Our Dog Died

Our dog died. No, that’s not quite true. I arranged for my dog to be killed. I know we prefer to say “we had to have our dog put down.” Or some people characterize the act as “we had to have our dog put to sleep.” While both of those are true I have always preferred the simple truth. It was a mercy killing, and she was killed by lethal injection by a veterinarian, but she was killed all the same. I asked that she be killed. Thankfully, the veterinarian agreed with my decision. He said “I agree with that. It’s time.”

We discussed the decision first. She had been throwing up more and more over the past month, and during her final week kept no food down that we could tell. What turned out to be her last night in our house was fitful. She retched, refused to drink water, paced until it appeared she was exhausted, and finally stood woozily, her head lowered, staring ahead at nothing. I felt then we’d waited too long. I had hoped she would die on her own peacefully. I hoped that selfishly I think, so I might avoid the trip to the vet, the conversation, the request. I didn't want her to suffer needlessly. It’s a long process, going from hoping your dog gets better to hoping she dies, to finally making her death happen. Killing her. But in the end that’s what my wife and I decided to do. We’d been hinting the same thing to the kids for some time. I didn’t want to blind side anyone. I couldn’t help but blindside Ally though, because she was a dog and didn't speak our language. When we put her in the car she had no idea. She always liked riding in the car. I think she enjoyed new smells. Oblivious to her impending doom I rolled down the windows, she raised her head weakly, and her nostrils flared as I drove more slowly than usual to the vet.

Ally was seventeen years old as close as we can figure. We rescued her from a shelter in Benld, which shares an interstate exit sign with White City, south of Springfield. I had taken my wife and son with me to some overnight work thing. We promised our son Dean we would visit shelters to see if we could find a dog. Our previous dog, Sandy, had been gone over a year. Gone as in dead, suffering the same fate as Ally. I was gone for that one. Gone as in not home, on a canoe trip with Dean. Our daughter Maureen was away with friends. Somehow all of us had left my wife alone with Sandy who, in advanced years, was rapidly slowing down. He took a quick turn for the worse, lying in the yard and refusing to get up. Sandy was big, too big for Colleen to lug around. Like most rescued dogs we didn’t exactly know his age or makeup. He was a cross between a golden retriever and a collie or a chow, some combination of the three or perhaps something else. All we knew was that he was loveable, and gentle, and very good to be with. He barked too much. We got used to it. Colleen called our kindly vet, who came to the house and gave Sandy the dose of drugs that killed him. Colleen couldn’t watch and didn’t want to see his lifeless body. The vet put Sandy in a bag in the garage to await my return. I buried him in the back yard, not far from where I later built the shack.

I found Sandy through the newspaper. Before there were no kill shelters a young guy found a stray dog by the Fox River near Sheridan, cleaned him up, and asked a vet to take him off his hands. The vet said he would, but that if no one claimed him after a number of days, he would be “put to sleep.” Killed. The guy didn’t want to take that chance with a dog so good so after the dog had been given his shots he took him home and put an ad in the paper. I split the cost of the ad and the vet bill with the guy and Sandy became ours. I brought him home the first night I saw him.

My wife had put down some conditions. “You can get a dog, but I don’t want him to be big or have long hair.”

Sandy had a mane of reddish gold hair like a lion. He was big like a golden retriever. I went against my wife's wishes knowing as soon as she was with him for ten minutes and saw how kind he was with the kids, how friendly he was with people, she would drop her objections. She did. Like many of us she talks a tough game but down deep is soft hearted.

Sandy was part of the family for nine years or so. We loved him. And if it is possible he might have loved us. Though deep down I doubt it. As wonderful as he was, he was still just a dog. It’s so easy to forget that.

Dean most among us wanted a new dog to replace Sandy, and we thought he needed one. We had looked at a lot of dogs in Benld and nothing seemed to click. Finally one of the volunteers brought out a little black and white dog they called “Eva” and stood in front of us with the dog in her arms. As the woman talked the dog gazed at us, coarse black hair shaggy around her eyes.

“We just got her in and don’t know a lot about her but she seems like a sweetie. Crossbred Terrier. She’s a little lethargic, but it appears someone has cared for her. She’s spayed we think. And right now she has a bee sting above her eye.”

We all looked at her, and then looked at each other. There was something about her. We could see it in each other’s eyes. She met my wife’s previous conditions, Dean liked her, and so did I. We walked her outside on a leash. She was compliant and easy going. In thirty minutes we were taking her home to Ottawa.

