My Simone-y, Smackrel, Sausage, Samoomoo, My Manire

It feels like someone put a gun to my chest and fired. No, more like a canon. In death, I celebrate her life. I think of the times she threw up in my car because she got car sick, ripped all cable line from the house, ate every single strap on my new lounge chairs and ripped the patio posts right off with nails showing out of both ends. She never failed to greet me with a smile and man could she smile, even when she ate a wasp and her face was swollen equal her body weight. The basis of her personality was so gentle and mellow yet she had the stubbornness of all the bulls in Spain.

Probably one of my favorite/morbid stories of Simone is when my cat, Alvin, died tragically. Being emotionally distraught, I decided to bury him in the backyard so he could always be with me. After a day or two, Simone, 1, smelled a project coming on. . . .coming on strong. I would go to work and always look forward to coming home to see my happy, wiggly baby. I would burst open the back door and there would be my happy wiggly dog. . . . .although now, along with my dug up dead, deteriorating cat, Alvin.

My mortification was beyond anything I can describe other than I had to relive the death of my cat over and over again each night when I got home from work. I came up with a plan as I dragged his lifeless, chubby body by this skinny legs back to his grave for the third and, hopefully final time. I put hot sauce and lots of black pepper on top of his grave so if Simone felt the need to dig into her project, she would be deterred.

The next night I hesitantly opened the back door and there was my happy, wiggly baby sans my dead cat. I thought, I'm a genius. My plan worked.

That night I slept confidently and soundly until I woke up out of a dead sleep at 2 am to the most horrific smell in my tiny one bedroom house. I saw that Simone got sick; and I mean really soupy sick all over the living room rug. I was up all night cleaning and airing out the house. Simone seemed fine once she got it all out of her system although there was no sleep for me. Just as the sun began to rise was I able to breathe through my nose again and I slept for a few more minutes until I had to go to work.

When I woke up, I thought to myself, wait a minute. I walked through my huge backyard all the way over to where Alvin was buried and lo and behold, there was his leg sticking straight up from his grave and half of it was missing, the half that was in Simones' sickness.

For a split second, just a split one, I had really bad thoughts toward my happy, wiggly baby. It was a Friday. I needed to remove her from the premises until I could figure out what to do. If I put her in a kennel, there was a great likelihood that she would get colitis as she did nine times out of ten when she was kenneled. With my hands tied, off to the kennel we went but this time, I brought my shoes, blankets and clothes to leave in the kennel with her so she could be near me while I was gone. I rented out the biggest one they had and I sat in there with her for almost an hour with all my leave behinds to help her get comfortable and to adjust. Although I was pretty frustrated with her, she smiled and said with her eyes "Mom, I'm a dog. I'm doing what dogs do." I told the kennel people I would be back on Monday to pick her up.

I went to work that day on about 10 minutes of sleep. I made it through the day. I got home and called my friend Janet for help on what to do with poor Alvin. Janet was my first choice because a) she loved Alvin and would have his best interest and heart and b) she was an architect with a degree from Sci-Arc, the school best known for testing the limits of architecture. Her senior thesis was a 40 foot long display of Wilshire Boulevard. Someone with that kind of mind would surely have an answer of what to do. And I was right.

Janet came right over and told me to get in the car. I didn't ask too many questions, I just trusted. We soon pulled into the parking lot of Home Depot. I followed her in and she lead me down the cement isle. We quietly purchased the cement mix and some accessories. We went back to the house, put on our masks, mixed the cement. We dug up poor Al. We placed his now hairless body into a box, dug a deeper, wider hole and placed him in. We poured the cement on top of the box of Al, let it dry and threw a piece of sod over the top. During the entire process we hardly said a word. We washed up and just stared at it and nervously giggled. It was weird.

On Monday, I picked up Simone from the kennel, colitis free, brought her home and she urgently ran to the backyard to resume her very important project. She sniffed and looked high and low, shrugged her shoulders and instead settled on a rawhide under the big oak tree and was perfectly happy.

And this my friends was Simone. This is one story of many. She will live in my heart forever. Funny, silly, curious, stubborn, soft, gentle, obstinate, loyal dog who ended up being one of the best pet therapy dogs at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles.