Whatever we may have managed to teach Clancy paled in comparison to what she taught all who knew her: Life is to be lived, one moment at a time. Guided by death on her left shoulder and the wisdom of a dog who was busy living, not dying, Clancy’s owner learned to treasure each day as it unfolded. Though she worked to protect Clancy from unnecessary stress, she no longer tried to protect Clancy from all that made her life worth living.
THE FENCE THAT FEAR BUILT
It is natural to protect what you love. To a certain degree, this natural protectiveness functions to limit or minimize risk and is part of our responsibility as dog owners, part of any loving relationship. All of us would look askance at someone who proclaimed that they loved their dog yet let him run freely in traffic or failed to provide veterinary care so disease and infection did not take hold. To the extent that the protection we offer is founded on caring for the well-being of our canine charges, our protection is a good and healthy thing. But at what point does protection become hurtful in itself?
McKinley was about nine weeks old when I took him to the barn along with the other dogs for a final night check on the horses. Curious about the new puppy, one of the horses leaned over his stall door to investigate. As I have done with every puppy, I picked up McKinley to meet the horse. Alarmed by the giant head breathing down on him, the puppy’s heart began to race, every beat registering in my suddenly unsure hands. Why had I done that? What if that was the momentary stress that killed him? My fears about losing him surfaced in a huge swell of doubt and confusion. Although the puppy calmed down quickly, I did not. Watching him gallop away to join the other dogs, I had to face a difficult question. What constituted the “full life” I had promised this dog?
It would have been much easier if his was a “manageable” disease or defect, if by modifying his diet or limiting his exercise or avoiding certain situations I could limit the risks, prolong his life. But McKinley was a question mark, with no more certainty of when and where the bell would toll for him than for me. While I wanted to protect him (and myself from the pain of losing him), there was a fine line between the reasonable precautions I would take with any puppy and overprotecting McKinley. Knowing just where that fine line lay was possible only if I was willing to examine my own feelings and fears.
When I was nine or ten, my mother sometimes washed my hair in the kitchen sink. Lying with my head safely held in her hands, I could gaze up at my mother’s beautiful face. One day, looking very closely at her nostrils, I began thinking that I would recognize her face from any angle, anywhere, no matter how old or wrinkled she got. Suddenly, it hit me that the day would come when she would no longer wash my hair, when I would no longer live with her, and then—building to a horrifying realization—there would be a time when she no longer shared the planet with me. What if she died when I was not there? What if I never got a chance to say good-bye? I could think of nothing more awful than seeing her for the last time without knowing it was, indeed, the last time. The fear those thoughts created was palpable: My chest tightened; my throat closed. To my mother’s utter surprise, I began sobbing uncontrollably.
Her first thought was that somehow she had burned me with too hot water or gotten shampoo in my eyes. While I could shake my head in answer to her queries about water temperature or shampoo, I was unable to answer her question, “Then why are you crying?” My young vocabulary could not possibly begin to explain the fear that gripped me. It was nearly twenty years before I could explain that moment to her.
To a certain degree, it used to be possible for me to gauge the depth of my love for someone by the intensity of the fear created in my contemplation of their death. While this is not as true as it used to be, thanks to lessons on living and dying that I’ve been offered by many animals, the fear is still there. No one wants to hurt; no one wants to experience loss. But I also know that to cling sobbing as I did to my bewildered mother is a waste of valuable time. I am well acquainted with my fear of loss, and with the specific physical feelings that it arouses in me. Finding that fine line between reasonable caution and anxiously clutching McKinley was not really difficult—I had only to recognize fear.
For McKinley to have a full life meant that I had to allow him to live. Any actions I took to protect him had to spring from normal, reasonable caution, not from my fear. With each choice I made for him, I first checked carefully for any hint of the wide-eyed monster. My fear would have dictated never leaving him unhappily barking in his crate, never disciplining his actions, never raising my voice to him, never forcing him to do anything he didn’t want to do, never letting him run after the big dogs or swim in the pool or face scary situations or anything, anything at all that might trigger the final moment. But in the end, I would not have held off death. I would only have held back life.
