Our dog died today. I have no witty reparte or any loving anecdote that I want to share. I don't want to remember her as a puppy or how many times she cracked me up, especially when she was little. I don't want to focus on the "joy." Right now, I want to feel sad and I want to write down the experience, for her and for me.
I carried her in my arms because she really couldn't walk. She had a swollen front leg and she had been wheezing and straining to breathe for almost two weeks. We probably waited too long. She was suffering, needlessly. Four days ago I was doing housework and she was laying by the back door and she was making soft sounds so I stopped what I was doing and I went and lay next to her. I put my arm around her and she licked my face, but then she started making the sound again. Whimpering. Chronic pain whimpering. I remember sitting outside with her about a month ago and I was petting her fur and I said, "You'll tell me when girl ok?" It was just like in that movie Marley and Me. And, to tell you the truth, I wanted her to tell Tim and I when because that is a decision that I've never had to make before. I've never had to put a pet down, until today.
She weighed about 45 pounds and she didn't fight me. People say it's like they know and maybe, in some small way, she was relieved that we were doing something. Maybe she was just so tired that none of it mattered. Last night she lay in one spot and she didn't get up at all. I waited for her to bark so that I could go downstairs and let her out, but she didn't. She just lay there.
I brought her into the room and lay her on the towel and she just looked at me, breathing heavily, her tongue coming out of her mouth once or twice. I wondered if she was thirsty. Within two minutes, a young man came in and told me that he was going to give her a shot of morphine to calm her. Strange, because she was already so calm, but I knew that she wouldn't be in any more pain after that shot. He administered it and said that the doctor would be in in about 5 minutes or so to give her the final shot. He smiled and put a box of Kleenex on the table by her head. He closed the door and I looked at the clock on the wall. 5 minutes.
Riley would have turned 14 this year, in December, but she started to look so old, especially these last months. It was in her eyes. She couldn't hear much anymore and she lost most of her teeth a long time ago. She spent several years without a lot of attention and for that, I feel terrible. Caught up in other things, there were times when Riley was just simply this figure that lived in our house, in our backyard. Sometimes she was annoying and she had fur problems for years. Every time my brothers would come over these past few years, they would joke about how we should just put her down. But the thing was, she may have looked scraggly and she was smelly and she couldn't hear, but she was a good dog. We first got her because we needed a watchdog and she barked at everything in the backyard, sometimes too often. She didn't like other dogs very much and she would growl and bark at people who came by the house who were walking their dogs. And when she was little, maybe the first 2 years, she jumped up on everybody. She didn't discriminate.
I have to be honest here and say that I am not the best pet owner, not even close; I'm sitting here right now thinking about all of the things that I could have done to show her that it meant a lot to us to have her around; that just having her here made our family complete. I would and still have recently joked that with a husband and 3 boys in the house, it was just me and the dog, that the bitches have to stick together. Sometimes I would just sit out in the backyard with her, pushed up next to me, thinking about things and sometimes I'd watch her roll around on her back, growling and barking.
I asked Jake if he wanted to come with me today and he did. For a second I know he thought about coming into the room, but now in retrospect, I'm glad that he didn't. I knelt down by the side of the table and rubbed her ears and petted her fur while her breathing changed and her tongue began to dart in and out of her mouth more often. Her eyes were half closed and I noticed that as I shifted, her eyes followed my face. I kept thinking about the 5 minutes. She was going to die in less than 5 minutes. The doctor came in and said, "I'm so sorry about your baby." I had already started crying and I said something like, "It's time. She's been in a lot of pain" although I really don't know what I said. The doctor turned her around on the table and plugged in the shaver then he shaved a little patch on her foreleg. He inserted the needle and pressed the syringe and it happened so fast. I don't know, less than a minute maybe. He listened to her heart and told me that she was gone. He told me that I could stay as long as I needed to and then he left the room.
Jake was 1 year old when we brought Riley home and some of my favorite pictures are of him sitting with her in her box in the kitchen while she jumped all over him. Jake will be 15 in May and I'm glad that he was there outside the door today. I stayed for a few minutes. I said goodbye. I told her that I loved her and that I was sorry for the times when I wasn't there, when I ignored her. I kissed her on the head and then I walked out. I was patting my eyes and when Jake saw me come out, he stood up and came and put his arm around me. We walked to the car and we didn't say anything. We started to drive and I could tell that he wanted to know what had happened. But at the first red light, I covered my face in my hands and just burst into tears; I just kept crying and before I knew it, Jake was crying too. I could tell that he was trying not to, but it was exactly what we both needed. When we were almost home, I told him what happened and for the rest of the day, he kind of kept an eye on me. He hugged me about a half an hour ago in the kitchen and he told me that he loved me and that it was going to be okay.
I cleaned up her dishes a little while ago and I swept and mopped the floor, maybe trying to eliminate the traces of dog fur. Maybe it just made me feel better. But sitting here, I realize that I don't feel better. I keep looking around and she's missing. Riley just became a fixture in the living room or in the backyard. We always had to make sure that the front door was closed so that she wouldn't run out and we had to bungee cord the gate in the back because she figured out how to open it by banging her paw against it repeatedly.
I needed to take her today. I didn't want Tim to have to do it. I needed to be there and I'm not exactly sure why. It would have been much easier to just stay home and to let somebody else take care of it. Easier and not nearly as satisfying.
There was a student in one of my classes at Richardson Middle School; a small boy with very blonde hair. When we got the puppy, I kept thinking about that boy and what a perfect name he had; perfect for this runt of the litter, the one with blonde fur and a pointy snout, the one who peed constantly all over the house until we had to remove the carpet. She's been here for the last 14 years of my life, just here, not asking for much, but here nonetheless.
I keep picturing her face today; her eyes weren't closed all the way and her body twitched once when I went to stand up. I guess she looked peaceful, but in some small way, she looked empty, hollow. Exactly how I'm feeling right now.
Goodbye girl.
