Are we masochists when it would be much, much easier not to have one in the first place, both in terms of mourning their loss and the truth that this animal depends on you for everything? Or does it represent something far more wonderful and special in human nature, that we voluntarily bring another creature into our homes to care for it and love it? Both?
Last week, we laid our aging coonhound to rest. Lilly had been experiencing behavioral problems for close to year, and while she was still physically capable of getting around reasonably well for an almost 15 year old dog, she was increasingly doing her business inside, even on the bed at least once a week, almost flat out refused to take a walk during the day, though strangely she would go out three or even four times after dinner as though she were scared of the light rather than the dark, and generally appeared to be suffering. Combined with her penchant for barking incessantly between dinner and bedtime like a canine half her age, Lilly, who was never an easy dog by any means, became near impossible to live with. There were practically hours per day when you couldn’t hear yourself think over the din, near uncounted nights we could barely get her into bed to begin with, the same or more when we were awakened by some rumble or plain fussiness, and more than a few when we awoke the next morning to a puddle pee, sometimes to discover we were sleeping on it. Perhaps needless to say, my lovely wife took all this much, much better than I did. The discovery of a soaked through sheet when we woke up, cold, clammy, and wet in the morning light would only prompt her to comment matter of factly that the poor thing couldn’t hold it in as long as she used to before changing the bedding, as though performing the tasks multiple times per week simply because something urinated on your bed was the most normal thing in the world. She’d taken to laying down a towel and a pad where Lilly slept, even though it almost never worked. At the same time, I think everyone can understand her caring attitude. Lilly had been a member of the family for over thirteen years when she began her decline. She was an undeniable even if annoying, at times, presence in the household with perhaps more personality than a dog should reasonably have. Mostly, she would follow my wife around in her better days, from the bed in the morning to beside the chair in her office upstairs in the afternoon, followed by the couch after dinner, but late in her life, when my wife was away, she discovered the doggie bed in my office and began to split her time. The mornings she’d spend upstairs, followed by afternoons downstairs. I’ve probably written well over 500 of these posts while she was on the other side of my desk. I couldn’t see her and yet the presence was still comforting somehow. Toward the end, however, she grew lethargic, remaining upstairs most of the day in a near catatonic state, the things that would excite or enrage her in her younger years such as the arrival of the dreaded FedEx truck, now unable to get her to so much as open her eyes.
Regardless, my wife likely would have allowed her to continue in this state indefinitely, even with the changes in behavior and general aches and pains of age, and I, while generally speaking, far more pragmatic and less sentimental (though not exactly Kristi Noem either, to be entirely clear), am not sure I would have disagreed with her, save when I was angry about the latest outburst or pee on the bed. It’s easy to say a dog is just a dog in principle, like the old George Carlin routine when he insists the best thing about dogs is that you can get another one almost exactly the same, just put the dead body on the counter in the pet store and order one up, but in practice, anyone who’s had one understands how effortlessly they become a member of the family, a constant, reliable presence, even if they’re laying down as they do must of the day. As one of the KGB honchos in The Americans quipped, the quickest way to love something is to take care of it, and so we did. When she began refusing her treat after dinner, we served up the second dinner sooner rather than later. When she was up and down from the couch at night, in and out of the house, we paused whatever we were watching, and did what we could to get her what she needed. When she peed and pooped inside, we laid down pads in the most common spots, and cleaned it up should she miss, which she frequently did. When something stunk so bad as a result of this, filling up the whole house with the smell, we shrugged, and simply threw it out, maybe opening a window for some fresh air. When she got up in the middle of the night my wife took her out and even spent an extended period sleeping in different bedrooms, while I did my best to cope. Over the past several months, however, she began to develop a new malady in her left eye. It started out as what we sometimes see in older people, when the retina goes pale and the whites get murky, structures and colors that are well-defined earlier in life, blending together as the body breaks down. When you saw her in dim light, only the right eye would shine the way a dog’s eyes do, as though the left had gone completely dark. It was eerie and unsettling to see her outside the bathroom, waiting and barking on her treat before bed as she used to do but with some of the light literally gone out of her, but over the past couple of weeks it changed again into what can only be described as something straight out of a horror movie. What had been pale and milky tinged a little pink, turned red and bright, as if the entire eyeball was a semi-transparent balloon filled with thick, slimy blood. The eye itself had also gotten just a little bigger than the normal one, bulging outward as though it might well pop, a balloon in truth. At that point, we had no choice except to take her to the vet, and even before the appointment we were pretty sure that meant that Lilly wouldn’t be coming home, a feeling that this was really it. I was stuck on a conference call for work, but my wife took her in along with her eldest son and daughter to learn the vet believed the eye had become cancerous, even if surgery could be performed to remove it, the cancer had likely spread. She was in serious pain either way, whether or not she showed it, and the time had come. They even had a little quiz to calculate the quality of life, and the results were not good.
