Dexter's Last Day

Today Ward and I took Dexter to the vet to be put to sleep.

As I scratched softly on the boney top of his silky warm head and looked into his sad tired eyes, I cried surprising tears of grief. It was not hard to let Dexter go – as everyone knows who knows me and the story of this adopted beagle with attachment disorders. This moment wasn’t tearing apart a bond forged through years of joyful master-dog relations. I’d been willing to be dog-free for quite some time, but it was in the doggy-hospice weeks leading up to this moment – during which he lost almost half his body weight and became so frail and light that I could carry him when his paws were too sore to walk on – that I bonded with him. It was in the humbling of him – and the quieting brought by his aging – that my heart reached out to finally attach deeply to this life I’d taken on ten years earlier.

We’d always had an understanding between us. I promised him that I’d keep him till the end of his doggy days. We would be his final home. We were his fourth owners in as many years – 5^th, if you counted that the second to last people gave him back to his previous owners who gave him to us. People didn’t seem to like him – found him annoying. He was beautiful – a tri-color pure-bred beagle – very large, and so very gentle, and yet . . .

He had attachment issues for sure – so there was never the level of love and trust between master and beast one often experiences with a loyal dog. The bond was loose – and any loyalty on his part was directed by pure self-interest. He lacked responsiveness to toys, fetching games and doggy tricks. His stubborn streak was carved like a deep trench from the tip of his nose down through his spine to the point on his wagging tail.

His love of the pack kept him close to us – ever near – but never quite reigned in.

I seemed to understand and accept his co-occurring needs for belonging and freedom. I know some people who are like this, too. I was also able to respect his lack of enthusiasm for pet behaviors, and didn’t expect much of him. He offered a couple of concessions - dancing joyfully when thrown a bone, and barking wildly whenever I got the leash out for our walk. He tugged on the leash– yanking it according to the random dictates of his nose. It was never much fun for me; but I walked him regularly – until the boys got a paper route, and then I sent him off with them at 5 a.m. each day. He didn’t go on a leash. They let him trail behind or wander ahead. He learned the route – and followed it each day with whichever boy was delivering the papers. They’d call him when they lost sight of him, and frequently the boy arrived home a good 10 minutes before the dog, but he always arrived. And if he ever got loose from our yard – he’d take off on the route again, as if he had another load of papers to deliver. We always knew where to look for him.

Of course, he was the luckiest dog on the planet with that paper route – but good things like that don’t last forever. After he lost the route he had a steady decline for about two years. One never imagines how time and illness will ravage the once young and vigorous. It will happen to all of us who survive long enough. Cats, dogs, people.

And that of course, is what I grieved, as we waited in the vet’s office for the shot that would slow his heart and finally stop it. It was age and death and loss – the fruits of this fallen world that broke my heart. And here was little Dexter – bearing this weight – displaying in his tired old body – for the benefit of my edification – the most tragic of truths. It is a fallen world.

It was sweet to let Ward hold him there for awhile in the vet’s office – and to feel Ward’s sadness too. We are the old people – stopping to mourn. The boys said their good-byes earlier – sentimental for Dexter, but not grieving. Their lives are beaming full ahead of them – too bright to let the puff of dark cloud in Dexter’s demise cast much of a shadow on them.

Ward and I can track the passage of time now in a way they cannot.

We know what happened after high school, what we majored in in college and who we married. We know how many kids we had, and what we named them. We had our dream house and won our prizes, coached our kids’ teams and redeemed the parts of our lives that broke down along the way with the loving support of good friends and much faith. Nursing the dying Dexter, we were practicing in part, for the time we would do the same for people –parents; one another.

When I am old, will you be kind?

When you are old, I will love you and care for you.

You will belong to me – and I will still respect your freedom.

I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;

I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me! (Job 19:25-27)