I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.

Lily was born in a small pole-barn. She spent the first year of her life in that tiny pole-barn with 71 of her relatives, living in her own waste. I don’t want to spend too much time on her backstory or how emotionally shut down she was when she was first rescued because she is so much more than her past. Suffice it to say it was bad, and to say she was scarred is an understatement.

Lily came to me broken and in tiny, shattered, unrecognizable pieces. She was not a dog, at least not a dog that I had ever seen. It was like someone had gone out into the woods, captured a full grown wild deer, brought them into my home and expected them to act like a dog.  She was terrified of absolutely everything. 

Her recovery was both long and nearly overnight. It was unending yet immediate. Because I am also a trauma survivor with diagnosed PTSD I understood her. I instinctively knew how and when to move around her, when to push and when to back off. I knew the demons she was battling, the monsters that lurked around each corner. I offered her protection from the monsters and she knew it. We were in sync almost immediately.

Lily came to live with us on January 11, 2013. Because she was a severe flight risk she had to be carried into our house in a crate and all the way into the master bathroom. When we took her out to potty she had to be triple leashed. She wouldn’t look in my general direction for the first six days. She was terrified of humans - not shy, not fearful, absolutely terrified. Two months to the day from when she was brought inside in that crate, she climbed up on the couch next to me and laid her head on my lap, for the first of hundreds of times to come.

Another favorite spot was a wooded campground outside Bend, Oregon. Walking trails surround the perimeter of the campground that most campers don’t know about and Lily was able to walk peacefully without too much threat of seeing humans.

Lily trusted only three people and surprisingly, one of them was a child. My granddaughter spent a lot of time with me from the time she was a newborn and from the beginning Lily was interested in her, even giving her an occasional kiss. However, I was worried that when the tiny human began to crawl, then walk, then run (yikes), Lily would backslide and never come out of the bedroom again. Much to my surprise, Lily and my wild, always-on-the-go granddaughter became bff’s and in Lily’s eyes, she could do no wrong. Over the seven years they shared together there were many bedtime stories told, naps shared, movies watched, backyard chases and treasured photos framed.

Everything about our lives, every decision we made was for Lily and I wouldn’t change a thing. From the moment she came into our house in that crate our world revolved around her and how to make her life better.

Where do we vacation to avoid humans? If people come to the house we have to get Lily pottied before they come and they have to leave within a few hours so she can potty again because if she knows they’re here she won’t come back in the house. Where can we take Lily and our other dogs for adventures where there are no humans?

Humans were Lily’s kryptonite. Oh, how the humans were scary for her. Which is why it was gut-wrenching when Lily got sick in November, 2020.  Lily ate a large bag of salmon cat foot and developed a severe case of pancreatitis and spent nearly three weeks in the ICU. This was at the height of COVID and hospitals weren’t allowing parents to visit but the hospital took pity on Lily’s emotional plight and allowed me four hours a day to visit with her. But leaving her every day was like a kick to the stomach, for both of us. Lily was sick, very very sick. Her bilirubin hovered around 20, her ALT and ALK were also off the charts, we had to tap her chest daily to relieve the pressure off her lungs, she didn’t eat so needed an NG tube, and needed an albumin transfusion. On the day she was finally scheduled to come home she crashed, became hypotensive and nearly died. Three days later she was finally home.

After the pancreatitis nightmare she had to brave the vet every quarter for regular labs to make sure her liver and lungs hadn’t suffered permanent damage and to ensure other issues like diabetes or kidney disease hadn’t crept in.

Ten months later routine labs showed significantly elevated liver values and an abdominal ultrasound revealed a gallbladder mucocele.  After consultations with three surgeons, our regular vet, an internist and the vet who did the ultrasound we opted to monitor the mucosele rather than operate, which meant quarterly ultrasounds. Quarterly kryptonite, but we could avoid surgery and the potential - based on the proximity of the gallbladder to the pancreas - of triggering another round of pancreatitis.