When I was a child, my mother appeared fearless. Now a mother myself and much older, I understand that she was often afraid, but to the best of her ability, she privately wrestled with her fears for us, and only rarely did we wonder at her urgent cautions or worried glances. She taught her children reasonable caution, but did not limit our lives because of her own fears. She understood, and taught by daily example, that a full life is not one described by fear, but one of well-considered risks taken with full enthusiasm and no regrets.
She found horses frightening and did not understand what drove me to spend countless hours in their company. At the first and last horse show of mine that she ever attended, she was greatly alarmed when my borrowed mount tried to deposit me (unsuccessfully) on the ground. But she did not limit my horse activities. She knew that this passion was part of what made me who I was; that mattered far more to her than her own fears. The fine balance she struck as a parent is the same one we must find with our dogs—protecting them without preventing them from being who they are, without limiting the fullness of their lives. This is a difficult balance to find.
Years ago, my good friend Judy had a dog who was dying of kidney failure. All tests showed that nothing more could be done for this dog; it was time to put her to sleep before the kidney failure caused her a tremendously painful death. Knowing there were only a few hours left before the situation became uncomfortable and then miserable for the dog, Judy decided that if Dawn must die, she would not do so in a hospital cage. Instead, she would bring her to my farm, a place they both loved, and a veterinarian friend of mine would put her to sleep there.
At the animal hospital, the attending veterinarian gave Judy a stern warning that while Dawn looked fine at the moment, taking the dog out of the hospital would worsen her condition in a few hours. To Judy, this seemed almost laughable. Why should Dawn’s life end after nothing but a few more hours of sitting in a hospital when it might also be called to a halt after a last chance to walk in the sunshine? How long, she demanded to know, would it be before Dawn began to suffer in any way? The vet shrugged. “Perhaps three to four hours at most. She’ll get weak and begin vomiting at first. Then it will go much more quickly.”
Facing death square-on, it seemed clear to Judy that Dawn should be granted the complete fullness of what remained of her life. “Give me my dog,” she said.
At the farm, Dawn and Judy wandered happily in the sunshine, played a little ball, waded in the stream. For the first time in the weeks since Dawn had become ill, they both truly enjoyed life together in the way they always had. It was a well-considered risk, this final gift of a few more moments of joy. Dawn never did grow weak as the vet had warned would happen. Perhaps the pure pleasure of those hours sustained her in ways medicine never could. Perhaps Judy’s timing was simply the impeccable timing of love. Still comfortable in her body, Dawn was eased with a gentle hand to her death in Judy’s arms, a tennis ball still soggy from play at her side.
IN A HEARTBEAT
When it came to McKinley, I wished I had as clear a timetable as Judy had with Dawn. A part of me wanted for the world to pause until we had marked his last day, so that I might not miss even a moment of his life.
Above all else, I wanted to accomplish this: to be able to look into his eyes when the end came and know that I had not limited his life or taken his time with me for granted. But trying to live each of an animal’s days in a heightened intensity of awareness, in a sort of death watch, is neither possible nor balanced. In waiting for the dreaded moment, I would exhaust myself, deprive others I love of attention and time, and most of all, miss what that animal’s life was really about. So I tried to live as McKinley did—in the moment, one heartbeat at a time.
But it was precisely a heartbeat that reminded me constantly of what was to come. Whether curled beside me on the couch, leaping up to deliver one of his special hugs or draped across me in bed, I could not miss the abnormal rhythm of McKinley’s heart beneath my hands or held close against my cheek. His heartbeat was like an enchanted seashell that, when put to my ear, whispered of both death and life. Even without a defective heart that beats telltale under our hands, there are other rhythms that also whisper to us, try though we might to ignore them. They are to be found in the gradual slowing of an old dog’s trot, in the dimming, blued eyes of a friend somehow grown ancient without our agreement or awareness. Like photos superimposed, it is hard to distinguish between the old dog before us and the young dog he once was.
