The dog in question was mine. I didn't actually kill her. The vet did. But I authorized it. I carried her to my truck and stood there teary-eyed in the driveway as the kids said goodbye and tossed a ball in with her. And I held her as the last bit of life spasmed out of her. Tonight I will retrieve her ashes. The reason I decided to pony up the extra money for an individual cremation concerns the kids. We encouraged the 13-year-old to go to soccer practice the night of the euthanasia, but his mother had to bring him home because he couldn't stop crying. On the other hand, the 9-year-old said he wanted a new dog that very weekend. I've put down dogs before, two of which were old and one that had bloated. But this dog has hit me particularly hard, probably because of the kids. And maybe the fact that I spent years intensely training with her.
Not to say that this dog didn't possess negative qualities. She was a high-drive German shepherd and liked to bark at anything--anything--that came by the house, like infants, other dogs, old ladies, birds.... The FedEx guy once refused to leave the bottom of the driveway to approach the house. One day son the younger approached me with a pair of scissors, pointing straight at me. She jumped off the couch barking, but did no harm. Likely because she knew the consequences of approaching one of our children with teeth bared. At the gas station, I had to close the back window and get out of the truck, for when anyone came near her vehicle, she went ballistic. The vehicle rocked, so adamant was she that nobody came near it. She could be really sweet, however, unless you were within 15 feet of her food bowl. Then the growling and hair standing up and territoriality grew to frightening proportions for other members of the household. The poster child for bitches be crazy. Her breeder had said anyone else would have given her back. I wasn't scared of her, though. I put my hand right down in her food bowl. I could touch her while she growled. Near the end, though, she may have become more belligerent, and I took to fending her off with a chair while taking her food away if she hadn't eaten it within a reasonable amount of time. It was like lion feeding time at the zoo, and I acted like a circus lion tamer. I think she may have grown frustrated with her condition, since she lacked the mobility she had once possessed. Degenerative myelopathy, the canine equivalent of ALS, ultimately prompted us to let her go.
Before DM, she had enormous stamina and impressive agility. She would run 11 miles with me. She would scale the rock wall to the kids' clubhouse. She would jump four-foot fences easily. That all makes the debilitating disease even more disconcerting. Because her mental faculties, such as they were, hadn't declined. So at the end, she was just a happy dog at the vet's office, wondering what the hell was going on on the other side of that door as we waited in the room. What, there's another dog out there? Unacceptable.
Dogs are dogs, I know. But my kids hurt, and I hurt for them. Dogs become quickly woven into the fabric of lives. Still I think I need to take her outside. Still I look for here where she's not. Still I expect the barking at the garbage truck or the mailman.
We'll let the kids decide what they'd like to do with her. Perhaps we'll bury her under that front window from which she lashed out at all comers. She kissed me aggressively before she went to sleep, and after, I straightened her head and askew tongue. It's not fun seeing your dog like that, but neither was it fun seeing her struggle to stand up and falling and banging into walls and furniture. Bye, Kelsey.
