Articles

It's a Dog's Life

You were never a “pet” person. You knew what it would really mean: another mouth to feed, hair forever clinging to your best clothes, ‘accidents’ to clean up, one more vacation plan variable. But there are children now; old enough to appreciate and young enough to need the experience of living with another species. They must have a pet, so you visit the neighbors or the shelter or the shop; and you watch and handle and let the children choose. Somehow you find yourself carrying homeward a warm, squirmy bundle.

The first weeks are filled with searches and clean-up and yelps, as the cussed thing pees, tears, chews, and wanders from hiding in closets to directly underfoot. The thing is a walking disaster, a micro-wrecking crew. Havoc lies behind every paw print. Ruined socks, poop-smeared paper towels, and chewed-up toys fill the garbage can; your carpet is decorated with dark splotches and the living room smells of stuff you didn’t find behind the couch until it was dried, crusty, and glued to the rug.

Slowly the little thing responds to your discipline. It seems to take forever, but gradually it figures out where to go when it’s got to go and a bit later, when to head that way so it actually makes it on time. Whatever digestive adaptations it needed to make have been made. It has learned to avoid your feet yet still be near. And it wants to be near now: it wants to play, to be noticed and accepted. All day long it is happy to explore and be a part of its new pack. Of course he has a name now and a face in the family. Your kids wouldn’t let you send him back for all the candy in the world. You’re still not convinced. You might consider the exchange for a week’s worth of real sleep, or a new carpet.

Only the nights remain strained: your arm drapes off the bed into a cardboard box, half-consciously comforting every whine, cry, and whimper. For Puppy, the nights are for remembering, in whatever dim way a puppy can, its mother’s warm body and care: nights are for grieving that loss—your doing— that can never be mended. Your only rationale for the crime is that this, of all the options, was the least terrible. Puppies that do not get adopted get eliminated. You cannot remove that grief; you can only fill the void.

Weeks pass and soon the box is too small. Your sleep is broken by puppy teasing your hand at 2 a.m. or leaping to escape his cardboard prison at midnight. He still whines at times but he is looking for your hand when he does, he is transferring that longing for comfort to your smell now, your warmth. Fortunately, his schedule and yours are coming closer, the night disturbances taper to a trickle.

Puppy doesn’t know much but his instincts are sure: inevitably, his loyalty gravitates to you. He may be “the kids’ puppy” but there is no doubt who he has decided to belong to. He has a heart big enough to embrace the whole family, but there is a line in his soul and you are the only thing on his side of it. The rest of the family stands along closely but clearly not in the same class. Perhaps another line divides the rest of the world from them, too: but you have your own insuperable place in his universe. Here in the springtime of life, with everything so new and unfamiliar, his universe revolves around and gathers order through your will and ways.

Years roll along and Puppy’s legs gradually catch up with his feet, his proportions slowly shift from infant-cute to adult stature. You can’t take a walk without a pleading pair of eyes watching every move you make near the door. Denying him that one pleasure wracks him with frustration and you with guilt. Eventually your habits merge with his desire and the necessary preparations become habit, so he can join the outing.

Now your hikes include a leash, a whistle, an extra portion of food to assuage your guilt at lunchtime. Your knapsack gets a little heavier but you enjoy the company. It’s entertaining to watch him, amusing to have something to talk to. He will go anywhere if he can, to follow you. You in your prime and stature can scramble up talus and boulders, while your four-legged companion sprints madly around to find a way around and back to your side. It is both comical and impressive, and sometimes you go somewhere challenging just to admire his willful pursuit. There is such a beauty in his endeavor: joy and love and devotion all focused in such energy and drive.

You carry a leash but rarely use it; it seems so cruel to throttle such energy. Then one day he bolts; his instincts get the better of him and he’s off chasing a rabbit or grouse or —lord, no— a deer. No amount of yelling, screaming or cursing turns his attention and in a moment he is gone, gone from sight and then, later, sound; his trumpeting bellow fades into the distance. You spend hours searching, calling, and trying to find tracks. You halt at every noise, hoping to hear his return, but as the day wanes, he does not come back. There may be days of waiting then, wondering; driving back to a distant trailhead, walking and calling; before finally he comes, dragging himself, bedraggled and weary, back to you. You’d kill him except the relief at his return overwhelms every other emotion.
But the leash gets used from then on.

