Maxine

Beloved Maxine. She was such a life force. She was our constant companion for 15 years until her passing January 2019 at age 17. We deeply miss her amazing self and still laugh about her ways;she still brings us such joy. We are so grateful that she found us! Maxine, or the Devine Miss M as we called her, was born in south Philly around 2002. We do not know much about her having met her at the Morris Animal Refuge on Lombard Street. She chose us. The shelter supervisor showed us this little black waif with mange in a back room where she was being treated. They named her Maria and told us 'she will dance for pretzels.' We passed. We would visit the shelter every 3 weeks or so to see if there were any new recruits. Each time we visited, there was "Maria" in her cage out with the other dogs. On our final visit, we saw that "Maria" was adopted and we were sad; she had grown on us. The shelter supervisor said, "we put that sign on the cage when young children come to the Refuge because she is deathly afraid of children, and we were waiting for you to finally adopt her." We did and as we left the shelter, she immediately laid down in my partner's lap in the car. What I recall about the initial 'discovery' period when we were getting to know her is that her personality was not a "Maria" but a "Maxine". Sassy, independent and self-assured-she was full of 'tude. In those first months with us we discovered that she loved to play with stuffed toys, so we bought her hundreds. She had a bunny that she would routinely pull apart and pull the stuffing out of in search of the squeaker. I bought a pack of replacement squeakers and repeatedly did surgical repairs to the bunny until it had one ear, one leg and was flimsy. Then she moved on to a stuffed tree trunk filled with chipmunks. She would spend hours pulling the 'munks from the trunk and flipping them in the air...more about this. Then we discovered that Maxine loved to run and sprint around. She was incredibly fast. How fast? Well remember those stuffed chipmunks? One day she was running around the park chasing chipmunks and to her and the chipmunk's surprise she caught it and tossed it into the air. It freaked both her and the munk and they took off in different directions! The other thing we discovered about Maxine is that she loved to be under blankets and under the covers deep at the foot of the bed. We wondered how she could breath. If we could not find her around the house, that is usually where she was. We also discovered that Maxine was allergic to everything airborne and foodborne. We tried every anti-histamine and diet and ended up having to cook for her because she could only eat eggs, fish and rice. The take away is that Maxine was a diva. As further evidence she would not let her rear-end touch any bare floor. If any blanket or coat was on the floor or ground, she assumed it to be for her. She would literally backup until she felt a rug and then sit down. She was also a “clothes horse” – she had many coats and collars for all occasions. Over the years, the three of us developed a rhythm of living together and were inseparable. We called ourselves the "3 Girls". As Maxine aged, she taught us so much about how to age gracefully and be at peace with the changes that were happening. I could go on and on, but simply miss her being every day and am so grateful that we had this life force in our lives for 15 of her 17 years. May we all be so blessed.