I wasn't supposed to need to write this post for three more years. That was the plan. Three. More. Years.
Why the hell do plans keep falling apart for us lately?
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I never planned to give in. I knew within hours of meeting Mr. Husband that he loved Bulldogs, but I didn't expect to ever have one living in my house. I guess when a guy has a tattoo of an animal and he has spent his entire life trying to scheme to get that animal, you should know that your plan to resist is doomed to fail.
And my plan failed miserably.
The first thing that happened was that Mr. Husband managed to kick some serious butt at work one month. He wound up with a bonus that more than covered the cost of our kitchen remodel. It's hard to tell a guy he can't buy his dream dog when you're standing inside your shiny new kitchen thinking lusty thoughts about your new crown moulding.
Then he started asking when he was getting his Bulldog EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. His persistence almost qualified as a form of torture.
And then there was this.
Bulldog puppies are the cutest damn puppies that have ever walked this earth. It's true. And Meg was the sweetest puppy EVER.
There was no way I could resist once I had spent ten seconds around baby Meg.
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Meg grew up to be everything I expected: a farting, snorting, drooling beast that had about as much grace as a bowling ball with legs. While that description is essentially everything I don't like in a dog, Mr. Husband adored everything about her. He loved her almost as much as he loved me. She was his dream come true.
He loved her so much that he happily tolerated me complaining about that dog every single day for nearly eight years. She drove me to the limits of insanity with her never-ending need to be wherever I was, constantly gnawing on her paws or snoring or snorting like a an old lawn mower. If her plan was to try to charm me with her constant need to be noisy, she failed miserably. I couldn't be charmed.
But it never stopped her.
Nothing ever stopped her.
Meg did whatever she wanted to do whenever she wanted to do it. She was all Bully.
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Every evening at our house is virtually identical. Mr. Husband disappears down to his man cave and I curl up on the couch with my laptop. Alexis does whatever she wants to do, as did Meg. And what Meg nearly always wanted to do was to shove her big, stinky butt all up in my business. I would tell her to get off of the couch over and over and over again. Each and every time she would obey, but would immediately boomerang back up without so much as pausing. It was if she was saying, "Yeah, I know what you want me to do and I'm willing to prove I'm smart enough to obey, but I'm still going to do whatever I want."
I'd tolerate her noisy presence for a while, but would eventually start to lose my mind. It was usually somewhere around the second or third room-clearing fart that I would chase her down to the man cave. She belonged down with Mr. Husband. Not with me. That was the plan.
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Things were going according to plan. Meg had annoyed me to the point of insanity. I had chased her down to the man cave. Mr. Husband was doing what he had done every night for as long as I can remember--he was playing with Meg. Her favorite thing in the whole wide world was to play Keep-a-Way. She would grab a bone-shaped fleece toy and dare you to try to take it from her. If you tried, she would snag it and run away. If you managed to grab hold of it, she would clamp down as hard as she could and pull and pull and pull and pull until your arm was ripped clean off of your body. Or until you let go. Whichever came first.
All they were doing was playing, just like every other night.
Meg went from grinning her idiot Bulldog grin to collapsing in a pile of fur and wrinkles in an instant.
Mr. Husband pulled her into his arms and carried her upstairs, all the while trying to figure out what had happened. We didn't even have time to start stressing over how we would pay for an emergency trip to the vet's office. She was gone less than five minutes after she collapsed.
Just like *that.*
Gone.
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The plan was for her to follow along with the statistics that define the English Bulldog breed. They are supposed to live 8-10 years, but of course Meg was healthy and active and made frequent trips to the vet, so she was going to live just a little past that maximum expectation.
She was always a little bit exceptional, so it was a reasonable plan.
We forgot to factor in that 20% of English Bulldogs die suddenly of cardiac issues. We don't know for a fact what exactly happened, but it's not hard to guess.
Meg followed a plan. It just wasn't our plan.
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There was exactly one person who could convince Meg to do her bidding: Alexis. Alexis was born with magical powers over that dog. She could put clothes on her, force her to move off of the couch, convince her to have a tea party . . . anything. For as bumbling and stubborn and klutzy as Meg was, she was miraculously gentle and tolerant with Alexis.
The news that Meg's heart had stopped and she was gone didn't go over well.
With anyone, really.
We'll miss you Megara Madison.