I arrived at the vet’s office while they were going through the final preparations, and though I’ve had dogs most of my life, as both a child and adult, I’d never actually been there in those last moments. The dog, of course, has no idea what’s going on. As old canines do, Lilly was just doing her best to bop around in a strange place, bloody eye or no, while her human owners, those who are supposed to love her most, are discussing ending her life with two total strangers. Perhaps, she noticed that the tones were more hushed than usual She might even have picked up on a general sense of sadness, but her brain wasn’t equipped to understand that she’d reached the end and this was the last room she’d ever be in, the last treat she’d ever get, in this case a few Hershey’s Kisses. The humans, on the other hand, are all too aware of what’s going on, even if it’s for the best and an end to our pet’s suffering, there’s no way to end the guilt and the second guessing. She’s moving around isn’t she? Would you do the same to a family member with Alzheimer’s? What if we postponed it a week, two weeks, or even a month? Maybe she’d completely fail by then and we wouldn’t have to be the ones to make this decision. How much, however, would she suffer in the meantime? Is it selfishness or kindness that causes us to want a pet with an eye bulging out of their head, one who must be suffering something fierce to stay for just a little while longer? Selfishness both because we don’t want the guilt, and, in her good moments at least, we still want her around, even for a few minutes on the couch at night, or those exceedingly rare times when she seems happy eating something? We know we can stop it with a word, or even just grab the dog and leave, but we don’t, not before the initial tranquilizer, not after, not up until the final dose is delivered and the heart stops beating. Lilly didn’t even react when the vet gave her the sedative, injected via a rather large needle where her neck meets or spine. At first, it didn’t seem like it had done anything as she continued to stalk about the room, that puppy dog look transformed into something exceedingly close to what am I doing here and how could you do this to me, like she’d figured it all out. About seven minutes later, however, she’d gone to sleep on a comfy mat with everyone gathered around her, a sleep from which she would never awake. The vet and her assistant came back in at that point with the final deadly dose. They shaved her rear ankle, paused for a moment as if to give us a moment of our own to turn back, and then administered what would kill her in less than three minutes. Lilly passed with the vet’s stethoscope on her heart as though the precise time of death was critically important for some reason, peacefully it seemed, but who can possibly say for sure what dreams may come in the undiscovered country or across the rainbow bridge?
The humans, me, my wife, my stepson, and my stepdaughter, were left to spend our final few minutes with the body. For a minute or two, the fantasy persists that she might well wake up and we’ll walk out together, but that doesn’t last long or pass much scrutiny. It’s obvious she isn’t breathing with even a little inspection, and as you have your hand on her fur, it cools quickly, your beloved pet reduced to an empty vessel. A part of you feels like you should linger, that you simply can’t leave her laying there all alone, even if she’s not there anymore, but after a few minutes you say a final goodbye, close the door on her and head home alone with our thoughts. Upon our arrival, even our other dog, a younger greyhound named Rosie, seemed to know something was up in her own way. Rather than the little dance she normally does when someone comes into the house, look at me, look at me, say hello, say hello, she proceeded to do a lot of sniffing, fast and furious, poking us with her little nose, which happens to be mounted on elongated snout like the tip of a rifle bullet, as though something foul were afoot that she couldn’t quite figure out. Of course, it was only personification on our part, but there was the sense she might well be thinking, how could you? Is this what you have planned for me at some point? That I’ll leave the house and never come back? As it is with the passing of a human, those remaining on this Earth can only wonder if they did everything they could, spent all the time they could, been as nice as they could, and loved them as much as they could. My wife has noted that the passing of a dog can even be harder than the passing of a human. Chances are, when your parents pass, or your siblings pass, or even an adult child passes, you no longer live with them. They aren’t a part of your daily lives, they don’t dictate your routine, you’re not worried about whether you left the house too long and they need to go out, or what they might have been up to in the meantime. They don’t depend on you, even worship you the way only a dog does. There’s also the reality that we are consciously aware a dog’s life is short and about fifteen years is as long as you can possibly ask for (Lilly would have been 15 in December). We love them fully knowing that we’re likely going to have to put them down at some point, consciously or unconsciously willing to endure the pain for the love they bring to our homes and the joy they can bring to our lives. Are we masochists, gluttons for punishment when it would be much, much easier not to have one in the first place, both in terms of the mourning their loss will bring at some almost inevitable point and the truth that this animal depends on you for everything? Or does it represent something far more wonderful and special in human nature, that we voluntarily bring another creature into our homes to care for it and love it? Both?
I cannot say for sure, except a dog’s life is a human’s in microcosm, as if you took a person, removed all the unnecessary wants and desires, fears and anxieties, shame and embarrassments, guilts and prides, all the bad that we do without any seeming reason except we cannot help ourselves, and reduced it to something more simple and more perfect. While it might be easy to think in our human way that they aspire to be like us – that they see us talking, coming and going, watching TV, loving and fighting, and wish it could be them, I suspect it’s the opposite. We see in them what most want to be ourselves: Simple, loving, living in the moment, and even when they’re wrong, they refuse to dwell on it for long.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 