I didn’t wake up this morning anticipating the final goodbye to a beloved pet. Yesterday was like any other, as were the days before. There was nothing to signal concern. Sure, he was getting older, but 10-years old is hardly geriatric. This morning he was obviously sick, we took him to the Vet, and following a couple of hours of diagnostics, we found ourselves holding him with his terminal diagnosis, petting his head while he looked tenderly first at one of us, then the other, speaking his name while the Vet emptied first one syringe and then a second. A peaceful moment later, he was gone.
I hesitated to write about this for any eyes beyond our own. After all, who needs one more sad pet story amidst so much anguish and trauma and global grief and pain? But perhaps poignant contact with the death of a beloved dog is the very thing we need – flaking particles that we have become of a collective heart so calcified and atrophied as to scarcely beat at all. We have become brittle and brutal to one another; acrimonious, poisonous and simply mean. Maybe a heartbreaking gaze into the soulful eyes of a diminishing dog can be at least one solvent drop on our coronary concrete.
Tir was, from the beginning, Lori’s dog – a too-soon replacement, in my opinion, for our treasured “first” dog that had only recently passed away. Grieving, we salved the loss with a puppy who looked identical to his forerunner. He was barely weaned. As his later quirks bore witness, he could have benefited from more instructional time with his mother. But home with us he came, and promptly set about the work of transforming our home into his.
He could be demanding, and he could be militantly petulant, as I found out one Christmas Eve when I tried to take away the full diaper he had snatched from our grandson’s changing table. The puncture wounds from his bite eventually healed, but I never tried that again. At the same time, he was routinely protective and loving. He slept outside the door of any overnight guest. He guarded our grandson like he was the Crown Prince. When one of us was sick, Tir couldn’t be dynamited from our side. We were his responsibility, and he took his job seriously.
Not quite one year old when we moved to the farmstead, he quickly established himself as the watcher and the “dog bell.” His favorite perch was the back of the sofa from which vantage point he could survey the front yard through the large living room window, warning us with voluble animation of passing deer, squirrels, visitors and delivery trucks.
And he would cuddle. He would rarely initiate such affection, but he never complained or resisted when one of us needed a hug. He would willingly submit when we drew him near, and settle himself into a pliant puddle of flesh in our laps.
And all of a sudden it is a quieter, soberer place without him. Yes, we have other dogs. Yes, and absolutely they are precious and dear and every other minute make us laugh or sigh with pleasure at their company. It’s not that we are suddenly alone. It is simply that Tir is no longer among our company. He was who he was, and the others are who they are. Tir, moreso than any of our other companions, taught us the absurdity of the ruse that, “if you have seen one you have seen them all.” Tir let us know in myriad ways that you hadn’t seen Tir until you had seen Tir; insisted that we comprehend that each one is unique, a particular personality, a discreet bundle of endearments and aggravations that, in snowflaked singularity, does not and will not exist again - only one of his life lessons we could afford to generalize in among our wider interactions.
Already we miss him, and the way he filled the space he carved in our lives and hearts – bite marks, tear drops, cuddles and his insistent stare-downs when it was time for us to do whatever it was that he wanted. And forever we are grateful – to each other for wanting him and agreeing to have him; and to him for, well, being him.
I suppose we will have to learn how to keep watch our own driveway from now on.
It’s a disconcerting feeling to turn 65. I’m not complaining. After all, it’s great to be alive. It’s just that, in a weird irrational way, I never thought I would be this old. I suppose I imagined that I would reach some mythically perfect age – say, 55 – and just hold there. The “reaching” part worked out quite well. It’s the “hold” part that the universe bungled. I kept aging. Year after year until reaching this Medicared benchmark. So far. Which is to say that I have no immediate interest in stopping the process. Who knows, for example, what 70 might hold – or 100?
