Slow Down For Molly

By Cheryl Ghiroli

All dogs are special, but every so often our lives are touched by a truly extraordinary dog that’s exceptionally smart and possesses traits that makes them almost human. That was Molly.

Molly was the fourth dog to join our family here on Roast Meat Hill Road. The first time we saw her was Christmas Eve, the night she was born.  She was on Channel 8 News because her owner, who was living out of a motel in Branford, had been picked up by the police walking along Route 1.  He carried an entire litter of puppies in a cooler, looking for a place to leave them to die. We were so moved by the story that as soon as we heard they were going up for adoption, we quickly ran down and added our names to the list.  And of course we were overjoyed when we learned we were selected from the hundreds of applicants that wanted a “Christmas Eve” puppy.  

Clarice (the name the shelter had selected for her…. from Rudolph) was one of the smaller puppies and the vet had only given her a 50/50 chance of surviving. But with the help of the woman who runs the shelter and brought her home to her own bed at night, she survived and moved here to Killingworth to become Molly.

We became part of an extended family of other “Christmas Eve” puppy families. We got together for reunions and this past Christmas my children and Molly rode on the Branford shelter float in the Christmas parade.       

Everyone that met her commented how beautiful she was. She had a golden colored coat and beautiful light brown eyes that had the longest gold eyelashes. We think she was part Chow (because of her black spotted tongue) and part Akita and always laughed when we thought of the DNA test we got from the shelter that said she was predominantly miniature greyhound. 

She was an avid tennis ball fetcher, could run as fast as a race horse, and was becoming a champion frisbee catcher. She knew right paw from left, could bark to three, and you could line up dog treats on her legs and she wouldn’t blink an eye until she was told she could have them. She absolutely loved the water and on hot days we couldn’t keep her out of the pond.  

On Sunday, June 5th, at around 11:00 in the morning, Molly was struck and killed by a car directly in front of our house,  just feet from a red “DRIVE LIKE YOUR KIDS LIVE HERE” sign. My husband and I were in the house, the kids were playing in their rooms, and my dad,  who comes over every Sunday to spend the day, was outside when it happened.   

I heard my Dad ringing the front bell and my husband yelled down that Dad had locked himself out of the house. But then he yelled in the window that Molly was hit by a car, and from that moment on, our  lives were changed forever. As I fumbled for the phone book and frantically dialed the phone, I could hear my husband break down in the road and the haunting screams of my two  children ages 8 and 10 as they stood on the front lawn. 

On the drive to the hospital I sat in the back seat with Molly in my arms. I kept reassuring my husband that I could feel her breathing, but I knew that she wasn’t and that she had already died. We returned home from the hospital with Molly wrapped in her favorite blanket, nestled in a cardboard coffin.

We pulled into the garage to 2 waiting children and had to tell them that their beloved Molly and best friend had died and was now in heaven.  I can still hear their screams and see their tears.  My son kept begging to open the coffin, maybe she was okay. It had only been an hour, he cried, in time she would get better. Maybe a miracle would happen, he kept crying, they happen all the time.  And then I watched him make the sign of the cross as he put his tiny hands together and held them to his chin and started to pray. 

We hugged a lot that day.My daughter sobbed that she was so busy for 2 days she didn’t even see Molly. My son regretted that the last minutes he spent with Molly, he had yelled at her for going into the chicken coop and eating the leftovers we had thrown out to them.  And of course I too had yelled at her the last time I saw her, for going into a duck nest that was hidden in the bushes on the side of the barn and bring me out a duck egg in her mouth.    “If only we could turn the back the clock” my son repeated so many times that day.

That night we had a funeral for Molly. We are blessed to have wonderful neighbors who came over and helped us through it.   They brought their backhoe so that we didn’t have to dig her grave by hand and we put her in our flower garden where our other two pugs are buried. The kids needed to see her one last time, so we opened her coffin and said our goodbyes.  Before closing it, my daughter placed in it her favorite tennis ball and my son added her frisbee, the one she always took with her whenever she left the garage.  

We placed some Peonies and Irises on her coffin and then each tossed in some dirt. That night we laid four in the bed, with of course Gigi our pug too. But no one slept.  The images of the day were too hard to bear.   

Now we come home from work at night, and Gigi is no longer at the door waiting for us.  She can be found on the sofa, shaking, because Molly was her eyes and ears and without her she no longer feels safe.  Molly no longer waits for the bus with the kids in the morning. And when I get up at 2 a.m. to use the bathroom, I no longer come back to bed with a dog laying in my spot, head on my pillow. The throw on the sofa with the corner chewed off and the oriental rug with the missing edge all seem so trivial now. 

We know over time that the pain will soften and the images will fade, but we’ll NEVER forget. 

Molly was such a special dog, we truly believe she entered our lives for a reason and her purpose for living and coming to Killingworth is not yet over. 

Please support our cause and make our roads a safer place.  Let’s prevent another family from having to endure the loss our family is now living with.

                Slow down for Molly  -   PLEASE DRIVE 25