So in November 2022 when Lily suddenly looked at me, stood up, tail between her legs, back hunched and pensively sat next to me, I knew something was very wrong. I suspected the mucocele had ruptured and that meant I needed to get her into surgery immediately. I was not at all prepared for the doctor to tell us my baby girl, the love of my life, this fighter, the one who had been through so much, this brave, resilient, beautiful angel, my Lily Girl, had free fluid (blood) in her abdomen from a ruptured mass on her spleen. And that the mass was most likely caused by a very aggressive cancer called Hemangiosarcoma which has a prognosis of 1-3 months with a splenectomy, and 4-6 months with surgery and chemo, or alternatively, there’s euthanasia. These were our options. All the while she was hemorrhaging…what would you like to do?

The floor opened up and swallowed me.

We rushed her into surgery. We began chemo immediately. We started her on mushroom therapy and did healing sessions with a Shaman. If someone had told me I could fly her to Greenland or Paraguay or the Moon for treatment I would have done that. Anything. Always, anything and everything for Lil. There was nothing we wouldn’t do for her.

I was fortunate in that I was able to communicate with her throughout her illness. She was able to tell me what she wanted and didn’t want. Mostly, she wanted to go for long walks by the river, and so we did.

We had eight more beautiful months with my girl. Eight more months where I got to touch her and stare at her sweet face. Eight more months of spooning her, of hearing her snore and seeing her play. Eight more months of seeing her face get a little more grey and her body get a little bit older.

She left this earth peacefully while looking into my eyes, surrounded by humans she trusted and loved. And while she is not in this earthly realm anymore, at least not in a way I can see her with my eyes, I know she is still here. I communicate with her and I feel her energy. As someone very close to me said when I needed to hear it most: “It’s like driving a car. When you drive a car you aren’t the car. Her soul isn’t gone, she’ll never be gone. She just got out of the car”.

People always say how lucky she was that I adopted her and it’s just not true. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I was - no - am the lucky one. She taught me everything; about life, love, death and courage. She taught me to slow down and see beauty in the simple things like a moth dancing near a light. She taught me to live life fully. Lily was kind and loving, and gave the best kisses. Lily lived with fear but walked in courage every single day of her life, and it is the greatest honor of my life to be her mama.

My work in this field is because of, and for, Lily. It is her legacy, I hope I make her proud.

Early on in Lily’s time with us I took her outside to go potty and when we walked out the back door there was a moth fluttering by the porch light. Lily, presumably never having seen a moth before, stood on her back legs so she could get as close to this intriguing winged creature as possible, not to harm it but to sniff, see, inspect it. She stood there, in awe of it, watching it dance among the light for what seemed like an eternity. I stood watching her, in awe of her innocence, her grace, her kindness. She had not one desire to snatch it in her mouth, not one notion of harming it ever entered her brain. She was perfection.

Everyday life was difficult for Lily, everything took time for her. She had to know she was safe in everything she did. It initially took three weeks to teach/convince her to get in the car. Eight years to convince her there were no monsters waiting for her on the other side of the back door. If we were going to try something new we had to strategize how we would introduce it to her and work around her needs.

But for all of Lily’s challenges (and there were plenty) there were many, many more victories. I like to say she lived a big life in her small bubble. Lily had four “safe spaces”; me, our home, my car, and our RV.  Within the confines of those safe spaces she lived a huge, beautiful life.

My husband and I used to long distance backpack and tent camp but when Lily came into our lives we knew that was no longer an option. We wanted to still be able to enjoy the outdoors so we bought an RV for her which she surprisingly took to immediately. We spent a lot of time in our RV, specifically in dispersed sites and areas where there weren’t a lot of people, so Lily could relax and enjoy her walks without the threat of humans.

We spent nearly four weeks each year traveling between the coast to the mountains of Washington and Oregon. Aside from our yard, Lily was first able to run off-leash at Neah Bay, the northern most tip of Washington state, during a crisp, sunny winter sunset in December, 2014. 

She and her sister Daisy (from the same rescue) spent hours off-leash at our favorite mountain getaway near Lake Wenatchee, in Washington state. They would bound down the trails, their long graceful legs dancing through the woods, sniffing the chipmunks and elk who had passed through earlier, always looking back to make sure we weren’t far behind. And even though Lily wasn’t a water dog she trusted me enough to follow me into the river and across to the other side where we could sit on the beach while they explored their surroundings.