My Frenchie and Me
I thought Maycember was tough, but June is turning out to be no picnic, either. The end of the school year is hurtling towards us with the mercilessness of a meteor. With it comes the end of my two-year tenure as the vice chair and chair of our elementary school PTA. Myriad loose ends abound, my kids are exhausted and loopy, and my mushy perimenopausal brain is barely hanging on.
The garnish atop this crap sandwich is that our 12.5-year-old French bulldog, CeCe, has been diagnosed with lymphoma and is currently waddling around with a giant tumor that has taken up residence in the entire right side of her head. Thank you, June. You can eff off now.
No pet lives forever. And at 12 years and seven months old, CeCe is already in overtime compared to the average Frenchie lifespan. But the experience of her decline and diagnosis has been harrowing and heartbreaking nonetheless. She is my first-born and, as I call her, my forever favorite child. And my family would not be my family without her.
Cecelia Mulberry Butler, AKA CeCe, CeCe Girl, Tongue Dog, Tonguie the Tongue, Tongue Jarvis Dog Ellis, Jarvis. My first born and forever favorite.
Back in 2010, my husband Mike and I, cute newlyweds that we were, were living in midtown Manhattan. We had been shipped back to Manhattan from London due to the aftershocks of the 2008 financial collapse, which closed Mike’s company’s London office. We were unhappy in Midtown, unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, and desperately hoping for a change of scenery. That change came in a job offer that would take us to Boston.
But first: “Can we get a puppy?” I asked Mike, as soon as he hung up the phone after accepting his job offer. “Oh,” I added, “and congratulations!”
“Yes, of course we can get a puppy, love,” he said. “And thanks.”
By the time we landed in a dated but charming townhouse apartment in Boston’s hip South End, we had been trying to conceive for over a year. All the books, blogs, and googling said it was officially time to seek fertility treatment. So we did.
We also reached out to a French bulldog breeder in Michigan. I had never been a dog person, but living in NYC in the early 2000s, I couldn’t help but notice these hilarious-looking, bat-eared, tail-less little muscle machines that sashayed down the city streets as if they owned them. I knew a dog would be a ton of work, so I figured if I were ever going to be a dog mom I would at least want a dog that made me smile and laugh every day. A Google search brought up a few breeders with available puppies, and one in particular stole my heart at first sight.
“Celia” was one of a litter of puppies all named after characters in “Monsters, Inc.” It was the tongue that sold us. It’s been too big for her head since she was born, and we wouldn’t want her any other way.
As Frenchie negotiations commenced, I was still not pregnant. My doctor recommended that we start IUI, or intrauterine insemination. I filled a prescription for Clomid. But when it was time to take it, I freaked.
I was desperate to get pregnant. The 15 months we had spent trying were some of the hardest of my life. Every time I got my period, I felt like a failure. I took my temperature daily. I chugged maca and pomegranate smoothies. I googled and googled some more. I wondered incessantly about what was wrong with me, or with my husband, or with the combination of us, that we were unable to make a baby. But I couldn’t bring myself to take the Clomid. I just wasn’t ready.
Instead, my husband and I hopped in our new Honda Element(!) and drove from Boston to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to pick up our puppy. We’d decided to modify her name from Celia to Cecelia so that we could call her CeCe. The second the breeder handed her to me on a frigid February day, my heart melted. I felt a surge of love like I had never experienced before. She was, after all, my baby.
And baby her I did! I dove into puppy motherhood. I bought all the toys, beds, clothes, and treats. I spent way too much time deciding on which color collar and leash (orange) and harness pattern (cupcakes) I would choose. I even designed personal stationery for her so we could send thank you notes for all the new puppy gifts we received. My days revolved around training her, walking her, and taking her to our local dog park. My thermometer and Clomid, meanwhile, sat in my medicine cabinet, untouched.
I unleashed all my pent-up mama energy onto our puppy. CeCe brought me out of my fertility funk and helped me find joy again. Just as I’d hoped, she made me smile and laugh every day with her comical snoring and adorable, precocious puppy-ness. Two months after we brought CeCe home to Boston, I was pregnant.
The morning after my first positive pregnancy test. One of the happiest dog walks of my life.
Dogs change families in so many ways. CeCe created ours. We have told our kids many times over the years that they would not be here without her. I owe this little 20-pound Frenchie so much more than I will ever be able to give her. It is thanks to her that I became a dog mom, and then a human mom. I wish there was a way for her to know how much joy she has brought me over the last dozen years. But therein lies the heartbreak of pet ownership: we will never know whether they know how much they mean to us. But we can choose to believe they do.
I am relishing each day we have with her now. We don’t know if we have days or weeks or months left, but it will never be enough time to love on this dog who has given us everything that matters. The best I can do is to give her lots of love, pets, and scratches as I navigate my grief and support my husband and kids in theirs. I am feeding her lots of chicken, too. Maybe for her that’s enough. I hope so. With all my heart, I hope so.
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A sad post, I know. So if you need a little pick-me-up, feel free to watch the hilarious video - and my source for the term “Maycember” - below.
