Mopsy the Magnificent Crosses the Rainbow Bridge

Ten and a half years ago, I stood on a graduation stage and spoke to my high school class. I told them about cliff diving in the Grand Canyon, about the terror and joy of leaping into thin air with no idea of how you will land. And immediately after  the graduation ceremony, I took my own leap. That very afternoon, I got on a plane to the Seeing Eye. Two days later, on June 21, 2010, my trainer brought me into the lounge and introduced me to my first Seeing Eye dog.

“This is Mopsy,” she said, as a little black lab sniffed me all over.

“Mopsy?” It sounded like a frumpy old British woman. “Can you spell that?” I asked, not sure I’d heard her right.

No, I did not like the name Mopsy. I actually considered changing it, but nothing I came up with seemed right. And the name grew on me. It fit this spunky girl perfectly, and soon she was not just Mopsy but also Mopsy Girl, Mopsicle, Flopsy Mopsy, and the Mops.

Mops and I became a team over our four weeks of training and then beyond, from our first misadventure on the beach, where we both got dehydrated and the sand was too hot for our feet and we had to be rescued so that she wouldn’t drink the ocean, to our first days at Kenyon College, when we made a bunch of new friends and Mops discovered that chocolate chip cookies are not food for doggies. Mopsy attended every class and sat through every exam. She was very well-behaved and quiet, though she did untie my shoes under the table once, and she was known to grumble happily every time someone mentioned a dog or whenever the silence after a professor asked a question became too long. She learned Italian right along with me, and we spent a summer abroad in Torino in 2012. She put up with dressing up for Halloween but made her displeasure known by shredding the antennae off her costume during English class.   She stood by me when my childhood pet, Kokopelli, passed away, and then when I lost my eye in 2013. In 2014, Mopsy and I graduated from Kenyon, me with my bachelors in English and creative writing, and Mopsy with her bark-elors degree as dogophonus maximus, because she loved to sing along with my clarinet and the wind ensemble. On her diploma, in Latin, it says, “With me you will go safely.”

And then we were off to Italy. We spent a year in Assisi, with trips to Rome, Florence, Bari, Matera, Narni, Ancona, Venice, Spoletto, Spello, Foligno, and Montefalco. Italy was a huge challenge, but Mopsy rose to meet it, and soon we were dodging radical Italian drivers with, if not ease, at least more skill. I’m not exaggerating when I say Mopsy saved my life at least three times a week that year. But while Mopsy rose to the challenge magnificently, Italy took its toll. Over the next two years, while I worked at the New Hampshire Disability Rights Center, took the LSAT, applied to law school, and then attended my first year at Harvard Law, Mopsy slowed down considerably and became defensive aggressive with other dogs. It became abundantly clear at the end of my 1L year that it was time for Mopsy to retire.

Mopsy was with me through some of the most important years of my life. When I left home for college, took my first steps as an adult, realized my independence, went off to law school, she was there. When I was happy, she shared in the joy, and when I was lonely, she was there to be a friend.

Mopsy moved in with my parents, and I went back to Seeing Eye and was matched with the Neutron Star. I finished law school, passed the bar, and moved to D.C. to start work at the FCC as a space lawyer. And Mopsy enjoyed three and a half years of walks in the woods with my father, soccer in the yard with my brother, naps in the sun at my mother’s feet while she worked on the computer, and cuddles with her doggy friends in front of the fire.

Mopsy had a lot of doggy friends over the years. First, of course, was our yellow lab Kokopelli.

Koko never really liked other dogs, but he did like the Mops. Later on, the tables turned when we got a new puppy, Rocket. Rocket was objectively annoying. One time, he tried to chew on Mopsy’s ear, and she very gently put her paw on his back and put his entire head in her mouth to prove that she was in charge. But she let little Rocket snuggle with her too. Mopsy and Neutron had a special bond from the beginning.