In the year between his fourteenth birthday and his death just five weeks shy of his fifteenth year, McKinley’s grandfather Bear became increasingly feeble. Watching his legs begin to fail him was difficult; his mind and spirit were still strong. Though no longer able to outrun the younger dogs, he could still exert sufficient authority to force any dog near him to relinquish the ball. I was unwilling to have him jostled by healthier, younger dogs or watch his frustration when they kept themselves and the ball outside his range of influence. So playing ball, a game he loved above all else, became a private matter between us, Bear and me. I would toss the ball a short distance on level ground, and with determination, he would shuffle after it. Even at his advanced age, his delight in having captured the ball was tremendous. Grayed muzzle gripping the prize, he would wobble back to me, eyes aglitter in anticipation of the next throw. In those moments, the sadly real image of an old dog playing a favorite game faded, giving way to the more familiar, remembered image of a younger Bear, a dog who could fly through the air to snatch balls in midflight.
It may have been just a mistake or the habit of years that prompted me one day to toss the ball, as I so often had, high into the air. And it may have also been only habit that triggered Bear’s gallant effort to leap for the ball, a canine Nureyev against the sky. I can still see his eyes brightly fixed on the ball’s trajectory, his mouth opening in preparation, his entire being projected up and away from gravity’s pull. For a split second, he was airborne and young again. Then he crumpled in the grass, shocked and embarrassed that his hind legs had failed him. Although I could apologize to him for my mistake, I had no suitable apology for what time’s passing had done to his body.
I had often wondered if, like myself, animals felt little of the aging process, so gradually sinister, so insidious yet ruthless in its quiet work. Marking yet another year’s passage, did they too feel no different, no older? Did they bear the knowledge, experience and wisdom of their years as I bore mine—a strange overlay on the child within me, the child who never truly disappeared? Were their images of themselves blended as mine were for me, a blur of young and old, past and present, and running through it all, a constancy that I think must be the eternity of spirit? Watching Bear send his mind soaring after that tennis ball, I knew that for him as well as for me, some part of him was forever young, capable of anything. As he struggled to right himself in the grass, I saw the surprise in his eyes, as if he too had been unable—or unwilling—to see himself as an old dog who would fly through the sky no more. I never again threw his ball high against the clouds; he never again leaped to meet it. Looking through my tears, I sadly brought into focus the reality of Bear, my old dog.
One of the most difficult aspects of caring for a very sick or old dog is keeping clear the images our hearts would prefer to blur. My friend Ginny’s dog Annie was a proud German Shepherd who had always disdained coddling or assistance. Now ancient, the end was written in Annie’s eyes, which had begun to glow with the oddly youthful look animals sometimes have as they begin the process of disconnecting from this life, this physical body. Annie was preparing Ginny for the departure that was not too far away, and Ginny knew it. Still, one night, Ginny and I knelt next to the old dog, hoping to offer some beneficent touch, some assistance for the wasted body. Annie’s paws were cold; her circulation had begun to limit its rounds, saving its precious energy for her vital organs.
“Give her a blanket,” I suggested. Ginny protested, saying Annie would never accept such coddling, had always rejected such luxury no matter how wet her coat or cold the night. Still, she gathered a blanket and we draped it around Annie’s frail form, leaving only her beautiful head exposed. With a brief, apologetic glance at us, the dog who had spent a lifetime needing no assistance snuggled into the blanket, accepting the warmth her old body needed. Ginny, who spends countless hours helping other people with their dogs, was devastated.
“How could I have missed that? Why didn’t I think to give her a blanket? How could I be so stupid about my own dog?” Ginny had not been careless or uncaring. In every moment of her life, Annie had created a powerful image of who she was. It was hard to shift a lifetime’s focus and clearly see the newer, less-welcome image of Annie as a rapidly aging dog who needed help. Ginny’s heart, and Annie herself, clung stubbornly to the more familiar view of Annie as strong, capable, independent.
