Coming to the End of a Dog's Life

Something I tell new writers not to do is write about their pets. I know they think they're cute and adorable and there's nothing else like them (just like parents think that stuff about their kids: She stood up in her crib and clapped her hands!) but you have to understand that feeling is only in your inner circle. And what I try to get new writers to do is push to their outer circles and what's in them.

But Al took such a great picture of Bob over the holidays, and frankly Bob's been taking up more than a small portion of my attention lately, I can't not write about him. Besides, I've almost gone so full circle that I can write about my dog if I want. And if you don't like it, just click off.

He gave us a bad scare a couple of weeks ago, and I can't help but look at him so differently now, knowing what he must be going through. He's coming to the end of the line, and that means I'm coming to the end of the line with him. I don't know if this post is about him or me, frankly.

A few weeks ago, it was a Friday, Sue was getting ready for work and I was up and about. I remember we were talking about Christmas; Christmas took up a lot of energy this year, and while we were trying to sort things out, suddenly Sue said, Where's Bob? He's no longer always underfoot, but he usually is somewhere in one of his spots, and he usually gets up with Sue, knowing she'll be a sucker and feed him before me.

We found him lying on the bedroom floor, in his own shit and piss, and he couldn't move his hindquarters. We called the vet, and tried to figure out how to clean him up and get him out of the apartment. We got some towels under him, and a tarp, figuring we could carry him down in a litter, but once we started to hoist him, he didn't want any part of it. He found his legs, and lumbered down the stairs.

The short story is he's just slowly easing toward the end of the line. He's just about blind now. The vet said it's like he has maybe three pair of sunglasses on. So he's slow going just about anywhere except when it's bright sunlight. Down the stairs at night and into the backyard so he can relieve himself is a long process as he feels his way along. I tried putting him on a leash and leading him, but he didn't seem to like that. Bob is smart, and lets you know what's up.

He's pretty much deaf and responds only to the loudest, sharpest noises. He has arthritis in his hips, and nerve damage in his hindquarters, so he doesn't always feel it when he has to go to the bathroom. He'll just walk along the sidewalk and things drop out of him like goose eggs.

All this so far might seem funny or endearing, but at times at can be pretty tough, like when it's pouring rain in the middle of the night and he wasn't responding to commands like he had been taught. Or when he'd relieve himself at the bottom of the stairs before we got out of the house, or right on the porch as soon as we got outside. Yeah, I was short with him. I got mad. I yelled. I said he was bad. And, like I said, he's smart. He had a vocabulary of maybe twenty words or more. We had to spell things sometimes because he knew words like walk, truck, kibble, Rocky (a cat), Toby (a dog). What am I saying; he knew more than twenty words. So when I yelled he took it hard. And I hate myself now for making him feel like that. He was trying. He's always been so good and he was still being good, just not in the way he always had been before. He was old and even he knew it. He hated it when he messed on the porch more than I did.

I knew he was getting old, but I didn't quite absorb it all. Or I didn't want to. I'm not trying to make myself look better than I am (ever hear the saying, I want to be the person my dog thinks I am?) but I questioned if I was getting mad at him because I was scared of the inevitable decision I was going to have to make. Or I was more angry at what seems like desertion. How dare you leave me. He and I have been together since he was twelve weeks old, and now he's thirteen and a half. We went everywhere together, and I mean everywhere. If I had to drive somewhere, he came along. Most times he came into whatever building I had to go into, too. And now he can barely make it back up the stairs.

On December 26 the girls came over and Al brought her dog, Ella Mae. It was snowing like crazy that night, and after dinner we all went out in the snow with the dogs. A neighbor came along with her Lab pup, and that pup and Ella Mae just tore through the snow. And while my girls laughed and clapped at Bob horsing around too, I saw something else. I saw a very old dog who couldn't keep up any more, but who wanted to. I saw a dog who used to be a big strong alpha, get run over by a runty little Lab pup that before would have been nothing more than a chew toy.

We've pretty much come to terms with Bob and what he can and can't do. We don't get guilty when we don't take him places anymore, because we know it will just tire him out. We're patient when he takes his time, knowing he's still the good boy he's always been, still doing things better any other dog. And we've decided that the inevitable day is coming for not only Bob, but us too, and before he goes we're just going to do our best (but not as good as Bob could do it) to make his last days here on earth as good an comfortable as they can be for him.

Hachiko

Yesterday after work I sat in Park Street Station waiting for Sue, who was coming in from Brighton on a B train, so we could ride the T home together.

I sat on a bench with a couple of scripts in my lap during rush hour and my God, there are a lot of inbound Green Line trains that rumble through that station at that time of day. For every train that came in, I'd lift my head and anxiously scan the rushing crowd of commuters, expectantly looking for that pretty redhead of mine.