I came home to New Hampshire during the pandemic so I could spend the holidays with my family, so I’ve been here with her for the last few months. I am so glad I did, because I was able to spend this time with her. Mopsy became more vocal in the last few years, grumbling and growling and sometimes howling when we were  playing or when she wanted attention, but in November she became very quiet. One Saturday night, we filled her bowl, and she didn’t come, in itself surprising. We called her, and she didn’t come. We went to find her, and she was struggling to get up off her bed. She had developed a sudden, severe limp, and she was in so much pain she didn’t eat that night, though she did eat the next morning. After examining her paws and her legs for cuts or other injuries, we were pretty sure she had an infection in her front left paw. I checked her ears, and sure enough, her left ear was infected too. Mopsy has had ear infections in the past, even ear infections that had spread to her foot, but nothing this sudden, and coupled with her sudden quiet, loss of appetite, and the excessive drooling she was doing, we were pretty concerned. We took her to the vet. They treated her ear and paw and also took x-rays. They discovered a mass on her spleen that they suspected was cancer.

After a lot of family discussion, we decided not to try to intervene with the cancer. Mopsy was almost twelve and a half, and we were worried, and the vet agreed, that any attempt to remove or further diagnose the mass might do more harm than good. So we gave Mopsy the antibiotic for her foot and ear and did our best to make her as comfortable as possible. But the infection in her front left paw did not get better. Instead it spread to her other feet. So we returned to the vet in early December asking specifically if there was anything we could do about her feet. The vet was now sure the mass on her spleen was cancerous, because apparently abdominal cancers in dogs can present in feet infections like Mopsy had. They gave us a different antibiotic and steroid, but warned us if these didn’t help, there wasn’t much else we could do.

But the medication worked. Mopsy’s feet healed. For a couple weeks, she was getting up and walking around, scrounging for crums when we were cooking, and even barking and grumbling again. I was overjoyed. I’d been facing down losing my Mops for the last few weeks, and now she was getting better. It felt like nothing short of a miracle, and we all thought that now she was acting more like her old self, she would be fine. My mom actually said that the cancer could be something she died with, as opposed to something she died from.

But on Christmas Day, Mopsy started going downhill again. She struggled to get up and started having accidents in the house. Over the next few days, her back legs completely gave out on her; she stopped eating, then stopped drinking; her stomach ballooned out while she lost almost all her weight everywhere else, as if the cancer was eating her from the inside. By Tuesday, she couldn’t lift her head anymore, though she was still licking up the ice cubes I brought her. Neutron and I stayed by her day and night. Neutron snuggling up against her to help keep her warm and even worming his way under the blanket with her.

And I slept on a mattress beside her for the last three nights, always with one hand on her side so she would know I was there.

Yesterday morning, on December 30, 2020, around 10:00 AM, Mopsy passed away peacefully in my arms, surrounded by my mom, younger brother, and Neutron. Today we laid her to rest at our home on Cape Cod, beside Kokopelli. The woods on the Cape was always her favorite place to walk. We planted wildflowers over her grave, and we’re planning to get a granite marker for her. It will be lovely in the springtime.

There are so many more things I want to say, but I can’t express the loss I am feeling right now. I still can’t believe my Mopsy girl, who would put your whole arm in her mouth and nibble on your ears when she was happy, who literally jump for joy and yip with glee when you came home and she wanted to tell you she’d missed you, who could be incredibly stubborn and definitely knew how to manipulate gravity so you couldn’t get her up when she was lying down, who’s breath was always horrendous no matter how often we brushed her teeth, who loved butt scratches and carrying around her blanket and baby carrots and lying at my feet with her head on my shoes and her paw around my ankle, my bestest girl forever, is gone. Mopsy had a long, full life. She was an extremely well-educated, well-traveled dog, and she was surrounded by so much love and had so much love to give. It was her time to leap from this world to the next, but she’s still gone, and I just don’t have words for it.

So instead I drew a picture. They say when our animal friends pass, they cross a rainbow bridge to paradise where they can play together. I found a picture of Mopsy walking in the snow, looking back over her shoulder in her characteristic Mopsy style, and I used that picture to draw Mopsy walking along a rainbow bridge. I hope she’s found her Kokopelli friend, and that she can lie in the sun and sniff every blade of grass and throw bones to her heart’s content in doggy heaven.

Shortly after I got Mopsy, Seeing Eye was doing renovations to its campus, including what they called a path to independence. We donated a brick, engraved for me and Mopsy, and I found it when I returned to Seeing Eye to train with Neutron. It says “Jameyanne and Mopsy, walking with my best friend.” And even though she’s crossed the rainbow bridge, she will still be walking by my side, in my heart, forever.