Friday, September 26, 2008

A Dog’s Life

Once in awhile I come across the first few pictures we took of Henry when he was a puppy.  In these snapshots his head is large, his fur is dark, and he approaches our little backyard lawn like a true dog, giving it all a good sniff. I remember the challenges of dog training and the handful of things he chewed or shredded on the way to an admirable adulthood.  I remember the longest walk we ever took, so far-ranging that we had to stop for water at a friend’s house on the other side of town. I remember the two dopey college girls who wanted Henry’s protection in the woods one day because a doe and fawn were chewing leaves menacingly beside the path. As I came to know him better over the years, I could see in his face a hard-to-extinguish hopefulness in the morning when I got ready to leave for work. “Maybe,” his eyes implied, “maybe this is a weekend morning,” one of those days when we could take a longer walk. “You’re not really a dog person, are you?” he hinted as I headed toward the door.

By the time he turned 12 this year, our tall, sleek Pet Refuge mutt had flowing black hair with a beatnik patch of white at the chin.  He enjoyed one of the best summers of his life, we thought – long walks nearly every day, the fresh attentions from our youngest child who no longer found mice engaging enough as pets. Henry’s arthritis medicine was working well, so people we’d meet on the sidewalk didn’t see him as a senior citizen. We were even a little vain about his good looks, what with all the slightly overweight dogs you see in the neighborhood these days.  “Yes,” we’d say, “he has no papers, but the groomer said he might be a flat-coated retriever.” We read about this unfamiliar breed in a book, and it’s true, he was a dead ringer for the purebred dogs in the color photographs.

But right at the end of summer Henry stopped finishing his meals, and one evening he fell down on a little walk around the block.  He didn’t seem injured, but that night he refused to come upstairs to his regular spot beside our bed. I brought his bed down and at the top of the stairs I looked back at him, aware that he might not live through the night. When the alarm rang in the morning, I threw on my robe and found him alert there on his bed. But there were more falls. At first the tests at the vet’s office were inconclusive, and then they were not. Explaining the results, the veterinarian was as gentle with us as he’d been with our pets over the years.

We told the children after school. Two of us went back to the vet’s office to be by his side at the end, and the other two went on a long, somber walk and talked about our memories. We passed some of his favorite corners and rocks and hydrants.  We passed the spot where on his very first walk Henry sat down and refused to walk any further. No more, he barked, no more. Our youngest child had known him all her life.

As an adult, Henry was full of intricate knowledge about the ways of humans. Before I picked up a jacket or a leash, he could often tell that I planned to take him for a walk, and he’d be standing by the door swatting the air with his tail. He always appreciated the time we spent with him and hoped for more. A good dog is capable of infinite hope, and which of us has earned the friendship of such a creature?  How can we live up to the example he sets? What kind of a world is it where such a being can grow old and pass away leaving little trace except what we preserve for a time in our hearts?

Broadcast by Ken Smith on September 26, 2008
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