["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published February 2, 2026] 2026
Despite months of heroic effort, our beloved 16-year-old bichon poodle mix, Lily, has had to leave us. Both Olof and I are inconsolable. It feels like the air has been sucked out of our house.
Lily came to us as an "emergency foster" in July of 2016, several months after our adored English bulldog Winston died of a heart attack in our living room. We were still bereft, not looking to be dog owners again. "One week max," the rescue agency promised me.
Those rescue people saw us for the mushballs that we were. Three days in, we were totally in love with Lily.
We think Lily might have been a breeder since she hadn't been spayed at almost eight. The first thing we noticed, besides her terrible teeth, was that she had no idea what dog toys were. How to play fetch. How to play tug. In fact, how to play anything.
We'd throw a small ball for her and she'd merely look at us like, "Am I supposed to be doing something with that? If so, I'm not interested."
Finally, I found her some small round rubber squeaky balls that did pique her interest but not as toys. She would gather them up protectively in a group close to her chest, her paws around them, and lick them affectionately as if they were her pups.
From time-to-time visitors to the house, not realizing that these squeaky balls were offspring and not play things, would pick one up and throw it for her. Lily would be enraged, chasing after it but immediately returning it to the rest of her litter and glowering at the guest.
"You just threw her child," we'd explain to them. "She's very sensitive about it." They were always hugely apologetic.
Lily was my little shadow, following me around the house, always waiting eagerly by the front door when I came home. Unlike my kids, she was always so deliriously happy to see me. When I did my yoga exercises on the floor, she created a new pose, Cat and Cow Over Dog. She slept snuggled up between Olof and me at night, and napped with me every afternoon. There wasn't a household chore that either Olof or I did that she didn't cheerfully oversee.
If the bathroom door were not closed tightly, Lily would nose it open and join the often-startled occupant. For her, bathroom activities were very much a communal activity. In fact, she was fairly annoyed if you excluded her and would park herself just outside the door where you could easily trip over her and do a face plant into the armoire which would serve you right for being so anti-social.
If the bathroom occupant were Olof, she would join him at the commode, assessing the proceedings with the laser focus of an Olympic Figure Skating judge. Artistic presentation? Meh. But given the added difficulty elements inherent in Olof s age, she was more than willing to bump up the score for technical merit.
While Lily became fast friends with our pool guy, she regarded our lawn maintenance man as her mortal enemy. The second he showed up on Wednesdays, 17 pounds of furious white fluff was hurling itself at our French doors. "He's stealing our grass! Again! And you let him!" She was eager to sink her three remaining teeth into the side of his mower.
As Lily got older, her need for sudden trips outside in the middle of the night became more frequent, a concept her aging owners could identify with. Lily would suddenly leap off the bed and run for the front door. I wouldn't even have time to step into slip-on shoes, as I raced to the door behind her, hoping to get it open before there was a "clean up on aisle five." It used to be that I'd stand on the front porch and keep an eye on her while she performed, but with the increasing preponderance of coyotes in our neighborhood, I'd grab the flashlight by the front door and rush out after her.
Our newspaper guy generally delivers our newspaper between three and four a.m. On multiple occasions, he would pull up to see me running around my front yard in my nightgown and bare feet waving a flashlight in my hand. I'm not sure he ever realized there was a dog involved. Fortunately, I tip well at Christmas.
In the time we had her, we funded multiple dental procedures, two new knees, and thousands of dollars worth of digestive diagnostics, meds, and special diets. The pet insurance companies we looked into wouldn't pay for most of this, especially the new knees. We called her our 401-Canine. She was worth every penny.
By the time she passed away, Lily was on her 15th life. Really. Her initial brushes with death occurred in late 2022 when she suddenly and explicably stopped eating and had difficulty walking. We amassed a two-inch thick file of evaluations. Just when we truly thought it was the end, we were referred to a retired integrative veterinarian (as in practicing both eastern and western approaches), who, in the first two minutes of examining her, announced, "Well, the first thing I'm noticing is that her jaw is dislocated. No wonder she's not eating." Feeling down her spine, he noted that her sacroiliac joint was out of place too. He adjusted both, did some acupuncture, and thirty minutes later when I brought her home, Lily scampered up the front steps and wolfed down three plates of food.
Had she fallen off our bed? Been dropped at the groomer? We'll never know. But she was cured. Even if a western-trained vet had diagnosed these issues, they wouldn't have been able to treat them. Having three more years with Lily was a gift beyond measure. And we gained a profound new respect for the power of alternate approaches to veterinary care.
Last August, however, Lily suddenly stopped eating again. Definitely not her jaw this time. We ran up yet another $3,600 in vet bills in three weeks but no source of this malady could be determined by tests. Once again, it looked like the end. One vet wanted us to have her admitted to a veterinary hospital for four days of feeding with a nasogastric tube. We could not do this to a 16-year-old dog who would be incredibly traumatized. I cried buckets. I think what finally helped was Lily looking at me one day and saying, "OK, I'll eat if you'll just stop crying." As mysteriously she had stopped eating, she started eating again.
Well, mostly. Unfortunately, she wasn't eating enough most days to sustain her weight, and certainly not to regain the weight she'd lost. While she seemed like her same happy Lily self, we watched her weight slide from her normal 17.5 pounds down to 12 in January despite every digestive medication and prescription diet imaginable. She looked thin and frail. While labs in September hadn't shown anything definitive, now her labs were showing significant kidney disease and high levels of phosphorus. If we were to have any hope of prolonging her life - no guarantees - we were advised that we needed to have her admitted to a veterinary hospital for several days of IV fluids under sedation.
Like the nasogastric tube, we couldn't bear to do that to this poor little dog. But we were able to arrange outpatient subcutaneous fluids and administered phosphate binders to reduce her phosphorus levels.
Sadly, it wasn't enough. For the last five months, my happiness level could be quantified on how much my dog ate that day. I just wanted her not to die at Christmas, and she obligingly didn't. Her labs continued to deteriorate. And ultimately we had to make the heartbreaking decision to put her down.
Millions of people go through this profound level of grief every year. Our beloved animals count on us to take care of them when it's time. I get it, but I still feel like my heart has been ripped out of my body. Making the euthanasia appointment was the worst call of my life.
Lily's passing has just flattened us. She was just so much of a part of our minute-by-minute retiree lives and we can t help but be reminded of her dozens of times a day. For two people who never went looking for a dog, that sneaky little girl totally took us hostage. The profound ache we feel just won't go away nor, maybe, should it completely. Any creature - human or animal - who makes such an in-road into one's heart deserves a place there forever.
Let me say that there is nothing better when you're having a bad day than a small dog snuggled up in your lap. It also works when you're having a good day. The unconditional love of an animal has to be one of the most powerfully positive emotions ever. Which makes the loss of it so devastating.
On her last day, I sat outside in the sun with Lily wrapped in her blanket. We listened to the birds and I rubbed her soft wooly head. I thanked her over and over for all the love she had brought not only to us, but to our friends and the rest of the family as well. She licked my hand. The next morning, she took her final breaths in Olof's arms.
Rest in peace, Lily. You were pure joy. I know you are in a better place. We most definitely are not.
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