light (I won't elaborate- we've all had them!). The other is the reality that our deceased loved ones are not with us on this day. Obviously, in our house this year, we are especially remembering Daisy since she just died several weeks ago after her difficult battle with hemangiosarcoma. But, for me, it's also the day I remember my dad, my sister, and all my grandparents with whom I always spent Christmas until they died. This past week in Naperville I walked Ginger and Mom's Daisy. It's hard to believe that Ginger has been with Mom four years in January and Daisy was with her a year last weekend. And if Ginger has been with Mom four years, that means Dad died four years ago this coming New Year's Day. On a day like today, it's important we take the time to remember our loved ones who aren't with us in the physical world now but remain with us and as a part of who we are. See the Lío cartoon here where he remembers his mom. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Sympathy cards outnumber the holiday cards

As of today, sympathy cards for Daisy far outweigh our holiday cards. The Daisy flower arrangement is still blooming and someone commented on the number (30 in one place!) of responses to my status update on facebook that Daisy had died. My friend Ginny said Daisy truly was a loved dog. Social media (facebook, blogs, etc) plus having written a book about my crew, have allowed me to share some of our lives with people around the world. I never ever thought we would lose Daisy so early. I finished sending out our 120 holiday cards today. People often tell me they look forward to seeing what I create each year- from the card with photos of the dogs to the letter with their antics and the photo stamp with a photo of someone or something. This year I had gone with one photo of the dogs that also had Joe and Devlan. It was taken in the summer and all of them were in the pool (except Chaco and Daisy who were poolside as usual). I bought labels with Daisy and put Daisy's name on the card as I usually do with the rest of us in the Linn-Gust clan. How could I not? I really thought she'd make it through to the new year- or maybe I was just hopeful. Still, writing the letter was difficult since I had to do it just a few days after her death. It was hard to even remember much of what happened this year before her diagnosis. As I learned with my sister's suicide almost 17 years ago, these losses happen to us and give us an opportunity to teach and help others. I'm sure Daisy is here with me in her own way, nudging my armpit with her cold nose saying, "Duh! That's what I've been trying to tell you!"

Sleeping with Daisy

The idea of losing someone or something we care about does strange things to us. While we often think we know how we will act, we usually find that we act in ways that surprise us. I have been sleeping in the guestroom of my house the last few nights, simply because Daisy can't always make it up to the stairs to the master bedroom. Sometimes in the morning she will hang out with me while I shower and get ready for the day, but more often, she stays downstairs because of the mass that is growing on her hip. Before the mass popped out, every night by 8 pm, she would go upstairs by herself and sleep in the dog bed. She'd stay until some time after I went to bed. By morning, she would wake me up between 4 am and 5 am to let me know she needed to go out and that it was getting to be time to get up. Not knowing how many days she has left, I keep thinking it's best to be close to her. Last night she got in the bed with me and stayed a few hours. When I woke up at 3 am, she came back and stayed for a while longer. The master bedroom always will be there. I don't know how long Daisy will be with me though.

The Dougy Center Fire

The Dougy Center is an incredible place for grieving children and families. Many centers in the US are based on it. In June, the building was in burned down by an arsonist. If you can help with any donation, please do. The service they offer to children and families is so important to help repair lives and help people find hope again after loss. The web site is here.

The loss of a 13-year-old girl

Yesterday, I found a friend of mine, who I work with in the suicide world, had a heart attack on Friday. This rocked my reality. Although his daughters are about my age, sometimes we think people will live forever. And it's a reality check for him and his family as well. A short time later in the morning, I found out that the daughter of one of Denise's childhood friends (they go back to elementary school) had died of a brain tumor yesterday morning. She was 13. It was through facebook that we had connected because I had posted some photos of Denise and her Brownie troop and some birthday parties and Jen saw them and friended me. She worked tirelessly to help her daughter since her diagnosis last fall. I haven't been able to stop thinking about their road and reading the blog entries of the journey of Brianna and her family. Jen wrote how Brianna told her she didn't want to die. While it's a different kind of death than suicide, it's still a loss and the one of a young person always is painful. I know the grief journey they are on and I hope they continue to feel Brianna's presence in their lives because she is now with them, although in a different sense, and guiding them as they move forward without her physical presence.

Farrah, Michael, Denise, and Bonnie

When I found out that Farrah Fawcett had anal cancer, I was taken back to the cancer of my friend Bonnie who died 3 1/2 years ago. I was with Bonnie almost everyday, as long as I was in town, until her death a few months later. Today is my 10th wedding anniversary and it was Bonnie who sewed my wedding dress. Bonnie had the same cancer as Farrah. I had a Farrah haircut in fifth grade and my older sister was a big "Charlie's Angels" fan. My cousins had a gerbil named Farrah. Farrah was part of my 1970s. After I found out Farrah died yesterday, I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. I knew it was coming but sometimes it's hard to imagine someone we saw as so strong and beautiful as having deteriorated and then dying. After my husband told me about Michael Jackson's death, I thought back to my sister Denise. I was coming of age when "Thriller" came out and I sware Denise had a "PYT" shirt (I can't confirm this since my mom doesn't remember!). I never owned the "Thriller" tape but I think she did. His songs were at the top of the charts as we ambled through school and adolescence, our teen years, and life. As Dick Clark says about music on general, for us MJ's songs are on the soundtracks of our lives. Each time something that is part of my history, part of my life, ends or dies, especially when it relates to my sister or my dad or Bonnie or anyone else in my life who has died, I feel like another little piece of my life is chipped away. I hold the memories but that's it. I can't grasp the rest of it with my arms because it's not here anymore. But I am always reminded that these people have left because they accomplished what they were supposed to teach us and it was time to go. We are sad because they are gone but they all left us something behind. We wouldn't feel a need to let any emotion escape via tears or sadness if they didn't.

Article from Australia that quotes me

This article just appeared June 11 (although it's still June 10 here in New Mexico!) in Australia.