We had a dog named Sammy. She was a Cairn Terrier who was getting very old. My mother would kind of click her tongue when she looked at Sammy and say that it wouldn’t be too long before she would go to dog heaven. Her full name was Samantha but I sometimes think we should have called her Toto. “What’s a cairn terrier”? people would ask and we would say, “You know, just like Toto in the Wizard of Oz.”, and they would nod because everyone knows about Toto.

Last year, Sammy had given up trying to jump on the bed. She was fourteen years old at the time and her arthritis was making her legs very stiff. “Just like Grandma”, Scotty said, which was only partly true. Grandma had never jumped on the bed – or off – for that matter, but she did have arthritis in her legs.

Sammy also was having trouble climbing the steps leading to our back yard and lots of times someone had to carry her up and down the stairs. She wanted to go outside to do her business which is dog talk for going to the bathroom. Well, dogs don’t say that. People say that because they don’t like to say the words for what she was really doing and for which dogs get scolded if they ever do it in the house.

Luckily for Sammy, she had her best friend living in the house with her. Her friend’s name was Lulu and she was also a terrier – not a Cairn Terrier, but a Yorkshire Terrier and if you asked, you would be told she was a ”Yorkie”. Lulu had been a little puppy when she came into our house and though she was almost half as old as Sammy, they got along very well except once in a while when they were eating.

They had their own separate bowls and whoever finished first would stand and watch the other. Bad luck to anyone who wasn’t finished and walked away from the bowl. In the beginning, Lulu – being a puppy – would sometimes walk away and zoom, Sammy would hurry over. At first, Lulu didn’t do anything when this happened, but as she got bigger, she would growl when Sammy came over to her bowl.

The rest of the time, they would lie close to each other in whatever room the family happened to be. Sometimes they would lie on the floor and sometimes on the bed, but that changed of course, when Sammy couldn’t climb anymore.

Lulu still slept on the bed but Sammy slept on a mat under the bed. People always shook their head and mumbled stuff about how they were going to miss Sammy when she went to dog heaven but no one thought about the one who would miss Sammy the most.

It was kind of funny – strange, not ha ha - but Lulu began to look out for Sammy. When Sammy got stuck on the stairs, Lulu would run to someone in the family and bark and do the little dance she always did when she was excited or wanted attention. She wouldn’t stop until we followed her and saw that Sammy was in trouble. When Sammy started sleeping later in the morning and didn’t come out from under the bed, Lulu would bark at her as though trying to wake her up. By this time, Sammy was having trouble hearing stuff so the barking didn’t do much good.

The weeks before Sammy went to dog heaven, she didn’t even try to climb the steps. Sometimes we carried her out and sometimes she did her business in the house but no one yelled at her. Lulu ran under the bed sometimes when this happened. I guess she thought we’d blame her but we never did. I felt kind of bad for her being a dog and not able to explain what was going on.

The night Sammy went to dog heaven I woke up in the middle of the night and Lulu was sitting straight up in bed and just looking at me. She kept looking and looking – not barking just looking. She would turn her head and look away and then turn back and look at me. I told her to go to sleep but she just sat there and then I fell asleep.

In the morning, we went into the kitchen and Sammy was lying there. We thought she was sleeping but then we saw that she had gone to dog heaven. Lulu kept barking and running her little circles around Sammy and then looking back at us. We tried to explain where Sammy had gone but Lulu didn’t understand.

How do you tell a dog that her best friend has gone away and won’t be coming back? We even read a special psalm – a funny word that doesn’t sound the way you spell it. My parents said it was what people often read when someone has gone to heaven and it made them cry a lot. Something about a shepherd that I didn’t really understand and neither did Lulu.

Someone came from the doctor’s office and took Sammy to the special place where souls go to heaven. We were all sad but I think Lulu was the saddest of all. She didn’t eat her breakfast and she would run from room to room or sit by the door as if waiting for Sammy to come in. At night, she didn’t bark, but just ran around, making her little circles and going to different rooms in the house.

For many nights, Lulu would wake up and just sit as if she were listening to something no one else could hear. Although she always used to sleep on the bed, now she would sometimes sleep under the bed on Sammy’s mat. For eight years she had been with Sammy and it must have been pretty terrible for her to be alone. She wouldn’t eat in the kitchen without Sammy and we had to bring her food into the other room.

My parents said that they couldn’t believe how sad an animal could be but Lulu was sad. It was like she had been a puppy for all these years and now she was grownup. They said they were going to bring home a new puppy for her in a couple of weeks and Lulu would forget. I don’t think Lulu is ever going to forget. I think it will be like the way people feel about each other. Like Grandpa. I’ll never forget about Grandpa but it doesn’t hurt so much any more to remember him. I wish I could explain that to Lulu. Then she could think about Sammy and say goodbye.