No prancing on the back of my legs,
those wonderful feelings lost, gone to stay.
No musical yawns giving me crows feet,
the sounds only haunting on this cold dark night.
No fur on my mouth while I breathe out,
just glistening salt on my trembling lips.
No dancing for repetitions of threes,
no Riley, Riley, Rileys…

Riley’s absence starkly stands out against the somberness of the house now. His presence was considered normal. Now removed, it’s painfully missing. His uniqueness lit up the room and filled it with a vibrancy and warmth that’s now forever lost. This new silence builds into deafening waves of pain that choke my heart and overflow my eyes.

This is Riley. I got Riley just over three years ago when he was about midway between puppyhood and dogdom - a secondhand dog, so to speak. His original name was just too awful to be kept. I remember riding home with him on my lap, Steven and I trying to come up with a suitable name for this little bundle of fun and energy. When I hit upon Riley, it stuck. It just fit. Like it had always been his name and it just took a little thinking on our parts to figure it out.

That’s how Riley came to be a part of our family. He came to live with me in a little studio apartment where we went through the ups and downs of training, chewing, cuddling, vet visits, bonding with his pal Earnest, and when we added Ludwig to the mix, bonding with him. His first friend was a cat named Sophie, from whom he picked up using his paws to groom his face and stalking while playing.

In 2006 we bought our first home. One of the big items on our want list while searching was a fenced yard for the dogs. Someplace they could run and play and just be dogs. Riley-dog loved to run and acted more like a greyhound when outside than he did a lapdog. So the house we bought in semi-rural Snoqualmie was a perfect fit. There was even a dog door already installed. The dogs spent many happy hours in the backyard. I would find all three of them back there sunning themselves on summer afternoons.

It was an adjustment at first for Riley. I think he felt a little overwhelmed at first and spent a few months expressing his resentment by growling at Steven. But he came to enjoy having “the pack” all together.

On Wednesday when I came home from work, I realized after a few moments that Riley hadn’t come out to greet me. After a few moments of calling his name, we escalated into full search-mode. Steven’s the one who found him on the other side of our fence lying in the neighbors’ yard. The neighbors’ dogs had managed to rip part of a fence board away and had pulled Riley through it. We think he died nearly instantly, probably a broken neck from being pulled through the fence. A 6 lb chihuahua is like nothing to a couple of 80 lb dogs. The probable speed of his death is very little comfort.

We knew of the neighbors’ dogs aggressive tendencies. We knew our little guys delighted in egging them on from the other side of the fence. We had already repaired parts of that section of fence and had added a thick plastic garden barrier at the bottom to keep any dog from digging under the fence. We installed a sonic anti-bark system that sounded everytime a dog barked in its vicinity. But we had hard rain that week and we had switched it off to keep it from sounding every 30 seconds.

We let Ludwig and Earnest see Riley’s body. It wouldn’t be fair to them to just have a member of their pack simply disappear. We wanted them to understand that he’s gone. They both took a lot of coaxing to even come outside to the back porch - as if they knew something terrible waited for them. But I felt it was necessary.

Riley was such a large and happy part of our lives these last three plus years, that it just doesn’t seem possible that he’s gone. I see Earnest and Ludwig come running to greet us at the door and I can’t help thinking to myself “There should be three of them.” I get Earnest and Ludwig treats and I no longer feel Riley bouncing off the back of my legs. I sit to watch TV for a little distraction and it kills me that my lap is empty where Riley would curl up. I hear Ludwig up at night wandering the house and know that he’s looking for his friend.

This weekend we build a second fence in the back yard. Our dogs will no longer have access to that part of the fence that borders that neighbors’ yard. I can’t bring myself to consider pressing charges. Why would I want to destroy two families? And if they destroyed the dogs, do three more deaths really make up for one, no matter how precious that life was?

For now we’ll grieve. And remember Riley for the joyful friend he was. And keep the rest of our family as safe and happy as we possibly can.

[addition: He’s fine. Neurology Specialist saw no problems on the X-ray (contrary to our local doctor) and his diagnostic tests showed no overt neurological damage. Riley might of simply pulled something, or at the worst injured a disk. He’s appeared markedly better that last few days, almost approaching normal, so doctors orders are to keep him less active for several weeks to let him heal and simply watch him for signs of problems.]