Lady Dora Von Derpinson, commonly known as just Dora, was born some time in August 2012 in South Korea.
I bought Dora on October 21st 2012. The day before, my parents returned to Canada after their trip to South Korea to visit me. I had been telling myself for years that I did not have a home large enough for a dog, but in hosting my parents in Korea for two weeks, I realized I could easily make it happen. During their trip to Seoul, we visited Chungmuro to see some motorcycle shops, and passed some pet stores on the way. I was in love with all the baby shihtzus there. By the time my parents had landed in Canada, I had returned to Chungmuro and bought Dora.
It took a while to pick a name for Dora, but it eventually came to me through a U-Kiss song, DORADORA. 돌아돌아 roughly translates to “turning around” but also seems to be used in a “spinning around” sense. Dora was full of energy as a puppy, and once I saw her chase her tail I was able to think of the name pretty quickly.
Dora was full of personality as a puppy. She knew what she wanted, when she wanted it. Luckily, what she wanted was cuddles and to play. A lot. Luckily, I was more than happy to play with her. Because we lived in South Korea, it was very hard to socialize Dora, because I didn’t know any other dog owners. Through her whole life, Dora was more fond of people than she was other dogs. But she was loved and cared for. Dora didn’t mind being dressed up in cute sweaters through the winter, and as she got older, it was something Dora would seek out when she felt cold. Even when we let her fur grow long in the winter, she would still want her sweaters.
When I made the decision to have her fixed (a difficult decision because she was so pretty, I knew people would ask if she was being bred) I worried the whole day of her surgery. Dora was fine, of course, but she was almost TOO fine. The day after surgery, Dora was feeling fine on her painkillers and didn’t seem to listen to me constantly telling her to settle down. A day or two after the surgery, we returned to the vet because she had played so hard, she ripped her internal stitches and gave herself a hernia. I faintly recall being so angry I couldn’t see straight, because the second surgery was pricy, but all I remember now is how silly she looked in her full body cast that was meant to slow her down.
Dora loved the snow. She was so tiny her first winter, and she loved jumping from footprint to footprint when I would go walking with her. Her most favourite thing was always a cuddle from me though. I would often call her my parrot, as her favourite place to sit was on my left shoulder. Even in her last days, when she wasn’t very comfortable sitting anywhere for longer than a few minutes, Dora would fall fast asleep on my shoulder for over an hour, until one of us had to do something.
In the summer of 2013, Dora and I returned to Canada for a holiday to see my parents. We had a wonderful time, and Dora was the perfect traveller. She was quiet the entire trip across the Pacific, and knew to hold her pee until we got out of the airport. I remember her getting to meet my parents for the first time in Ottawa International Airport, and taking her to Lyn Pits to try swimming (Dora hated swimming) and we even went to Niagara Falls. It was such a great trip… until I started to get ready to return to South Korea. It turned out that during the time I had returned to Canada, the requirements for bringing a pet back into the country had changed. We needed a titre test to prove Dora had her vaccines, and it was impossible to do in the time I had left in my vacation. I had to make the heart breaking decision to leave Dora with my parents as I returned to South Korea. In that moment, my time in South Korea finally found its end date.
We were reunited in March 2014, when I returned home to Canada for good. Me and Dora lived with my parents in Brockville for a few months, before I got antsy and decided I needed to live in a bigger city for a while. Dora and I moved to Toronto, and the next five years seem like a blur. Things settled into a beautiful routine of just… being there for each other. I worked long hours, and had a long commute, but no matter how long Dora had been waiting for me to get home, she would always be there at the door, ready to give me cuddles and kisses.
I hate that I’m just summarizing five years into a single paragraph, but that’s the thing with dogs – eventually, everything becomes a beautiful routine. Dora was there for me constantly, and I was there for her. In a massive city of 3 million people, Dora was sometimes the only thing keeping me sane. My job was stressful, and it would have been easy to lose control sometimes, but no matter what the day was like, I knew that when I returned home from work, Dora would want her food, she would want her walk, and she would want her cuddles before bed.
In 2019, the opportunity of a lifetime came up – a job in my field (social media) in an industry I was passionate about (tourism) in my hometown. Dora and I moved back to Brockville, and moved into a little apartment down the road from my parents place. In that year following, Dora had the best life she could. We made up for the fact she spent so much time alone while I was work, because she now spent her days at my parents place, and was never alone. She had all the cuddles and love you could want.
Then 2020 hit.
