Pet loss stories

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Good­bye dear Jake– a reader tells his story

School mourns beloved Alice

HISTORY

Posted By BENZIE SANGMA

Posted 13 hours ago

What caught her eye draw­ing her to the road that spring day on May 3, 1979?

One would never know. But she never heard the sound of anau­to­mo­bile thun­der­ing down the road toward her. In a split sec­ond laden with sounds of screech­ing tires and a dull thud, it was all over.

Alice Mowat Whit­ney was dead.

The tragic news ric­o­cheted through the hall­ways and class­room­sof Sir James Whit­ney School for the Deaf in Belleville as teach­ers and­stu­dents bus­ied them­selves in the day’s rou­tine. Shock and grief gripped them as they found out the details of the fate of their dear pet who had lit up their days with a wag of her black tail and a glance from her warm, friendly eyes.

Donna Fano was a teacher at SJW at the time of the tragedy. She­was in her class­room that morn­ing when news of Alice’s death was announced over the school PA sys­tem. While she heard the details of the news from another teacher, she recalled that the stu­dents from dif­fer­ent res­i­dences heard of the acci­dent at break­fast time in the main school cafeteria.

A cross­breed of New­found­land water dog, which orig­i­nated in ancient times before the Euro­peans arrived in Canada, and Labrador,Alice first came into the lives of the staff and stu­dents at SJW when she was donated to the school by Far­ley Mowat in 1972. In the fol­low­ing years, she became the school’s live-in mas­cot dog.

Delv­ing into Alice’s fam­ily his­tory, Fano found an inter­est­ing lin­eage that made the SJW mas­cot even more special.

Alice’s father, Albert, was born in the New­found­land out­port of La Poille, noted Fano.

“He was one of the last of the ancient New­found­land water dog­stock. His mate was Vic­to­ria, a mostly Labrador lady; and the pair gave­birth to Alice and the rest of the pups in 1971, where she (Alice) waspet­ted by Pierre and Mar­garet Trudeau dur­ing a visit and per­haps would have become their dog if she had not been afflicted with loss of hearing.”

Instead, her brother, Far­ley Trudeau, went on to live as a mem­ber of Prime Min­is­ter Pierre Trudeau’s fam­ily for sev­eral years.

“Another brother trav­elled across the ocean as the com­pan­ion of Pre­mier Kosy­gin of the USSR. A third went to live with Cana­dian author Scott Symons, and another brother spent his adult life with Dr. JoeM­cGin­nis, author and under­wa­ter expert and explorer,” noted Fano.

Atthe time of her death, Alice had become a famil­iar and beloved part ofthe school and was espe­cially dear to all at the school for the deaf because she, too, was deaf.

Fano thought that Alice might have been the only deaf dog in North Amer­ica to have been owned by a deaf school.

“The deaf stu­dents all thought it was so cool to have a deaf pet. Not very often would they be per­mit­ted pets in the residences,“recalled Fano. “She was very lov­ing and affec­tion­ate, friendly and so agreeable.”

In an arti­cle pub­lished in The Intel­li­gencer in Feb­ru­ary 1976,a Mrs. Ryer, a coun­sel­lor with whom Alice lived dur­ing the holidays,was noted to have observed:

“She learns more quickly than other dogs who hear,” she said.“Alice under­stands and obeys sign lan­guage to sit down, come here, liedown and let’s go for a walk.”

Alice was buried in Hodg­son Woods located behind the present Sag­o­naska School.

“Stu­dents and staff grieved at the death of their school pet.The now-deceased Dr. J. Demeza gave the trib­ute at the dog’s funeral at the woods then the stu­dents and staff lined up to sprin­kle soil on the grave,” recalled Fano.

A new tomb­stone was unveiled at the site of Alice’s grave on Oct. 20, 2009 at SJW.

“The first tomb­stone, made of cement, was made by Bruce Gomes, a stu­dent in the voca­tional shop in 1979 and was set up on Alice’s grave.” said Fano. “The tomb­stone lasted almost 20 years before it broke into sec­tions from the weath­er­ing and was moved to the school archives and kept there until 2006. The cur­rent Man­u­fac­tur­ingTech­nol­ogy teacher Nor­bert Irion had plans to replace the tomb­stone with a metal cage hous­ing a slab of mar­ble with sand­blasted let­ter­ing on it but the school birth­day com­mit­tee decided to replace it with gran­ite for more durability.”

The project, she noted, was made pos­si­ble with sup­port from the OSD/SJW Alumni

Asso­ci­a­tion, Belleville Asso­ci­a­tion for the Deaf, SJW Stu­dent­Par­lia­ment, Bert ‘N Ernie’s Café (staff lounge snack bar), and SJW­stu­dents and staff. The cer­e­mo­nial event was the high­light of the 139thbirthday anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions of the Sir James Whit­ney School forthe Deaf.

