MENDOTA – Several new pet waste stations are in place at Lake Mendota and Lake Kakusha thanks to the efforts of Jeany Donovan and her fiancé Tyke Lopez. The young couple had spent many happy hours playing at the park with their beloved dog, Daisy Mae, but they noticed that people were not very good about picking up after their dogs. After Daisy Mae passed away this year, Donovan knew she wanted to do something special in her dog’s memory and came up with the idea of pet waste stations.

“We talked to the city to see if they would approve and they thought it was a great idea,” Donovan and Lopez said. “They said they had been thinking about installing pet waste stations but it just hadn’t happened yet.”

After the couple bought the first three stations, their friends and family heard about it and wanted to pitch in as well. “They donated enough money to buy two more,” Lopez noted. “Now there are four at the lake and one at Lake Kakusha.”

The couple explained just how special Daisy Mae was to them. Donovan had received the lab-pit puppy as a 16th birthday present and she quickly became a constant companion. “Her name was Daisy Mae but we called her Moo Moo because she had big cow eyes,” Donovan said.

As a puppy, Donovan had her hands full with Daisy Mae calling her a “terror.” But over time, she grew to be a great dog who loved to run and play and also loved wearing accessories, everything from colorful bandanas to coats in the winter. She also enjoyed her special treats including an occasional sundae from McDonald’s. “We had to watch her diet but once in awhile, we would let her have a sundae,” Donovan said. “After awhile the employees at the drive-through knew us so well, they just knew not to give us a spoon because the sundae was for the dog.”

But life was not all fun and games for Daisy Mae who developed an array of medical problems over the years. Donovan said there was everything from allergies to rashes and then in 2016, Daisy Mae went blind. Two different veterinarians told the couple it was SARDS (Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration Syndrome), a disease in dogs that causes sudden blindness and there was nothing they could do. But the couple persisted and took her to an eye doctor for animals in Wheeling. That doctor determined that the blindness was not caused by SARDS but by an autoimmune disease, which was treatable.

“We put her on medication and she got her vision back in a month, but she still had the autoimmune disease,” Donovan said. “We took her to numerous vets over the years. We drove for hours and even went to the University of Illinois a couple times. We took her everywhere we could to keep her healthy.”

But during a regular check up about a year and a half before Daisy Mae died, the vet felt a lump in the dog’s neck and thought it was just a fatty tumor. When the lump kept growing, more tests were done and it turned out to be thyroid cancer. It was too late to operate because the lump had grown too big. Being a large dog that weighed in at 83 pounds, it would have been hard to notice a lump in the very early stages when an operation may have been possible.

“We took her to the U of I again, we were willing to do anything,” Donovan said. “They said they could put her on an expensive chemotherapy pill but she would have to stay there for several days for each treatment. But she had separation anxiety and I knew she couldn’t be away from me that long. She went everywhere with us - even slept with us and had her own pillow right by ours.”

As the illness progressed, Daisy Mae got weaker and eventually stopped eating. After talking to their vet, the couple finally decided that it was time to let her go. “That was so difficult,” Donovan said. “I had her for 11 years, one month and one day and we would have done anything for her.”

Near one of the pet waste stations at Lake Mendota, there is a memorial stone with Daisy Mae’s picture on it surrounded by a flower bed. “We go and water the flowers and some of the neighbors also water them,” the couple said. “We knew when she got sick that we wanted her memory to live on and we thought that if people took a little time to pick up after their animals, the park would be a much nicer place. We also have bags at the stations so there is no reason not to pick up after them. We’re just glad to see that people are using them now.”

Donovan said they really appreciated the city allowing them to do this in memory of Daisy Mae. “If they had said no, we wouldn’t have been able to honor her this way. It was awesome.”