That bee sting above her eye turned out to be an abscess, she wasn’t spayed, and after the abscess was healed she was a lot friskier than she first appeared to be. She turned out to be so smart, and so alert to smells, sounds, and movement. When Ally left the house each morning she ran forward a few paces and stopped dead still. She would put her nose in the air, raise one paw, and survey the entire yard, the same yard she surveyed every day, before striking out, her nose to the ground. Each day was new to her and she took it on with zeal, though her routine seemed to me mind numbingly boring. Life was never boring to Ally. On the contrary, she brought life to us.

Ally would run out an open door at every opportunity and be blocks away in minutes, sometimes not returning for twelve hours or more, if then. If you pursued her, and she saw you, she would stop, look at you with perked ears, perhaps even take a step toward you. But as soon as you called her name, or came nearer, she would bolt away again at top speed. She came home when she wanted, on her own terms. When she was young, if we caught her, it was through sheer luck. She was stubborn and willful, as dog people say terriers can be. We think she might have been rat terrier and schnauzer, Jack Russell and something else, who knows? They say you can do DNA tests of dogs now and find out exactly their lineage. While I think as a rule it is always better to know than not on that one I think I’ll pass. It doesn’t matter. I think dogs are what they are, each one an individual, no matter what the breed(s).

That Ally would grow weak and feeble was in such contrast to what she once was. Because of her propensity to run away (was that why she ended up in a shelter?) we walked her around the neighborhood twice daily on a leash, the retractable kind that gave her the momentary illusion that she was free to go where she chose, until she reached the end of her cord. When she encountered a rabbit or a squirrel, seeing or smelling it before we did, and took off after it she would hit the end of that cord and nine time out of ten violently jerk the leash out of our hands. Unless she quickly treed a squirrel, in which case she would wind up sitting at the base of the tree staring up, or leaping, four feet off the ground, against the trunk of the tree naively as if she could scale it and nab the squirrel, she was off, the black plastic handle of the leash bouncing and sliding behind her. If we were lucky the cord would quickly become wrapped around a tree or a bush, but often we were in an open space and Ally, realizing she was free of humans, would take off and go.

We would pursue, usually Dean and I, and find her in various places. In someone’s yard tethered to a fire hydrant, at the edge of the meadow wrapped around a sapling. But occasionally it would get dark and become hopeless. She wouldn’t bark until she wanted to come back. I remember going out early one morning, after losing her the previous evening, into a ravine a quarter mile away, as it was just becoming light. I whistled. She gave one bark. I went toward the sound and there she was, in the woods, lying in a dense thicket of saplings. As I approached she looked at me as if to say “where have you been?” I freed her and we resumed our walk, she acting as if no time had passed at all.

That’s the great thing about dogs. They have no shame, suffer no embarrassment, and rarely if ever carry a grudge. Over the past year, as Ally’s strength failed and her faculties diminished, she appeared not to care. Her eyes, surrounded by gray hair, became cloudy with cataracts. As she bumped into things more and more we realized she was blind. When she stopped greeting us at the side stairs, alerted to our arrival by the sound of tires on the gravel, we realized she was deaf. Only the shrillest of whistles would alert her to a bowl of leftover cereal milk on the floor. When she was young she would sit at my feet awaiting the treat at the mere sound of my spoon scraping a bowl. It was painful to watch her grow old, but seemingly easy for her. She adapted and went on. Rather than pull us or escape us on her walks we could now easily pull Ally in the direction we wanted to go. She, unsteady on her feet, offered little resistance. But did she sulk? Was she indignant, offended, pouty, depressed? No. She was a dog. She went on living her dog’s life, one day at a time.

A month ago we gave her a bath and a home haircut. Growths and sores on her skin, bumpy in her coat of black and white hair, afflicted her during her final years, but now they seemed worse. She itched more, scratched a lot, and licked herself too much. We applied lotion, gave her Benadryl when it got bad, but little helped. As I bathed her I realized her backbone was suddenly bony. Her digestive problems were making her thin. I was afraid she was starving.

When I took her to the vet for the last time the attendant directed me to put her on the scale. She weighed only 29 pounds. She checked the file. At her last visit, not so long ago, she weighed 37. They put us in a room. I stroked her head. She stood with that vacant blind stare.

The vet came in. Thankfully it was Dr. Lendy, the same kind man who helped Colleen with Sandy so many years ago. We were contemporaries in a way. He started his practice at nearly the same time I started at YSB. We both had thirty years of work invested in the community. He looked older than I remembered. I’m sure I looked the same to him.

We discussed Ally’s problems. He brought it up first.

“So you’re considering putting her down?”

“Yes.” I was so thankful he said it first.

“I agree. You could spend a lot of money diagnosing her problems, and in all likelihood you would discover a condition that required an equally expensive treatment that may or may not be successful. In her condition, likely not. If she were five years old it would be a different story. But she’s seventeen. She’s been amazingly healthy up to now. I think her time has come.”

