Bidi Chandler Sikorska - May 26, 2011 to September 18, 2022

I’ve made a lot of difficult decisions in my recent life, but today’s was among the toughest. I euthanized Bidi.  She had all-but lost the use of her back legs, and she was just too big for me to manage in her lameness. My heart is breaking. 

Bidi came to my life as part of a package - Jack and I had been together for nearly two years but decided to move in together.  

I knew during the house-hunting process that life was going to be much richer living with Jack and complicated living with my two cats and Jack’s two dogs. Kora, his aging Boxer, had had an accidental pregnancy with a Boxer-Bulldog cross earlier in the year.  Right from the get-go, Jack was extra-besotted with the brindle one with blue eyes and a white diamond on her back.   My stepdaughter wanted to call her Diamond, and Jack felt she should have some input because she owned the pups’ father. I felt Billie would be perfect for our girl. Jack came up with Billie Diamond or BiDi for short.   (We dropped the mid-word capital D because it seemed a bit pretentious.)

We moved in together 11 years ago today.  Bidi found her way into my heart too, immediately. It was I who took her to puppy training where all the dog-dads of the small breeds fawned over her, the tough-looking softie that she was. I walked her and her mother proudly through Weston and when Kora died, Bidi and I continued the tradition alone. Even in the sketchiest corners of Weston, I never felt nervous with Bidi by my side. Despite being a cuddly pet, she once growled at someone who made me nervous. I knew she had my back. 

 Bidi was the last of my original housemates - I organized and was present for the deaths of each of the five.  For each of those five deaths, I have felt great sadness, as I do now, but comfort knowing that medical assistance is available, saving them from further pain and the stress of a natural death.  In fact, it was Kora’s death that first prompted Jack and me to discuss medically assisted death for humans, then still a couple of years away from being legal.  

I still have Molly, the Lhasa-poo we gave a home to six years ago.  Just like the Queen’s Corgis (see my piece from earlier today), it is Molly I worry most about. She lost her pack-mate without understanding why.   We will push on though, Molly and I. We have no choice.  

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