Dalai, proudly registered with the AKC as Spotless Dalai (I named her after the Dalai Lama in the hope that it would inform her behavior) settled easily into the household. Murray’s grudging toleration of her grew to fondness.

Eventually they developed into a gang. As long as Dalai realized Murray was the mob boss.

The only time I recall that they got into a bad spat was when we were loading into the SUV for agility class. Dalai pushed past him and started to jump into the truck. The Boss was having none of it. He grabbed her by the back leg and dragged her out. Instead of going to agility, we went to an emergency hospital to get her leg sewn up.

She deferred to Murray from then on.

Agility is not the default dog activity for Great Danes. Danes were originally bred to hunt boar in Germany, but sport is not the first thought when someone mentions Great Danes. Couches arIn my house dogs do agility.  All dogs. I started with Murray when got bored of obedience classes.

Agility requires a lot of obedience, but it’s fun. And he loved it.  So I did too.

My trainer was originally skeptical of Danes doing agility, but he was won over by Murray’s devotion to the sport. (Except for dog walks. Murray hated and feared dog walks.) By the time Dalai came along, Poppy had been going to class regularly, and depending upon her mood of the day, was either spectacular or spectacularly bad. More than once Poppy leaped off of the top of the A-frame to chase a squirrel. Her weave poles were spectacular.

So Dalai did agilty. She nailed jumps, turns, the tunnel and tire. Even the dog walk didn’t faze her. She was no Poppy on the weave poles, but was getting the idea.

 We were at class one day when Dalai started limping. When she climbed into the car, she cried. We went directly to the vet.

 By the time she got there, she was unable to move without howling in pain.

 After a barrage of tests and X-rays, it was determined that she had severe disc issues so we were off to a specialist. The vet thought surgery was in order, but wanted us to see a neurologist first.

I was numb. By this time, my barely three-year-old dog couldn’t stand without pain.

As soon as I got home, I called the neurologist who was part of a snazzy emergency /specialty hospital in Santa Monica.  She was booked for the next two weeks.

Dalai couldn’t wait that long.

I called the surgeon again, hoping she could pull some strings for an earlier appointment. She couldn’t.

One more call to the hospital, this time in tears. The receptionist took pity on me when I said that Dalai couldn’t wait two weeks. I’d have to put her down; leaving her in that kind of pain was unconscionable.
               

“Well…” she said. “You could bring her in as an emergency. Then she’d already be a patient and the neurologist would see her.”

With tons of tears (me) and crying (Dalai), we headed back to Santa Monica I got there and called to tell we were there and needed help. It took a bit to convince them that I needed someone with a gurney since Dalai couldn’t walk.

I signed a ton of paperwork and handed over my credit card. The neurologist would see her that day.

I wasn’t sure if I would ever see Dalai alive again. Or if I was doing the right thing.

By the time I got home (traffic on the 405 IS that bad), the surgeon called me to schedule for the surgery the next day.

Of course there were caveats. Usually this surgery is done on small dogs so there was no guarantee it would work on a dog Dalai’s size. (It wasn’t until much later that I learned that this was the first time the surgeon had done this on a giant breed.) Dalai would have to be confined and kept very still for months.

I gulped at the cost estimate and gave my credit card number.

I set up an X-pen in my bedroom, to keep her contained, but I never even closed it. Dalai was a perfect patient. She took her daily 12 (!) Tramadol, and tons of antibiotics without a problem and never moved unless she had to potty. She never used a towel sling to help her walk – instead she chose to hop and cry. It broke my heart, but that’s she was still stubborn.

A vet friend who came to the house to do acupuncture and laser treatments on Dalai’s back and wounds and I moved my office into the house so she wouldn’t go outside.

It worked. She started to heal. Six months later she could wag her tail – something the surgeon told me she’d probably never do again.

She also could finally go for walks again. That’s how we met Werber family. They had just adopted Blue, a year-old blue merle Dane. Blue and Dalai bonded quickly and deeply. Most afternoons we’d either walk the Danes together, or Blue would come over to play. They’d chase each other around at astounding speed and leap and jump in the air. When they were tired of the zooms, they’d chase Poppy until she had enough and went into the house with Murray.

When Murray died, (at the age of 11 ½!) Dalai and Poppy bonded even more. They also fought. Poppy was a third of Dalai’s size, but four times as tough. Dalai occasionally thought she could push her little sister around.

She couldn’t.

The fights were short, dramatic and thankfully rare. They always ended the same way: a frantic drive to the e emergency vet with me explaining that my giant Dane had not only started a battle with a small spaniel, but had lost badly.

When Dalai was six, I decided that it was time to add a new Dane to the pack. Dalai didn’t so much jump with joy, when Jasper came home from Kentucky with me, as sigh in a ‘there goes the neighborhood’ way.

But they did play together. A lot. Their zoomies  were something to see. Dalai was older but wise and Jasper was young but a dumb puppy. He’d run around the yard and she’d cut him off at the pass every time. They loved each other.

At some point Dalai had moved from sleeping on my bed into Murray’s big crate. She’d occasionally sleep with Jasper and I, but seemed to genuinely prefer the crate with its many orthopedic dog beds. She looked a little like the Princess and the Pea. Appropriate.

Dalai started being a geezer about two years ago. She had the lumps and tumors of old dogs, and her back legs were occasionally wobbly but she wasn’t in pain.

She was still Dalai. She ate, barked at whomever had the nerve past our yard, chased squirrels and ran out back to fuss at the horses. She still played, even when Ruckus arrived last December, Dalai would zoom around with Jasper and the puppy. She was just more strategic than fast.

That couldn’t last forever though. Last month she cried when she struggled to stand up in the morning. It wasn’t the same as when her discs first blew out, but for the first time since then, she was in pain.

Covid meant my regular vet couldn’t come to my house but I found a kind, gentle vet who did in-home euthanasia.  I bought Dalai a McDonald’s quarter pounder with cheese which she ate daintily, then she sighed and passed peacefully in my arms.  She was ready.

I wasn’t. The thing with the Bestest Dogs, and they are all the Bestest Dogs, is they just can’t stay with us long enough. 11 years is a long time, but it’s not nearly enough time.