She didn't need words, her eyes said it all

Obituary for a small dog

Rina Marro, September 21, 2017 - December 14, 2020

When Rina heard a soft whimper coming from her owner’s office, she did not hesitate. In seconds, she was standing before him, front paws on his knees, her eyes fixed on his. After he lifted her into his lap, she began to lick his cheeks with soft gentle strokes as he clung to her and gave into his worry about his daughter who was undergoing major lung surgery in a hospital filled with COVID patients. 

“She heard me,” Ed Marro said a few minutes later to his wife who found them in the chair together. He smiled through his tears. “She came right to me.” 

This was not the first time the little terrier mix had comforted the couple who shared a home with her. She was generous with her kisses; she was always quick to offer her warm body and velvet ears when she heard a sneeze, a sound that concerned her, or picked up on a tense silence. She didn’t need words to ask questions or offer advice, her eyes spoke for her. 

“They had a big vocabulary, those eyes,” said Ed’s wife, Betsy. “Sometimes she was asking what’s wrong, where’s dinner, what was that noise, or look at that! Other times she just found my eyes and seemed to say, “O, there you are.” She looked at me and I felt a calm wash over me. My heart opened up all over again every time she did that.” 

Rina’s eyes closed for the last time in the early hours of December 14, just six days after comforting Ed in his office. She was three years, two months and 23 days old. Her death was a shock and neither her regular vet nor the emergency vet who treated her for a pinched nerve in her neck over the previous 48 hours could say what caused her death. She died at home with her family of two, the Marros, who still listen for the scratch of her nails on the wood floor of the bedroom or the soft whine that meant she needed to go out.  

Rina entered the world unplanned and landed softly on the plush cushions of a living room sofa while its owner was at work. Oblivious to her impact on the sofa’s upholstery, she and her two brothers settled in with their mother, Lolo, whose pregnancy had gone undetected. 

“When I left for work, I had two dogs. When I came home, I had five,”  said Veronique K., the owner of the sofa and mother of UC Davis student, Cassandre, who’d found Lolo eating roadkill as she and her friend were on their way to camp in Zion. They scooped up the scrawny tangle of black fur and brought her back to school with them. When they brought her to a vet, they asked about the swelling they noticed in Lolo’s belly. “Nothing important,” the vet said. “Just a ghost pregnancy.” Phantom pregnancies are common in unspayed dogs, he told them. 

When Cassandre went home before leaving for her semester abroad, she left Lolo with Veronique who fell in love with her and then, a week or so later, fell in love with all three of Lolo’s puppies. She raised them with fierce devotion after shifting them from the sofa to a guest room-turned-whelping room in her house. This was where the Marros met Rina, then named Olivia, for the first time. She was the only girl but, at five weeks, was already bigger than either of the boys. She went home with Marros the Monday after Thanksgiving when she was 11 weeks old and immediately began to win the hearts of their neighbors in Point Loma.

Day 1 in new home

“She was a wiggle worm,” recalled Cory B., who, with his wife Seekey, was among the first to come over and meet her. “The front half of her body wriggled one way and the back half wriggled another way she was so excited to see us.” 

Rina paused at Seekey’s house on every walk, hoping for a glimpse. The next stop would be Sue and Ken M’s house where, if Rina was lucky, she’d find Sue gardening in her front yard with her much older and savvier Brittany Spaniel Lucy nearby. Lucy tolerated Rina with grace while the “wiggle worm” did everything she could to get her to play. 

If friends weren’t handy, strangers would do. She greeted everyone with those wiggles followed by as many licks as she could get in before they pulled away. She especially liked toes. Sandal wearers who entered her domain left with stickier feet and a new appreciation for closed-toe shoes. 

As her world expanded to training classes, the dog park, dog beach, she met it all with a confidence and delight that made her owners see the world in new ways. Her exuberance was infectious. She  just assumed that dogs and people would like her and was not unduly upset on the few occasions when they didn’t.

“A man I’d never met before and never would have approached after overhearing him talk about his politics came up to me, pointed to her and said, I love that dog,” Betsy remembered. “We stood and watched as she raced, rolled, played, and organized a chase. Then we started talking about dog food and puppies. For a few minutes we were connected. She reminded me to be more open, looser, to assume the best instead of the worst.”