“You helped us in the same way with our old dog Sandy over fifteen years ago.”

“I remember. Went to your house and your wife was alone.”

We were both silent for a moment. I didn’t know what to say. It was sinking in that Ally would soon be gone, as in dead. I continued to stroke her head, concentrating on that place behind her ears she liked.

“Do you want to be present when I do this?”

“Yeah I think I should. How does it work?”

“I give her a sedative first, fairly strong under the skin, and when she’s comfortable, after five minutes or so, I inject another drug intravenously. It goes quickly then. Are you ready? I’m in no hurry. Take your time. I’ll go get the syringes ready.” He left us alone again.

I was committed to it now. Ally looked up at me. Thank God she doesn’t comprehend human language. I had just sealed her fate and she didn’t flinch. I took her collar off and scratched her in the flat ring of hair that is always hidden. I rubbed her chest between her front legs, lifting her a little. We only had a little time left together. We’d been together in some fashion for fifteen years, and it was about to end. I put my hands, one aside each ear, and looked straight into her cloudy eyes. I lowered my head so that it touched her forehead and held it there a while. The vet came back.

“Ok, are you ready? If so I’ll give her the sedative, and then give it five minutes or so to work. This will relax her without knocking her out, and make her comfortable. You’ll have a little more time with her.” He lifted some loose skin on the back of her neck and pushed the plunger, forcing a yellow liquid into Ally. She was always good with shots. Never whimpered.

“I’ll be back again.” With that he left.

Ally stood as she had since we’d arrived, not immediately affected. I talked to her. I told her the Cubs were getting better, and may win a pennant in my lifetime though they didn’t in hers. She looked oblivious and unbelieving as do many baseball fans. I often talked to her about the Cubs, because no one else really wants to listen. I thanked her for being a good dog. I tried to stay calm. After a while she sat on her hind legs. I thought her breathing seemed slower. Then she laid down, and slowly lowered her head to the floor between her front paws. I rubbed her neck the whole time. Then Dr. Lendy came back into the room. He picked up the syringe filled with a blue liquid. He had a small set of clippers in his other hand.

“Whenever you’re ready, just put her up on the table here.”

I picked Ally up. She was docile and cooperative. I put her four legs on the table and she lay down right away. Dr. Lendy gently pushed her over on one side. He shaved a part of her top front foreleg, exposing a vein.

“What is that Dr. Lendy?”

“The drug? It’s an overdose of phenol barbital. It will affect her brain first, shutting down all the feeling centers, and slow her breathing to a stop. Then her heart will stop beating.”

“Why dogs do you think Dr. Lendy? We outlive them. This is the second time we’ve gone through this. Why don’t humans take some animal into their homes that will roughly equal their own life span? Then all this wouldn’t be unnecessary.”

“Well, there’s parrots. You give a ten year old a young parrot, the bird lives seventy years, and you’ve given a kid a lifelong companion.”

“But aren’t parrots sort of a pain in the ass?”

“Well, they’re temperamental and they make a lot of noise. Not especially affectionate. I don’t think you can beat a dog. We bring them home and love them because we think they love us. And maybe they do. But take it from me, people love dogs. They cry when they lose them and they miss them long after they’re gone. Dogs are the best.”

“Yes they are.”

“You ready?”

“Yeah.”

He pushed the needle into the small exposed vein in Ally’s front leg, and then pushed the plunger slowly. The blue liquid left the syringe and went into Ally’s bloodstream. I watched her closely. Her eyes closed. She didn’t twitch, she didn’t move. She took a deep breath, four of five smaller breaths, and then didn’t breathe again. Dr. Lendy put a stethoscope to her chest.

“I don’t hear a heartbeat.”

I just stood there. It happened so fast. Much faster than the execution of that man convicted of murder in Arizona.

“You want me to take care of her from here?”

“No, I’ll take her home. I have a spot for her in the backyard.”

“You want a bag?”

“No, I have a towel in my car. I’ll just go get it quick. Is it OK to leave her here?”

“Sure.”

“You need me to pay before I go?”

“No, we’ll send you a bill. You can leave out this side door here.”

“Thanks Doc.”

“You’re welcome. Take care of yourself.”

I got the towel, wrapped her up, and put her in the trunk of the Buick beside my golf clubs. When I got back home to the garage, and shut the door behind me, my wife came in from the patio.

“Is it over?”

“Yeah.”

“Is she with you?”

“Yeah, she’s in the trunk.”

“I don’t want to see her dead.”

“It’s OK. I’ll bury her right away.”

“How did it go? Did the vet understand?”

I walked toward Colleen and started to speak. I got about two words out and began to sob. Big shoulder shaking sobs. We held each other by the garage fridge and cried for a long time. Who knew?