A friend of mine wrote to me recently about her 17 year old cat dying. This friend, I think, mainly just needed an avenue to vent. Her correspondence was filled with searching and uncertainty.
My response to her actually got me thinking quite a bit about the lives we share with our pets and the unique relationship with death we have because of them.
And it is unique. We have human family and friends, people close to us that have made significant impressions in our lives. We lose them and grieve. And we remember our own mortality and do that entire, emotional danse macabre that spirals down through you like a drill. And yet, while we experience the same thing with our animals, the steps of that dance are somewhat different, are they not? Not worse, or necessarily easier, just different.
My friend was wrestling with the idea that she didn’t have the right or the authority or the knowledge to make the call to euthanize. I told her that, as difficult as it is, it’s our responsibility to make the call. We make choices every day about what they should and shouldn’t eat, when to take them to the vet, ways to protect them from things they don’t understand like roads and chocolate and heartworms. We do this because, despite their intelligence, these are things they cannot grasp and we, as their guardians, as their caretakers, as beings who attempt to love them as completely and selflessly as they love us, are obligated to take such steps. As death approaches, we cannot shirk that duty. I believe we must have the courage to make the call. I believe we must also have the courage to hold them through the entire thing. We owe them for what they have given to us. We cannot allow them to face it alone.
At the time of this writing my bulldog, Dexter, is six which for a bulldog is pretty near senior. He’s in awesome shape without many of the maladies that typically plague bulldogs, so I’m optimistic that he’s going to stick around for a good long while. Nevertheless, I’ve been preparing myself slowly, in the background, trying little by little to fortify myself against what I know will eventually come.
That dog saved my life. I went through a very difficult, bitter divorce a few years ago. It was without any exaggeration the lowest and darkest point in my life. I remember clearly on many occasions lying on the floor in a walk in closet, keening—and I don’t mean just crying, I mean keening, that primal, hopeless howling that pulls the life from the deepest, most broken parts of you—and he would creep slowly in, lick my face tenderly, and curl up against me as if he was trying to let me know I didn’t have to do it alone and that we’d be ok.
When I was screaming on the phone, deep in the trenches of war with my ex, he would sit by me and paw at my legs quietly. Not annoying, like a puppy or boisterous or silly, but supportive. He doesn’t like seeing me upset.
He follows me everywhere. He won’t be content unless he’s laying against me or on me. He makes me laugh with his goofy faces and his silly Wookie noises and his stinky farts at night and the way he wiggles around on his back when I come home. Nothing life throws at me is ever too much after we went through that stuff together. He has given so much to me. Don’t tell my new wife, but I think that dog is pretty much the love of my life.
But, like I said, I’ve been stealing myself against the truth that he and I only have a handful of years left together, or less.
Our dogs, and our cats, are such amazing sparks of life and selfless love. I am reminded daily what teachers they are. I strive to emulate what Dexter, and my other two dogs and my cat, and all the dogs I’ve taught as a trainer have shown me about kindness, generosity, patience, and love. As death looms ever closer we feel more acutely how precious these lessons are, and how irreplaceable our companions are. It’s a progressively intense bittersweet. A simultaneous joy and pain. Grateful and fearful. It’s truly a manifestation of the sublime: awe tinged with horror.
It was hard replying to my friend with comfort and encouragement. I was crying when I wrote my response, putting myself in her shoes and picturing Dexter instead of her cat. I tried to offer the encouragement and strength she was searching for. I’m not sure how successful I was.
If Dexter gets advanced in age, and he’s suffering, if he’s at the end and it’s a choice to make, you know he would choose to go on no matter how miserable he was just to be with me. This is where I have to make a decision that’s best for him, just like I always have. It’s then that we must acknowledge that we love them more than ourselves. We have to reject the easy but ultimately selfish idea that that’s an ok alternative because we can’t bear to see them go. I will send him on his way, and I will sit down and look death in the eyes. And as he slips away I will curl up with him so that he doesn’t have to do it alone.
When I had to let Nikki go I wish someone had said those words to me. Eloquently said and from the heart. We each as owners must carry this decision and burden alone, but as pet lovers we are united in that love.