She knew how to read dogs and humans. One day, she arrived at the park to find a small dog with paralysis of his rear legs who relied on wheels for locomotion. She bowed to him, and then, taking her cues, sniffed carefully, touched noses, licked his chin, and then moved away to find someone else to run with. Then, when Ed’s brother Pat died she brought peace to Miki, Ed’s daughter and Pat’s niece who took her for a walk while the others made the sad arrangements.

“I took her out on her leash around the property,” Miki remembered. “Her being there gave me a real sense of healing as I walked her around the pretty grass area and told her about Uncle Pat; how much he would have loved meeting her and getting to spend time with her. She was so inquisitive. She drank in everything from the birds to the squirrels to me. I remember how healing it was for me to run my fingers through her thick beautiful shiny terrier fur and how she’d look up at me with the sun in her pretty brown eyes. I remember how much I loved her right away; there was very little warming up period there can be with some pups. It was just an instant “this dog is a good friend” feeling. I wanted to hug her and be with her and appreciate all her zest for life and excitement. She made me feel good about life and I wanted to embrace it as she herself embraced it even on such a sad day.”

She was unstinting when it came to physical affection which was a good thing because she was surrounded by people who loved to touch her. 

“She had a wonderful, gentle aura about her,” said Seekey. “In her world, life was wonderful and joyful. I loved the softness of her undercoat and the way she would wrap a paw around my wrist when I was petting her. Her ears always reminded me of pigtails sticking out on each side of a young girl’s head.” 

She happily deferred to older dogs like her neighbor Lucy and Miki and John’s dog Spritle, a chihuahua with strong opinions about who should get all the toys and first choice of laps to sit in. She visited them just two weeks before she died and took advantage of Spritle’s preference for remaining inside while she stayed outside for a socially-distanced lunch with the two-leggeds. 

“I’m so glad we got to see her then,” said John. “I will remember how happy she was. Her energy was as boundless as her love.” 

After being diagnosed in 2019 with Addison’s disease, a chronic adrenal problem, Rina’s energy shifted from wild runs at the park to swimming with her neighbor, a Lab named Oliver, at a nearby pool. Her antennae, though, were always tuned to the rhythms of the household and her people. When it was time for Betsy to write, Rina curled up under her desk or on the sofa where they snuck naps together in the afternoons from time to time. When the world went into quarantine, she began to check in with Ed on his side of the bed every morning as if she knew he’d had trouble sleeping the night before and might need a reason to get out of bed. They became breakfast companions, watching out the window for dogs and people they recognized while Ed sipped his coffee and she digested her chicken and kibble with a dash of salt. 

No matter how frustrated and frightened her people became as the pandemic wore on, she had the ability to bring them back to the important things: the stuffed toy raccoon stuck under the big chair in the living room, the snack that was due an hour earlier, the warmth of the San Diego sun shining down on her towel in the backyard where she made room for company, or that walk down the vine-bordered alley that they almost didn’t take because they were too preoccupied. At night there was the warmth of her solid little body as she gave herself completely to a sleep that sometimes eluded her people.

She was not a glamorous dog. Her hair was a swirl of cowlicks that no amount of grooming could corral for long. Her back was longish, her head smallish. She was fast, then she slowed. She was small, then she thickened into thirty pounds of muscle. She could sleep through fireworks but the barest breeze rustling through the trumpet vine at night would send her running for cover. She dug hole after hole and buried chew after chew as though each were gold. She spent the three years, two months, and twenty-three days of her life being completely herself. Had she been able to put her purpose into words her people could understand, she would say it was to be loved. She excelled at it. 

“When I felt her next to me at night, often on her back with all four legs in the air, ears inside out, I felt safe, anchored, and less concerned about whatever the next day would bring,” said Betsy. “For that moment, we were all okay and that was enough. Now she’s gone. Nothing about that is okay but I know she gave us all she had and it was more than enough.”

She is survived by her two brothers, Jobo and Rascal, her mother, Lolo, her cousin Spritle, her neighborhood friends Lucy, Lexi, and Oliver. She leaves behind two broken hearts and a host of other two-leggeds who will never forget her. 

Rina (right) and her two brothers at eight weeks old

Reunion at 1 year old. Left to right: Jobo, Rina and Betsy, and Rascal.