And I thought to myself, I must look like a faithful dog sitting here, waiting for his master.

I told this to Sue on the ride home, and having lived in Japan, she knew and told me the story of Hachiko.

From Wikipedia:

"In 1924, Hachikō was brought to Tokyo by his owner, Hidesamurō Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo. During his owner's life, Hachikō saw him off from the front door and greeted him at the end of the day at the nearby Shibuya Station. The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno didn't return on the usual train one evening. The professor had suffered a stroke at the university that day. He died and never returned to the train station where his friend was waiting.

Hachikō was given away after his master's death, but he routinely escaped, showing up again and again at his old home. After time, Hachikō apparently realized that Professor Ueno no longer lived at the house. So he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachikō waited for Professor Ueno to return. And each day he didn't see his friend among the commuters at the station.

The permanent fixture at the train station that was Hachikō attracted the attention of other commuters. Many of the people who frequented the Shibuya train station had seen Hachikō and Professor Ueno together each day. Realizing that Hachikō waited in vigil for his dead master, their hearts were touched. They brought Hachikō treats and food to nourish him during his wait.

This continued for 10 years, with Hachikō appearing only in the evening time, precisely when the train was due at the station."

In my world, being compared to a dog is not a bad thing. In my world, it's a compliment. If you don't understand that, well, I feel sorry for you. Sorry, that you don't understand how deep the relationship can be between a human and a dog.

Bob, the Wonder Aussie

It's not that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. It's just that the old dog isn't the dog you think it is.



Bob, the Wonder Aussie, has changed. In the past year he's slowed down. When we hike he now lies down whenever he can, when before he'd charge down the trail ahead of me. Then got stomach problems. I used to feed him kibble and table scraps to the vet's horror, but now it's just kibble, or sometimes a little rice. Then he got clingy. Now he sleeps in in the morning until I call him to breakfast.

It took me a bit of time and thought to figure out what was happening. We'd go out in the morning, just like every morning, so he could run out to the fenceline and do his business. But it became infuratiating. I'd be in a hurry to catch a train, and he'd just balk and wait for me to tell him to go. Bob, I'd say, we've done this every morning of your life. What's the story? Now, he's all the way out there, and sometimes he'll just stand there staring at me, as if he's making sure I won't go away. If I have to clean snow off the truck, or put something in the truck, I have to do it after he's finished. He's like an old man, now, who needs constant attention.

It's hard to see, and harder to watch, but I guess it's inevitable.

He was quite a pup. I picked him up from his breeder. I wasn't even sure what an Aussie pup looked like, and when I saw him, I thought, that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. Tall and gawky, with a big nose. Aussies are typically black, white, and brown or a blueish color called merle. Bob is all black. He was the last of the litter because no one wanted him. He was no good for breeding. Maybe that's why I liked him. My breeding is questionable, too.

The breeder had already named him Bobby, because he looked like a little bear. I thought is was kind of a wuss name, but it did seem to fit, and as he got older he just grew into Bob. He still looks like a little bear cub. A couple of times in the mountains people coming along the trail have started when they saw him.

He was carsick the whole trip home. Fifteen seconds after pulling out of the breeders he stuck his head down on the floor and vomited. Then he rode the whole way home drooling in my lap. My pants were soaked by the time I got him home. He was carsick the first year of his life. Every time we went somewhere he'd throw up within the first minutes of leaving the house. I can't tell you what the truck smelled like. I didn't give up on him, though, and suddenly he got over it; now he's still the best little traveler. "Truck" was one of the first words he knew.

He still wants to go everywhere, and nothing stops him. Last summer Sue and I were down on the Cranberry Highway on the Cape, and we thought Bob was in the truck. My cell phone rings and some guy is telling me there's this little black dog running around in traffic on the highway. I was scared out of my mind, and when I got outside the minute he saw me he made a bee-line for me. I had left the back window open and he had jumped out and run up to the first store we went into. Another time I was up at the corporate headquarters of Eastern Mountain Sports in a meeting, and the receptionist called the person I was meeting with. Do you have a little black dog, he asked. Yeah, I said, why? Bob had jumped out of the truck, run around the building, and was barking at the main door. I came downstairs to find Bob surrounded by all of these women, including the vice president of Web development, the person I was there doing work for.

A buddy thinks I should get another puppy now, as if I have time for that. I don't have time for myself much less an Aussie pup. But I think he's looking out of me. People have said they don't want to be around me when he goes. I'll be devastated. My buddy thinks that having another dog around will soften the blow when Bob, bites that big bone in the sky, as Sue says.

I'm not looking forward to that day either.