Once in your lifetime, if you’re very, very lucky, you’ll get the chance to own and love a dog like our Sweet Ariel.
We lost Ariel to transitional cell carcinoma—primary bladder cancer—on April 21, 2021. We had owned two other Pembroke Welsh Corgis before Ariel. Losing them was awful. Ariel’s death was brutal for us for many reasons.
I knew from the moment she died that I would want to write about her and honor her. It’s been almost a year since she went over the bridge, and I am only now able to do it. I needed time.
For days after she left us, I asked myself why she was so special and why losing her hurt so deep in our bones. I hope to do her justice here in this post.
We adopted Ariel on January 15, 2016 from her breeders, Vicki and Anna. She had been a champion in the show ring and was moving into retirement. Two months prior, we had lost our second corgi, Little Bear, at age 12 to a ruptured disc that had finally paralyzed him. We were lonely and grieving. So when we found Vicki, Anna and Ariel, we were overjoyed. Here was a new corgi for us to love, one who was ready to enjoy being the only dog in the home and all the attention that would bring.
The day we met Ariel, we were immediately struck by how beautiful she was. She was a truly fine example of her breed—easily the prettiest corgi I had ever laid eyes on—and she was about to make us a family of three again. We were so grateful.
If you ask me what I’ll remember most about her physical features, the answer would be easy: her ears.
Her big, beautiful ears were the softest things on this planet. I would tell people they were as soft as mink, but I truly believe they were softer. Loving on Ariel’s ears was comforting for me, and she never grew tired of it.
I think Ariel knew she was beautiful. She wasn’t aloof. She just carried herself in a way that was elegant and dignified. By the same token, she didn’t suffer fools lightly. She hated it when I’d get the iPhone out and start taking too many photos. Her “put the phone away” look was well developed.
I spoke to Ariel in a British accent much of the time. “Hello dahling. Good morning, love.” Jimmy would sing to her every morning—a little tune he made up, “Ariel is my buddy.” And off they’d go to Dunkin Donuts for Jimmy’s morning coffee and egg white wrap. She was a drive-thru celebrity at our DD stores in Virginia and here in Pennsylvania. The crews simply adored her. Like me, they loved her soft ears and would pet them every chance they got.
Ariel was Jimmy’s 24/7 friend. She literally never left his side unless she had to be in her crate for a short while.
She fished with Jimmy countless times for puppy drum and speckled trout, completely at home on our Carolina Skiff.
When I fished with them, she would always curl up in my lap on the way home. And she had a very memorable approach to dock photos.
I’d estimate that 50 percent of our time with Ariel was spent giving her long, luxurious belly rubs.
She lived for them. If Jimmy wasn’t picking up on her belly rub vibe quickly enough, she would sit on the bed or next to him on the floor and bark at him until he got the message. A belly rub was successful when Ariel made her “pig noises,” little soft grunts of bliss and corgi contentment.
She was only my dog when she heard fireworks or thunder and was scared. I would hold her and pet her slowly for hours.
I was ok with the fact that she was Jimmy’s dog. I loved how they loved each other.
In February of last year, after treating her for a urinary tract infection, we sought help from a respected veterinary practice near Penn State that employs the best of their graduates. The night before the first sonogram they’d scheduled was a rough one for me. I hugged Ariel and cried into her fur softly, “You just have to be ok.”
In 24 hours we would learn she wasn’t ok. And this would not be about us. We would have to be careful not to place our neediness of her over her comfort.
Ariel responded well to treatment for two months. Then it became too hard on her. So we made the excruciating decision we’d had to make twice before in our lives with our corgis. We helped her peacefully over the bridge, her beauty and dignity intact.
For a full week after she was gone, I felt like I was walking around with a huge hole in my chest. It was so real it surely must have been visible to the world. Jimmy and I struggled to put one foot in front of the other and stay busy. Nothing had any meaning anymore. I would stop my perpetual motion several times a day to sob. Sob from deep, deep within. The grief had to come out of my body. I couldn’t hold it.
One morning Jimmy sat in his truck and drew this simple little picture that captured his grief for his beautiful little buddy. God, how we cried.
A couple of days later, I had a breakthrough thought in the shower. “I want this pain again. I want the chance to love another corgi. Because the joy they give us far outweighs this sorrow.”
Grieving Sweet Ariel taught me that love never dies. She lives now in both of our hearts, deepening our understanding of love. Coming to this conclusion was the one thing that made it possible for me to keep moving and see the meaning in things again.
Two weeks after Ariel’s death, an unexpected, tender blessing came to us from Vicki and Anna. This tiny little boy came into our lives. We named him Duncan.
He shares some of Ariel’s ancestry and is now expanding our capacity to love, just as Sweet Ariel, Little Bear and Punkin did before him.
I believe that God placed each of our corgis in our lives to teach us about love. The physical and emotional pain of love. And the exquisite, indelible joy of love that lives forever.
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