TWO DOGS AND A FUNERAL
In our house, it is a rare year that does not include death. With so many animals of varying life span and age, it is almost inevitable that by each year’s end, we have had to say good-bye to one or more friends. Looking forward as we do to Christmas, our favorite of all holidays, we wonder silently and aloud who will be there with us for the celebration. Because death is such a constant in my life, it was not a surprise when a friend called to tearfully inform me that she had just put Blaze to sleep. This thirteen-year-old Golden Retriever had been her first dog, and she did not know what to do, nor how to handle the situation with her other Golden, Kelly. After talking for a bit, she decided she wanted to bury Blaze in the backyard. Knowing that she was recovering from giving birth just a few weeks earlier and that her husband was away on a business trip, I agreed to dig the grave.
If there was ever a suitable outlet for grief, it is this: the backbreaking, mind-numbing work of digging a large dog’s grave, especially in the rocky ledges of western New Jersey where I then lived. At first, you begin with somber purpose, mindful of little but the sadness of your task. Tears spill readily as you work. The digging is easy at first, and as you shovel, you cry and talk and remember, and you even laugh a little. Then the dirt becomes rock, and cursing quietly under your breath, you pound away at the stone that eventually shatters under your determination. You begin to feel the effort now in your back and shoulders, and it gets harder to talk. You no longer speak in whole sentences; instead, you merely grunt in sympathetic agreement as the person who is not digging continues to reminisce and weep. (There is an unspoken rule that the dog’s owner need not dig unless they choose to; it is understood that their grief is sufficient work for the moment.) What had been moderate-sized stones grow into boulders the size of small foreign cars. Yet when you wrestle these lost pieces of Stonehenge loose from the earth’s grasp, you are shocked to see that the hole you have dug is barely as deep as your shin; you need a hole that will reach to your hips. Surely, your aching body protests, surely we are halfway to China by now. As you stand resting on the shovel to catch your breath, you realize also that the carefully sized grave has somehow changed shape, narrowing as it deepens so that perhaps only a Chihuahua could be laid to rest in the space you’ve cleared. With a groan, you begin to enlarge the hole on all sides (thinking for o
nly a fleeting moment of how tightly you might curl a dead dog to save some space; practicality is breaking through the heavy clouds of sadness and punching a few holes in this responsibility to treat a lifeless body kindly). And it goes on like this for quite some time. By the time you are done, you are numb, a state of being that is oddly welcome in this sad moment.
Eventually, the grave was ready. Not far away, in quiet repose under a blanket, Blaze’s body lay in the back of my friend’s car. It is time for the next step. “What do you do when one of your dogs dies?” my friend asked. I explained how we bring the other dogs to the body, how they respectfully gather around and how they sit watching as we bury our friend, attentive until the last shovel of dirt has been lovingly, tearfully tamped into place. She thought this over for a few moments and decided that this was a good way to handle this—after all, Blaze had raised Kelly from a young pup. She headed off to get Kelly for the funeral.
In the wild scrabble of Kelly’s feet on the garage floor, I had my first inkling that there might be many ways for dogs to act in the presence of death. Foolishly, I assigned Kelly’s enthusiastic gallop toward the car to her joy at seeing me. After all, I told myself, the poor dear had no way of knowing that her friend Blaze was dead since when she last saw her a few hours ago, Blaze was ill but alive. Kelly greeted me with enthusiasm, and I tried to calm her a bit as I returned her hello. My friend asked, “Do we show her Blaze’s body now?” Nodding, I opened the back of the car and invited Kelly to put her feet up on the tailgate so she could sniff and understand what had happened. Never a dog to do things halfway, Kelly responded by leaping into the back of the car, merrily bouncing on her dead friend as if this were a new but oddly uncomfortable cushion under the tactfully draped blanket. Even as I heard my friend gasp in horror, I was already calling Kelly out of the vehicle, grateful that she responded quickly by sailing out as gleefully as she had leaped in. Eyes wide, my friend wailed, “I thought you said dogs were respectful of the dead!”
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