Requiem For A Vizla

I don’t often publish guest posts on the Underground, but when I received this from an Undergrounder, I immediately asked to post it. [Name Redacted] said yes, and we are the richer for it.

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Requiem For a Vizla, by [Name Redacted]

Among the saddest things in life is that we outlive our dogs.

Sienna was a petulant princess in a red fur coat. There may never have been been a more demanding creature — animal or otherwise. Accompanying her imperious personality was a lot of highly un-doglike behavior.

She would watch (scrutinize actually) television for hours waiting to see animals. If animals or even close cartoon likenesses of animals — like an elephant logo on Animal Planet — appeared, she would charge the television barking, ready to fight or at least sniff. All our TV screens wore nose blotches from these electronic encounters.

She was never once deceived by a human dressed in a costume. Now that it is too late I realize that we should have screened the famous Northern California footage of the purported Sasquatch so that she could have authoritatively settled its authenticity.

The most astonishing example of how attuned Sienna was to animals was when she ran barking at a windblown leopard-pattern scarf being worn by a starlet in a 60′s driving scene.

Demanding? Several times almost every night she would start up a tiny plaintive ” Uh huh, huh, huh” just loud and repetitive enough to wake Janet or me up to re-cover her with a blanket.

Like Chico Marx she loved to rest her body on people. She particularly liked planting her bottom on people’s feet or sitting in their laps. It must have seemed to Sienna that people existed mainly to cushion her from hard objects.

Unlike the good dogs that obediently request permission to sit anywhere but on the floor, Sienna knew that she belonged in lofty places. Even at the Vet’s Office she would automatically jump up on one of the plastic chairs in the waiting room. During a recent visit that included a nail trim her pose moved one of the veterinary technicians to say “Here comes Sienna for her pedicure.”

Vizslas are supposed to be what is called “versatile” hunting dogs; capable of marking and retrieving all sorts of game, including waterfowl.

Sienna would have none of that. Her self-appointed role in the field was narrowly focused — locate and point living birds. At that specialty she excelled. Her nose (the same nose that unerringly knew when you had opened a Hershey Kiss upstairs) was spectacular. She could smell pheasants from a football field away and was clever enough to anticipate their every evasive maneuver. Her fluid grace tracking birds was enthralling to follow.

Once a bird was dead, though, she lost all interest, as if to say, “You shot it, pick up yourself.”

Sienna also drew the line at swimming. She hated even getting her dainty paws wet. Reluctantly she would sometimes wade into the water, but never deeper than her chest. The few times we tried to force her to swim her frantic flailing was hilarious; they became part of family lore.

Like other royals she was afflicted with genetic infirmities of the too narrowly bred. She was allergic to beef and had to eat what we dubbed Klamath Falls Diet: duck and potato dog food.

This rare and expensive kibble was augmented with freshly cooked chicken; smoked during the summer months, crock-potted during the winter. She tolerated this diet (much better nutrition than what is available to most of humanity) but preferred to daintily pull a piece of whatever you were having off a dinner fork.

The combination of her Futaki-horned, overly convoluted ear passages and her allergies necessitated constant otic attention. Something she often provoked by loud and persistent ear rubbing with her paws or on the carpet.

She had a collection of more than a dozen “dollies” strewn about the house; stuffed animals with their offending eyes pulled off. She liked to sleep with them and would carry one into the living room whenever a guest visited or absent family member returned home. She would then insist on a game of catch, never really accepting the part where she had to return the animal to the thrower. Instead she would trot back and then immediately turn her back, forcing you to either pull or verbally command her to drop the animal.

We hear that animals live in the moment; Sienna planned for the future. When all of us left the house for prolonged periods she’d stash food, her favorite being unopened bags of bread; food laid away against the eventuality that this time we wouldn’t return.

Sienna had been such a part of our lives for so long — half of Anna’s life and two-thirds of Robby’s — that it’s impossible to believe that this time she is the one who won’t be back.