Mia Is Put To Rest

I buried Mia yesterday. She’s at an area called the Overlook on the grounds of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. My dogs--Hollywood, Rosy, Joey and, now, a new puppy named Sissy--were there. But a special moment before Mia’s placement was when a Chihuahua named Lois Lane, Mia’s inseparable pal for two months in 2005 at the Hurricane Katrina triage center, said her goodbyes to Mia. We had a viewing and Mia looked like she was sleeping. Lois licked Mia's face, eyes and ears, then it was as if she realized Mia wasn’t sleeping after all; Lois tucked her tail and kissed Mia again, then looked back at the rest of us. She knew. It’s amazing how much animals know and see. It could not have been a better or more sweet ceremony. Good friends who work at different areas of the sanctuary were there, including Sherry Woodard, animal behavior expert, Best Friends co-founders Faith Maloney and Anne Mejia, and Yvonne McIntosh, who runs Best Friends' potbellied pig department. Jennifer Hayes, an editor for Best Friends' Web site, took beautiful photos. Also there were Sandy Miller, a Best Friends writer, adoption coordinators Pat and Larry Donoho, animal caregivers Kersten Muthreich and Joyce Wallace, and adoptions manager Kristi Littrell. Mia touched so many; they gave her much love and Mia, who had such a big heart, returned it with gusto. Also there to say their goodbyes were my good friends Harriet and Al Needleman, who drove up from Las Vegas for the service (and they didn't drive up just once; they thought it was the day before, realized it was the wrong day when they arrived, drove home, then returned the next day). It was their first time at the sanctuary and they fell in love with Angel Canyon, where the sanctuary sits on 33,000 acres. As Harriet said, "It's beautiful and so peaceful." Officiating at the ceremony was Best Friends' staffer John Sichta, who did a beautiful job. He placed a plaque, with Mia's photo, with her marker--a stepping stone--along with a large sandstone rock from Red Rock Canyon, where Mia hiked more than a hundred times in the nearly four years she was with me. She loved it up there, and so it was fitting that a rock from one of her favorite places marks her resting place. Her plaque reads, "Goodbye, my sweet Katrina survivor. You loved and touched so many. You will live on forever in our hearts. Harriet read a Rudyard Kipling poem, which started with this: "If there's a doggy heaven, I know that's where you are, About a million miles away, Standing on a star." For my part, I described how Jeff Popowich, rapid responders at the time for Best Friends, rescued Mia from a pool deck at a factory-turned-apartment complex in New Orleans. I also quoted Kahlil Gibran, from The Prophet, about death:

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides that it may rise and expand? Only when you drink into the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountaintop, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Photos of Harriet Needleman speaking at the ceremony, Mia’s gravesite, and Mia, at the viewing, and Sherry Woodard with Sissy, by Jennifer Hayes.