In October of 2004 we brought home an 8 week old Cairn Terrier (think Toto from the wizard of Oz) who we named Cordelia. As you can see from the pictures she was tiny, with more energy than even she knew what to do with. Her first couple of weeks at home were spent sleeping in Natasha's lap, eating, relaxing in her crate, or exploring her new surroundings. After she outgrew the daily napping we found that her favorite things to do were to chew, nip, and chew some more, which made things challenging! With 2 bigger dogs at home as well we had a few concerns about the 3 of them all getting along but Cordie soon made her presence known and definitely held her own with "the boys." They napped together, played, got into mischief when they could, and we had a big, happy family.
Our back yard is fenced in but Cordelia was so small that she was able to crawl under the bottom of the fence into the neighborhood. Much to our concern, there were times when she would get out and a chase would ensue... Natasha and I running up the street trying to get her to listen and come back to the house. Most often we would either have to run away from her so she would chase us or we would have to corner her in a neighbors yard. When we realized that she was quite skilled at digging her way out of our yard, we bought her a 30 foot lead on which she could be attached and allowed to run. Before we got the lead we had been attaching her leash to her collar and to the rail of our back porch, allowing her to go to the bathroom and bringing her back in. It was February after all, and the dogs didn't want to stay outside any longer than they had to.
On February 28th Natasha let Cordie out on the porch to go to the bathroom and didn't attach her to the lead that was in the yard. The lead was tangled around some lawn furniture and as it was a pretty bitter morning, using the leash just made more sense. All 3 dogs were let out and Tasha went back inside. Within 7-8 minutes she went back to the door to let the dogs in and saw that Cordelia was not on the porch. It was then that she realized that Cordie's leash was hanging off the edge of the porch and that Cordie had somehow fallen off and was still on the leash. As you can already guess, Tasha found that she had died; the leash didn't reach to the ground and she had hung.
When Natasha called me at work I could barely make out what she was saying, I just knew that something was terribly wrong because she was crying. When I realized what she was telling me I told a co-worker and left the office. I still don't remember the drive to the vets office, I just remember walking in and seeing Tasha there. Seeing Cordie was incredibly hard for me and I was confused, not feeling like I could stay and look at her but not wanting to leave her either. We got to spend some time with her and tell the vet our wishes and were able to have a lock of her fur kept for us as well. Those decisions were so hard and we had never thought about them before.
The following days, weeks, and months were full of pain and guilt. It was like nothing either of us had ever experienced and there was nothing that we could do to make the feelings go away. Time of course was the only thing that helped us and thankfully we have been able to mourn her death, keep her close in our hearts, and learn so much from the whole experience. In some respects we feel like we failed. I had guilt about not being a good enough "mommy" because I was at work all day and frustrated with her chewing and biting. Natasha felt as though she was responsible for her death and suffered with that guilt for quite a long time.
What we've learned from this experience is that while we can never be perfect parents to an animal, we have a responsibility to make whatever efforts we can to keep them safe and happy. We had materials to mend our fence but never got to putting it up because of the temperatures and snow. We had a lead that would have given her better range but we didn't always use it. We were frustrated with her behavior but we didn't take her to obedience class. These are the ways we feel we failed her. On the other hand, we loved her a great deal. We snuggled her when she let us, gave her treats and let her chew our socks, and kept her clean and cozy in her crate with her bed. We loved her and expected her to be with us for a long time.
Unfortunately, an accident took her away from us after only 4 short months. We know that we could have done more to keep her safe and we wanted to share information we have found since then that will hopefully help other puppy parents. We appreciate you taking the time to read our story and hope that the information on this site will be useful for you and your family.
Sincerely,
Natasha and Bettina, Cordie's mommies
ps. We wanted to add that something you might notice as you go through the site is that we spell her name "Cordy" sometimes and "Cordie" others. For whatever reason, when we had to spell her name we noticed that we spelled it differently. To us, that's just because of our personal connections to her... we each had different attachments and loved different things about her. On her papers she's Cordelia and to us she's our baby, no matter how we spell it.