Chip Wishart: A Life Well Lived
March 27, 2013-June 30, 2024
I was going to write this week’s Substack about grief, because I seem to be reading a lot about grief these days. And then, yesterday, my husband and I had to put down our beloved lab/labradoodle cross, Chip, and instead of just reading about grief, I’m feeling it.
So indulge me, please, while I tell you about Chip, my first dog. My daughter, Elizabeth, put it best in a text to me after I sent her and the rest of the family the sad news: “Goodbye Chip. You were the best first dog I could have had.”
We brought Chip home from a breeder just outside of Edmonton the last weekend of May in 2013, right around the time Elizabeth graduated from high school and our son, Noah, finished grade 10. Even though she was a female, I insisted on naming her Chip because she was a chocolate lab/labradoodle. What else could we call her but Chocolate Chip?
The kids had begged for a dog when they were little. My husband, Dave, also wanted one—he’d grown up in a family that always had at least one dog, sometimes two. But he traveled a lot and when he was home he worked seven days a week. I knew the bulk of the responsibility would fall on me, and I wasn’t ready for more responsibility when the kids were in elementary and junior high school.
I offered a compromise: guinea pigs. I was ignorant enough to think that a small furry pet would be just as good as (but easier to care for than) a large furry pet. I don’t think Dave was terribly enthusiastic, but he also wasn’t nearly as negative as my sister, who was on her second dog by then.
“Guinea pigs are so stupid,” she said.
“We’re not getting them for their conversational ability,” I told her.
I never gave the guinea pigs an IQ test, but I can tell you, they were not very interesting. They were furry, so in that sense they were a step up from the Siamese fighting fish that were the kids’ first pets, but they didn’t like to be held, so in that sense, they were no better than the fish. When they finally died after a ridiculously long time (my husband figured they lived longer because they had almost no human contact), we didn’t replace them.
Interestingly enough, by the time I was ready for a dog, my kids no longer really cared. But I thought a dog might give the adolescent Noah an outlet for the affection he no longer seemed willing to show to us, his human family. I thought a dog might be a calming presence for Elizabeth, who got stressed so easily.
As for Dave, I knew he had never stopped wanting a dog to greet him excitedly at the door with a wagging tail and a toy. And I wanted a dog because I needed an excuse to get out of the house and into a morning routine now that my kids no longer needed me the way they once had. As a freelance writer whose children were too old to be walked to school, it had become frighteningly easy for me to spend the day working in my pajamas. I wasn’t motivated enough to go for walks just for me. A dog would force me to walk whether I wanted to or not.
Our friends Pat and Judy had a beautiful, gentle, laid-back chocolate lab, Bailey. I called Bailey’s breeder. I was nervous about getting a shedding animal—I had pretty bad allergies growing up, which was one reason I never had a furry pet. No problem, the breeder said: he had just bred labradoodles, though not all of them looked very doodle-like. Chip certainly didn’t—she looked like a slender chocolate lab with a wavy coat. People constantly mistook her for a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. Pat and Judy’s daughter, Rachel, described her as having “beachy hair.” Also, she shed. But it didn’t matter: she didn’t seem to shed much (mind you, I had no frame of reference) and she was a wonderful pet.
Chip did exactly what I had hoped: provided and received unconditional love for and from everyone in the house, and gave me an excuse to go for long walks and explore parts of Edmonton’s river valley that I hadn’t seen even though I’d lived so close to the area for nearly two decades.
The unexpected bonus of a dog was how many new friends I made, some whom I knew casually in my pre-dog life, others whom I hadn’t known at all, all of whom have become an integral part of my life.
Because I’d never had a dog, I had no frame of reference for dog behavior. But observing the many dogs I saw at the off-leash area, I realized quickly how lucky we were to have Chip. She wasn’t outgoing and cuddly, but she was extremely loving. And she displayed very little interest in other dogs. She had some doggy pals, but mostly she was happy to explore her favorite off-leash paths and, in the winter, to amble along in search of delectable dog-park poopsicles.
When she was younger, I was kind of disappointed that she wasn’t more outgoing. I think I was projecting, the way I did when my kids were little and we’d go to the playground and I was convinced that the only way they’d have fun was if they played with other kids. I’m an extrovert. I figured my kids would be extroverts and I (naively? narcissistically? ) assumed my dog would also be an extrovert.