You can reach Ben­zie Sangma at bsangma@cogeco.ca

23 Responses to “Pet Loss Stories”

1. Sid Korpi Says:
   February 25th, 2010 at 4:09 pm

   I awoke this morn­ing to see a large black bird atop my neighbor’s roof, stark against the new snow that cov­ered the house. Imme­di­ately, the lyrics from a song by Sting, “The Lazarus Heart,” came to mind. In it, he speaks of his mother’s impend­ing death, using the fol­low­ing image:

   Birds on the roof of my mother’s house
   I’ve no stones that chase them away.
   Birds on the roof of my mother’s house,
   Will sit on my roof someday.

   This image is espe­cially poignant to me this morn­ing because, yes­ter­day, I had to look into sweet Peb­bles’ eyes (she was my sis­ter Diane’s schnau­zer) as she closed them for the final time. For well over a month, she had been hav­ing increas­ingly fre­quent grand mal seizures and mini strokes due, her vet believes, to a brain tumor.

   It only makes sense to release a beloved ani­mal com­pan­ion from pain, fear and cer­tain death when you wit­ness his or her obvi­ous debil­i­ta­tion. Trou­ble was, the day her euthana­sia was sched­uled to take place, I walked into my sister’s house to see 12-year-old Peb­bles run­ning, jump­ing, wag­ging her tail and happy as a puppy!

   My sis­ter was, quite nat­u­rally, beside her­self with second-guessing. She sobbed, “How can I do this to my baby when she looks like this?!”

   The vet had watched Peb­bles’ symp­toms progress and had told Diane quite hon­estly that, despite med­ical inter­ven­tion, they would only get worse, and prob­a­bly quite soon. She had already ago­nized over wak­ing at night to Peb­bles’ vio­lent seiz­ing, her heart break­ing dur­ing the day as her dar­ling girl was falling down, walk­ing in end­less cir­cles, or just ’s hav­ing to per­ma­nently tilt her head remained to remain upright. Diane knew what the vet had told her was true, and it was on this that she based her most painful of all decisions.

   But surely this wasn’t the same dog we were see­ing before us today!

   If I thought Diane were mak­ing the deci­sion to put Peb­bles to sleep pre­ma­turely, I’d have told her so. What I knew in my gut was hap­pen­ing was “The Arby’s Effect” (see my book’s chap­ter by that name—“Good Grief: Find­ing Peace After Pet Loss”—for a full recounting/explanation of this phe­nom­e­non). In short, Peb­bles and we were being blessed by her final ral­ly­ing. Humans and ani­mals alike often have these moments of clar­ity, coher­ence, appar­ently spon­ta­neous healing—only to have it fol­lowed by a swift decline and death shortly there­after. My dad, my mom, my step­dad, my dog Tup­pence and my cat Genevieve all exhib­ited this before they died.

   I told Diane we were to be thank­ful for this bless­ing of a final mem­ory of Peb­bles as she was in her prime rather than dur­ing a grand mal. We shouldn’t cling to false hope and keep her alive long enough to fully dete­ri­o­rate before our eyes. Sure, we’d be cer­tain the deci­sion to let her go had been right, but wait­ing for that, in this case, would have been totally self-serving. As it was, my sis­ter showed astound­ing strength, courage and self­less love in let­ting Peb­bles go when she did. (And she claims she’s a wimp!)

   Peb­bles licked away our tears and did her best to show she was OK with her upcom­ing tran­si­tion. When her mama had said her heart-wrenching good­byes and left the exam­in­ing room, I stayed behind with this beau­ti­ful lit­tle girl who’d brought so much laugh­ter and love into both our lives. I’m so very glad I did, too, because I was able to tell my sis­ter, “Peb­bles was ready. She wasn’t afraid; she didn’t strug­gle, flinch, or cry out as she got her shot.” I’d kneeled in front of her and held her head in my hands and looked into her eyes, show­er­ing her with love and prayers that our mother (“Gamma Lu,” who art in heaven with all our past pets) would lov­ingly gather up Peb­bles in her arms. Those sweet eyes gen­tly closed and she went on to her next life.

   Alone in the room with Peb­bles after­ward, I sent her on with bless­ings and thanks (and oh, lordy, such tears) and I asked her to send us signs that she was all right.

   My visit from the rooftop bird was my first sign. “The Lazarus Heart” song goes on to say, “Every­day another mir­a­cle. Only death will keep us apart.”

   And that sep­a­ra­tion, in the grand scheme of things, will last only a twin­kling of an eye. It’s just that in this life, it feels like we’re alter­nately liv­ing in slow motion, pro­long­ing the pain of loss, and fast-forwarding through the won­der­ful times, mak­ing them seem all too fleeting.

   I need to work on revers­ing that process.

   Thank you, Peb­bles, for open­ing my eyes to that need. We’ll always love you, sweet dog.



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