I will never forget when Ellie was dropped on our doorstep, quite literally, nearly 13 years ago.
It was Thanksgiving 2013, and my best friend during my time in Galveston, Texas, a gentleman named Steve Mataro, and I were watching the Alabama/Auburn game with Allison and the girls.
Everyone knows I’m an Alabama grad and fan, and Steve was an Alabama fan because I was. The finish of that game was no fun for either one of us as the infamous “Kick Six” transpired, an ending Auburn fans will seemingly celebrate for eternity.
As we sat there stunned, Steve’s wife, Karmen, who hadn’t been watching the game with us, texted Allison and said, “There’s something on your doorstep I think you need.” When Allison went outside to look, it was Ellie, at the time a 6-week-old Shih Tzu no bigger than the palm of your hand.
Karmen wasn’t referring to the game, although she could have been. She was referring to the fact we had lost our dog, Dixie, earlier in the summer, and we were having a hard time getting over it.
That’s just the start of the story.
Two weeks later, I was fired from my publisher job in Galveston by the company I had worked for for 17 years. Most of you already know the story about the kind of spiral that put me on until the Good Lord helped me sort it out by working sure enough miracles in my life, and in the middle of all it was Ellie.
When it felt like everyone else in the world was either angry, disappointed or deserting me, that dog picked me to be her person, and the rest, as they say, was history.
Ellie and I pretty much went everywhere together we could after she came to us. She has seen all the highs and all the lows over the last 13 years, and there have been plenty of both, and as long as she could be with me she really didn’t worry too much about the rest.
Put it to you this way. I’ve got friends who I’ve been getting together with to watch the Alabama/Tennessee football game each year for gosh, probably 25 years now. I’m the only one who had his little dog in tow for those weekends the last 13 of them.
On those rare occasions when I had to leave her at home for some reason, she would sleep on my pillow on the bed at night. Waiting for me to get back.
So yeah, it was like that.
Why am I sharing all of this? In one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do, we had to let Ellie go on, of all days, 9/11.
In a classic example of how everything is OK until it’s not, Ellie seemed perfectly fine at the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, and we were all looking forward to the start of the college football season and Alabama football in earnest.
But by the end of the weekend her health had fallen off a cliff. When we got up on Monday to head back to Georgia from our cabin in northeast Alabama, she couldn’t get up. And she wasn’t going to make it.
We called a vet who understood the situation, Dr. Jessica Jones at DeKalb Animal Hospital, and was willing to meet us even though her clinic was closed for the holiday.
Ellie stayed with the vet who did her best for three days, came home with us for a day and we did our best, but with little change. She had developed diabetes and pancreatitis, and while we prayed for a miracle, there wasn’t getting her over it. In fact, she was getting worse.
It was awful.
I’m not going to remember Ellie that way. I’m going to remember her as that faithful companion who was game for whatever as long as she could tag along.
I’m sure going to miss that little dog.
Remember folks, you don’t get one minute back with your loved ones. Doesn’t matter how many legs they have.
Make sure you make every one of them count. Prioritize that time instead of making it be what’s left over after you’ve done everything else that you think is important.
I know I’m going to try do a better job of that. I hope you’ll join me.
Patrick Graham is the publisher of The Sand Mountain Leader and other newspapers in Alabama and Georgia. His email address is [email protected].
This is how Publisher Patrick Graham will always remember a healthy, happy Ellie. Photo by PATRICK GRAHAM l The Leader