We didn’t notice it as a problem at first. We just started to notice that Dora… no longer liked her walks as much as she used to. She got tired faster and didn’t like going up the hills as much. Then her appetite started to get worse. She was always a picky eater to begin with, so her deciding to not eat once in a while didn’t worry me.
She didn’t play in the snow this year. That should have told me something was wrong right away. But I figured… she was getting a little older, and these things happen with age. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right though. When Dora needed to go get a vaccine to go to the groomer, I brought it up. They took her temperature, and said she was running a fever. We started Dora on her antibiotics to try and shake whatever was bothering her.
Things didn’t improve. In fact, things were getting worse. Her walks became short trots around the block. She was losing weight. The energy that she had for years was suddenly drained from her. Blood tests came back saying her white blood cell count was nearly double what it should be – her body was apparently fighting something but we didn’t know what.
Then, one day, Dora’s eye became red. Not just bloodshot, but RED. We called the vet again, and more tests were done. Dora was a shadow of herself at this point. We had scans to see if she had maybe broken something, or if there were any lumps or bumps hidden away. Nothing but some constipation. But her eye was getting worse and worse. Our vet referred us to an ophthalmologist in Ottawa. Before we could get to her first scheduled appointment, the swelling began. Her eye looked like it didn’t fit in her eye socket. Something that looked like a pimple was forming on the white part of her eye. We ended up going into the vet emergency where our ophthalmologist was. From there on, I was fighting my own emotional battle of keeping positive for Dora.
At first the vet said it could be something called episcleritis. We tried treating it with drops and medication, but her eye kept getting worse and worse. I tried to keep strong, but instead I kept quiet. I’ve kept a lot of this from my friends, because it was too hard to discuss. By the night before our last appointment with the ophthalmologist, I was convinced we were going to have to operate, lose the left eye, and Dora would become my adorable cyclops. That was the best case scenario. I held onto that hope until the very last second, until I was told what I’d been fearing:
The inflammation had begun on Dora’s right eye.
This meant that removing the left eye was only the beginning of Dora’s problems. That we would continue to go through this until her right eye was ruined too, and then had to be removed. We had no idea if this would stop at her eyes either, because we had no idea what it could be. The working hypothesis was now necrotizing scleritis, which can often be caused by an auto-immune disease. If that were the case, would this stop at her eyes? Would it attack something else? Dora was clearly in a LOT of pain, and looking back, it had been painful for a long time.
Picking her up from the vet, I sobbed while holding her in the parking lot. Despite the fact my heart was willing to spend the thousands it would have cost to do the operation, my gut was telling me… that wasn’t fair.
Every day after that moment was filled with tears. Sometimes, I sobbed for most the day. Some days, it would just be for a few moments when the crushing reality of what was going to happen would settle onto my shoulders. On Saturday and Sunday, I took Dora to the beach with my mum and my parents dog, Luke. Just like I did with my first dog, Princess, we sat on the beach and watched the water. Sometimes, she looked happy to be there. But then there were other moments where I was reminded that she was uncomfortable. The sun was too hot, the water too wet, and the sand kept getting dangerously close to getting in her eyes.
Monday was Dora’s Last Day. My sister came down from Ottawa to help take some photos of me with Dora as she was spoilt rotten. She had her first Puppacino from Starbucks (whipped cream in a sample cup) which she absolutely loved. We also picked up some fries for her from McDonalds, which have always been her favourite.
Things were a bit busy at St Lawrence Park, so we went over to Hardy Park for a few more photos and just to relax with Dora. She relaxed on a bench and posed up a storm, which a lot of people walking by seemed to love.
Tuesday, August 11th at about noon, Dora passed away peacefully, in her most favourite place in the world – in my arms, resting on my shoulder. Our local vet had a beautiful enclosed gazebo in the woods behind their clinic. We sat in there, and Dora first was given a sedative to help her calm down. Once she seemed good and sleepy, I held her close, told her I loved her a million times, and after a few minutes, she was put to sleep. I clung to her for another few minutes, and played a song that I had started singing to her in the nights before – Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel) by Billy Joel. I am the type to assign songs to moments of extreme emotions – especially grief. This song will forever be Dora’s song now.
Dora. The past eight years have been the best years of my life. You have been my best friend, and I will never ever forget you. I hope you will be watching over me, waiting for me on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge. I want you to get to know Princess, and tell her how I’ve been. Please don’t terrorize mum’s cat Mila – I know how you like to bother her.
I love you Dora.