Chip was absolutely not an extrovert. But let me tell you, there are benefits to having an introvert dog. While my friends’ dogs barked incessantly at every dog they saw, disappeared into the bush with pooches they didn’t know, or lay in wait and then humped unsuspecting pups with abandon, Chip generally stuck close to me. Better yet, when other dogs came flying at her, barking aggressively, she ignored them. And they gave up and left her alone.
Edmonton has the biggest urban parkland in North America, and I’m blessed to live just a few blocks from part of it. The drawbacks to that are that we often encounter predators either on the trails or on our streets. My friends’ more outgoing dogs have been attacked by coyotes, sprayed by skunks, and shot full of quills by porcupines. I always figured something like that would happen to Chip, but it never did. When she sensed a coyote was near, she’d bark and take off into the woods, but she’d always come back when I whistled for her. The one time we saw a porcupine while walking, I put Chip back on her leash and headed up the hill before the porcupine saw us. And somehow we were fortunate enough to dodge the skunk bullet.
What we were not fortunate enough to dodge was the cancer bullet. In early November 2023, Chip developed a cough that no medication seemed to cure. An X-ray in mid-December showed a tennis-ball-sized mass between her lungs. She was given four weeks to live. We were stunned and heartbroken.
I, the person who had lived for 52 years without a dog, now couldn’t imagine a day without one. On Dec. 19, my husband and I went back to the breeder and brought home Belle, a two-and-a-half-month-old silver lab.
Chip was not happy with Belle. For the first 24 hours after we brought home the puppy, she wouldn’t even be in the same room with her.
The thing is, we didn’t expect Chip to be alive for long: the specialty vet who had looked at her X-rays told us we would have to put her down by mid-January.
He was wrong. Other than prednisone, which we gave Chip on and off from late December until this Sunday morning, I think what kept her alive was a combination of her strong will, the love she had for us and ours for her, and the relationship she developed with Belle (or maybe it was a fear of replacement).
In late May, Chip began losing a significant amount of weight and her breathing struggles grew more severe. Dave was determined to take her on one last trip to Jasper National Park, four hours from Edmonton, to play in the lake she so loved.
We went there early last week for what we think of as Chip’s “Make-a-Wish” trip. It was everything that we had hoped for: beautiful weather, time to play on the beach by Jasper Lake, hours relaxing by the Athabasca River, and dog-friendly dinners at the Jasper Park Lodge and the Olive Bistro.
Chip’s appetite went downhill after we brought her home; she would only eat soft food, and not as much as usual. Then, on Sunday morning, we found a large infected sore on her left shoulder. I brought her to the emergency clinic. The vet made it clear that there was no way, in good conscience, he could treat her, given her respiratory distress. I was ready to let her go; I’d been readying myself to let her go since December. But preparing yourself intellectually and then living through the moment are two very different things.
I was surprised at how much I cried at the vet clinic yesterday, first when the vet told me that if he sent Chip home with me, he’d be doing so against medical advice and he’d have to notify Animal Control, next when Dave came to the clinic, then again when we agreed together to put her down, and then when we had our last moments with her. I am tearing up now as I type this.
As I said, I’ve been reading a lot lately about grief, partly because I’m writing an article about medical assistance in dying, but also because I seem to gravitate toward those sorts of books. And in my reading lately, or maybe it was in my viewing, I heard a comment about how grief is an outward manifestation of how much we love.
I knew when we brought Chip home 11 years ago that the day would come when she would die. It was always there, that understanding and the dread of losing yet another loved one.
But I was also aware that being prepared didn’t mean I would be able to anticipate how I would feel. I mean, I knew I’d be sad. I just didn’t know I’d be this sad.
I loved Chip so much, more than I could have imagined possible. She brought such joy to my family and to me. Every memory from the last 11 years is a memory with Chip. As Dave said today, “She was a link to your mother.” Mom was with us the first time we met Chip. It was one of her last visits to Edmonton, and it was extra special because she loved puppies.
Thank you, readers, for letting me share some of my thoughts with you. And thank you, Chip, for being the best first dog ever.
Oh Deb, I am weeping. This is a beautiful tribute to Chip! She was such a great dog!
What a loved and loveable dog she was, from puppyhood (those photos!) until the end. I always wondered how she got her name, and a fine name it was.