Somewhere along the years, his color gradually mellows. White hairs sprout among the brown, black, and gold; eyebrows lighten. His gait slows a bit; his playful dodges lose their crisp abruptness. There is something of autumn in his eyes now, but his demeanor is as spring as ever. Joy to him is anywhere with you. The walks are his entire conception of ecstasy. And because he has lost a step or two, you walk closer now. He doesn’t pull quite so often or hard against the leash, and you don’t scramble over quite so difficult terrain anymore.

Here on these walks you can leave the cacophony of your world and for a spell every day absorb it through a simpler pair of eyes. You don’t have to please everybody, or anybody, just him; and that so easily. He only asks to come along.

One day your walk ends, and you notice he’s limping on the way home. He is lame for a day afterward. Maybe he hurt something during the hike; but you can’t find any outward injury. There is no cut or bruise, only a flinch whenever you examine him. After awhile, he is fine again, and romping as always and always begging to go along with you still.

His eyes however, tell less of spring now. Fall has thrown a shadow over them. He sleeps more, plays less and shorter every time. His artful dodges no longer prevail, his sprints tail off in a few seconds.

There comes a time when every major outing ends poorly. He follows along, not ahead; and while you sense no complaint during the trip, he always seems happy to point homeward. Soon, every hike becomes a sentence of pain and lame the evening after. He cannot walk without agony; he lies down and cannot rise.

Your walks do not end but he cannot accompany you on the vigorous hikes anymore. He watches you pack and dress with eyes full of hope, but you must refuse. A dog is blessed with so little memory for the aftermath and so much of it for the pleasure that it cannot help but want to come along. You find yourself taking more short walks and fewer hikes. You enjoy them just as much, and he does, too.

They are golden-tinged days: evenings he lies in the background, dozing and dreaming. Regularly he rises to take short sentry walks around the room, sniffing for a lost crumb here and there, or begging for a needed trot outside. Gentle walks on gentle ways for short whiles are his only exercise. A routine with no rigid course but inevitable habits surrounds each day; easy now, relaxed. There is no rush, no need, and every reason to pause.

A dark and endless winter awaits, but it can wait awhile longer. He does not see it coming but you can. It’s a black unopened door in the corner of your soul. He has always hated the vet: you wonder if you have the courage and skill to save him that last agony. Dire preparations and agonizing arrangements creep into your thoughts once in awhile. In some dim way you are preparing yourself for that door, but you know when you come to it, you cannot be prepared.

He is, so suddenly, crippled. His sight fails, then his hearing. Winter has crept into his bones. He doesn’t make it out in time once, then often. You scramble to foresee his need and get him out the door every night. You gather him up and carry him at times to the door, so large now, so much heavier than the puppy you brought home so long ago. You clean up the mess, and you remember doing this once before, a lifetime away.

He needs help standing. He walks unsteadily and delicately and stops awkwardly. Still, he struggles to rise whenever you put your coat on, every time you approach the door. He whines and nuzzles, his darkened eyes plead to accompany you. Every time you give in, you know it will mean a week of misery and mess and wondering what you will find in the mornings. He is fighting now to keep his living, to carry on with whatever joyful pursuit his life embraces.

The winter is no longer approaching, it is fulfilling, filling him. You are watching it slowly engulf him. The dark thoughts slowly settle into rigid, stoic plans. There will come a time, a time not far off.

With the finality of a gavel, the black day arrives. How it happens or how it is done matters less now than the fact that it had to be done. You carry your friend one last time, to one last place, and begin digging.

Somewhere now, there is a hole in the ground where winter has come to stay. Forever, he is lost to you, and to himself. There is another hole, too: the black door has shut. The room behind is filled with memories, and suddenly you realize that door was not an opening, it was an exit. Your perspective was twisted; time has steered your view around right at last. He did not leave you through that door; you had to leave him in the room behind it. Somewhere behind that door he is there, young and joyful and strong; and every now and then you catch a glimpse through a window that cannot be closed.