What Happened To Yogi?

After posting my last blog about our dog Indiana, I received quite a few questions as to the whereabouts of our dog Yogi.

I should start at the beginning so I make more sense, this is quite an emotional topic for me, filled with both laughter and so many tears, but ultimately it is a story worth sharing.

We adopted Yogi when I was 19; I had just had the majority of my right ovary removed, due to a large cyst. Due to all the scar tissue my doctor wasn’t confident in my ability to have children. Hearing this news was devastating for me, I had always dreamed of having children, and thus went into a deep depression. Part of my healing was adopting a pet, to fill the void left from the potential of not being able to have my own children.

Yogi was a German Sheppard- Chow Mix; he looked just like a dingo. In his kennel at the shelter he was the only dog who wasn’t barking, he was huddled in the back of the kennel, leaning against the cement wall, and looked as though he had lost all hope. He had tufts of hair missing, from a bad case of mange. His paws were blistered and hairless, due to being left in his own feces for far too long, indeed any amount of time in one’s faces is too long! His nose was scabbed over, and scars dotted his golden face. This dog had been through the wringer; even with his thick coat we could see his ribs. I instantly fell in love with this abused and beaten being.

We took him home, and quickly realized that he had major issues. For one he was terrified of all men, brooms, fishing poles, anything long and slender seemed to instantly create panic in him, clearly his past was filled with torture from some sort of stick or rod. When our first visitor came to meet him, we realized that he was a submissive wetter; as soon as someone would reach down to pet him he would wet everywhere. He couldn’t tell the difference between a loving hand and a hand being used to hurt. He was a biter, never an attacker but when he was afraid he would snap, when he did this you could tell he felt bad, but his fears were obviously overbearing and controlling his actions.

With all of these negatives one might think that we would hate him. It was a lot of work keeping him inline, and a lot of times he got out of line, but for David and me every time one of his flaws would shine through we would instead place that hatred to the owner who had abused him. Yogi deserved nothing but our love, his previous owner was the one we would curse beneath our breath.

Yogi eventually became part of the family, soon Indiana joined us and they were best friends, constantly wrestling and playing, we took them everywhere, they were our children. They were the perfect team also, I recall several occasions where one would stand watch and distract David and I while the other ate something off the counter. Yogi was a chewer too, everything from my friends mouth guard to my underwear (still don’t know what was up with that!)

Six years and a lot of surgeries later I became pregnant. We were both shocked, what a wonderful miracle. I know most people think, “Oh once kids arrive the dogs don’t matter.” That wasn’t true for us, we included the dogs in everything still and it was wonderful, until Madi started crawling. Yogi had nipped at her once and so I began separating them whenever she was on the floor, this worked well for a long time, until one day when she had first learned to walk, she chased him with the remote, in a panic he turned on her and grabbed a hold of her cheek, leaving a huge gash. Yogi immediately cowered, knowing he had messed up, just not realizing how badly.

At the doctor’s office we were informed that since he bit her on the face we would need to get rid of him. However this task was made more challenging by the fact that he was now “un-adoptable.” We quarantined him for the required two weeks and made arrangements to have him put to sleep. He was twelve years old, had a few health issues and the thought of him biting someone else’s child, or worse freaked us out. The entire time I still felt as though it was his abuser that deserved this death sentence. Due to him being a “fear biter” we were told by many trainers that we couldn’t train it out of him, nothing would stop him when he was terrified.

I made arrangements for him to be cremated; I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing his lifeless body. David took him and held his paw as the injection was done, he watched him drift off. I can’t even fathom the pain he still feels over that moment. My only reassurance was that he was in a better place now. A place where he couldn’t hurt anyone, a place where no one could hurt him.

We thought this was the worst part of the experience, we were wrong.

A few days after David took Yogi to the vet the vet’s office called me and asked when I was going to pick up Yogi’s body. I was confused and frustrated, because the mortuary was supposed to pick up his body to cremate him. The vet’s office had no record of this (even though the same person who was calling me was the person I had made the arrangements with several days earlier). She said she would call the mortuary and get it taken care of.

A half hour later I received another call from the vets office, this time the girl asks me “where is Yogi?”

“What? What do you mean? You have him; you just called me and told me that I hadn’t picked his body up!” I yelled and cried into the phone.

“Oh, well my check list says he hasn’t been picked up, but I went into the cooler and I can’t find his body.”

“WHAT?!” I growl. A string of curse words flew out of my mouth so quickly I couldn’t catch them between the tears.

“Let me check with the vet.” She hangs up on me.

Five minutes later she calls me back again.

“Shauna we figured out what happened, the vet thought Yogi was abandoned and decided since no one had picked him up that he would give him a proper burial. He has a small graveyard on his property and buried him there.”

“WHAT?! Why would the vet think he was abandoned if you have a checklist saying he was to be cremated? Why wouldn’t the vet call us, as you did this morning to tell us to come pick him up?” By this time I was so angry, so upset and emotionally exhausted from the loss of my dear friend and now the loss of his physical body that I was giving up. She calmed me down and finally I just accepted that he was buried in a wonderful small graveyard, somewhere on the vet’s property. I was feeling better, I called David and told him what had happened, to which he replied,

“That’s strange the mortuary just called me and wants their $100.00 for cremating him.”

David contacted the vet and told him to get his shovel; we wanted our dog’s body back! After some quick side stepping on their part he called the mortuary, after a royal lashing to both (and after the vet spoke with the mortuary) he was told that Yogi’s name tag must have fallen off his body in the cooler, that the mortuary did pick him up, he was cremated, and this was all just a confusing mix up. Whatever.

Trying to appease me, David came home with what we are told are Yogi’s ashes. It is strange that a 40 pound dog’s ashes would be triple the weight of my grandmother’s, but whatever, we were just wanting closure. I still have the box, haven’t had the heart to bury it yet, I’m half tempted to open it and see if it’s just burnt up newspapers, not that I could really tell.

I do know this though, as much as I feel guilty for not being able to keep Yogi, I’m confident in this: He had a lot of good years with us, never once was he beaten or whipped. He didn’t go hungry, his skin and scars were physically healed. We couldn’t heal him from his emotional scars, as much as we wanted to, that wasn’t our purpose, our purpose was to show him that humans could be loving, gentle and trusted. I know his rational side trusted us; it was his terrified side that felt the need to lash out.

I continue to pray to this day that he is in Heaven and that Jesus is healing those emotional scars, perhaps Yogi has forgiven us and his previous owners, I still don’t know which was worse, putting him through misery as they did or taking him out of it? This question will haunt me forever, but perhaps it's that haunting that provides my answer.