My Beautiful Boy
It’s a simple little phrase, but the thing that describes how pain or loss feels: heavy heart. That’s if you are lucky to feel, because sometimes the pain is too much and your body takes over and shuts it down. And then you’re numb. You feel nothing, let alone your heart-space.
So, if you are lucky enough to feel, it’s a physical thing, not really a metaphor. It’s like something of heft is perched there on your sternum, like an antique dentist chair. Or a granite slab. Or a mammoth’s bony hoof.
My ancient, time-defying dog died today and it wasn’t graceful or elegant. At the vet’s, he panicked, was stressed, and he couldn’t breathe and he was gagging. His tongue turned blue and he backed up into the wall. I was yelling to please help him and a young vet gave him a pain shot and his back legs stopped working. He was still not breathing right. She suspected larynx paralysis, which makes total sense. I begged them to put him to sleep right away, please. They were offering oxygen. Kate and I were sobbing. Three vets worked to find a vein and put the needle in his right paw. And they depressed and he relaxed and sunk down. The second shot had him slowly recline to the side and give way to total peace. It was a vast relief at the end of a sudden horrible emergency for my old guy.
I feel like I really “screwed the pooch” if I may be candid. I should have taken him in yesterday but I have all these human desires like letting Walker, my daughter, “say goodbye” and “making absolutely sure” that this was the last hurrah. And so, last night wasn’t good for him. He was restless and pacing and swallowing hard. Finally, I gave him another anti-nausea pill and he fell asleep.
Selfishly, I wanted him to die peacefully on his own terms. I prayed for that. I kept thinking he was SO old, SO weak, SO thin, it would happen. Add to that, he wasn’t eating much and he was throwing up water. The old body would just conk out and that would be that. And it would be graceful. Painfree (for him). Noble. Quick.
If you’re a purebred and a big dog, you aren’t expected to live long. Certainly not to 15+, where you get the cape and superhero status of “super geriatric.” But Osho was that guy. He got there. And once he punched the time clock past eleven, where his mother and brother had given way, I started saying (like a mantra to my tender daughter): “Every day is a blessing.” I didn’t want her to get sucker punched.
Because it was true that we were all enjoying borrowed days–and I’m not religious, but every second after 11 years was pure gift.
And we climbed to 12, 13, 14, then 15 and there was a point, where although the “Old Man” was slowing down, way down, he clearly was going to live forever. He was a Miracle Dog.
But there ain’t no such thing as forever. Well, except for our love of these animals that love us back, through sun and storm.
They love as partners walk away. They love us when finances crumble. They love us when we are sad. They love us when we are triumphant. They love us when we walk them. They love us when we are grouchy. They love us when we are buoyant. They love us when we take them to the lake. They love us when we stay home.
They just keep on loving us.
And O wasn’t a “sweet” dog per se. He wasn’t the dog that spoons with cats or licks the hand. He would rather lunge at cats and scare them and show hierarchy. He wasn’t the sort to grovel or cow tow. But he loved petting, massage of his shoulders, scratching his flanks. He loved to play tag. He used to love to swim the perimeter of the lake cove with me, matching me stroke for stroke. As he grew older, he deigned to stay on the shore, but he still walked the forest road.
He liked to kill small game and eat them. He just did. He did a lot of that. I think it was in part because he first mom fed him vegetarian dog food.
He was shot by a chicken fighting farmer in Virginia, under the care of another, when he was six. No one knew. It was how he came back to the city—he killed expensive fighting chickens and was “at risk” of being shot. So, we took him in.
So, apparently, he was shot, but his skin and muscle healed. I discovered this when he turned 11 and he had eaten rotted fish and lakeshore stones, the latter of what jammed his “pooper” making me think he was dying of bone cancer like his brother and mother before him, at the same age. There was a large metal slug just outside his intestine, showing up like a white elephant on the X-ray. But no cancer and I was so grateful, even though it was dumb of him to eat rocks.
He was beautiful, aloof, independent, and majestic. Wild seeming, although he took well to urban life, once leaping the fence to beg chicken at the Mrs. Winners from frightened patrons. He always loved chicken.
An exceptionally large, silver husky with one copper partial eye and the other blue, he was otherworldly in appearance and frightened more than one hiker or fisherman, on outdoor excursions, with his wolfish look.
But he was a family member and part of the unit.
Once, a very stupid thief attempted to break into our Atlanta house and Osho apparently stalked him silently like a cat and attacked. There was blood throughout the yard, an alarm sounding from a jimmied window, loose change scattered in a trail to the back fence, and finally the bloody handprints of a terrified criminal leaping the fence. On the other side, the police found large drops of blood.
The police called me when they investigated the alarm to tell me that “my dog got someone,” described the scene, and the fact that they were endangered when a large silver wolf-dog slinking low to the ground quietly stalked an officer. The policeman ran and leapt over the fence in fear. I was told I was lucky they didn’t shoot Osho right then.
Then, there was the time when my daughter first came home from the hospital in her “baby carrying case.” We set her on the elevated coffee table. We didn’t know what to expect from the dogs. We monitored them, as they each took a sniff. Without hesitation, Osho and his brother put their snouts to the air and howled a big friendly welcome. This was a first, a welcoming of a new puppy, even if human. There were times in the past when they howled at sirens, other dogs in the distance. But rarely in the house, never to a living creature.
Later in life, even as old as he was, he slept by the front door so that we had to move him to get in or out. He was so arthritic, so it had to be a huge pain for him, literally. But it was a way for him to monitor the comings and goings of the household.
His loss reverberates tonight, with one fewer plate to feed. We miss his Darth Vader breathing, jokes about him being a “grouchy old man.” His constant present as soon as you stepped into the house. His drooling trail of water. He mooed like a pasture cow when eating. And purred when he was petted.
He was plodding footfalls and snipes of irritation. Glaring laser eyes at cats that ventured too close. He’d frolic with his soul buddy, Jedi when we had fire pit events out back, like he was a cave wolf.
We had a nice day at the lake two weeks ago and he went up and down the hill, dipped paw in the water, took a long clear drink of the minerally lake waters, begged some picnic food. He napped in the shade of the dock in the damp shore mud.
Last week, we closed the dog door and he shredded the frame and broke the snap-on plastic door. He was old, thin, half his formidable size, even feeble in his super geriatric state. But, dammit, he wanted in the damn house and if he needed to shred a polycarbonate dog door to do it, he would. And did without apology. Typical Osho.
Towards the end, I had to coerce him to eat. And so he ate chicken and rice and scrambled eggs with cheese. I did more cooking for the old dog then ever in my life.
A kind friend, with a connection to him, brought a parting gift of a pound of deli turkey. He ate the bulk of it on this last morning and kept it down. He loved it.
On the way to his last car ride, he had trouble breathing, walked with stiffness, still gagging. I took him on a short walk up and down a block and he had trouble with it, but still seemed to enjoy it on some level.
After that walk, he waited and took a final poop in the middle of our driveway–as if to say, “Remember this, Bitches.”
I shed a lot of tears today. For my loyal companion. For our shared history. For his independent spirit. For the release of his pain and suffering. For the fact that he had to suffer at all. For all of the memories we shared. For his constant presence as a family member. For my daughter’s words: ‘Mama, I’ve never been without him.’ For Jedi, my other, younger husky, and his attempt to dig him up after his burial in the yard.
Ultimately, I am deeply sad for the newly torn hole in the fabric of our family.
And he won’t be forgotten. The ornery, stubborn old guy was one of us. And he was there for us– all the way through, to the end. I just hope he felt the same.
