ARLO'S PARTING GIFT

Just a shade over an hour ago I had the mournful duty of taking my thirteen-year old dog, Arlo, to the vet for the last time.  I knew on Tuesday night that he was in trouble.  When an old dog whimpers at every odd move,  it is a clear indication that those carefree days of unlimited mobility and rowdy displays of affection are gone.

He had been hosting this declivitous passage for a few months having lost his hearing in early fall with his eyesight in close competition, and more recently, drinking copious amounts of water (which is usually a sign of kidney failure in old dogs); but until the other night, he was not in any perceivable pain, had a healthy appetite and a frequently wagging tail.

So I let him be and merely observed.

However, I knew this day was not long off and began preparing myself for its arrival in small ways; one being to continually absorb the reality that already he was no longer the dog I had weaned on a bottle from two weeks old and the one who, ever since, has rarely left my side.

He could no longer hear me so that the comforting cooing from me to him and eager responsiveness from him to me was no longer possible.  Often he would stare off into nothingness looking tense and concerned, which made me think how lonely and afraid he must be without the use of all his natural instincts and senses.  But he how slept a lot.

So I let him be and merely observed.

It is a little surprising to me that I am right now able to sit here calmly without tears and put this into words, and I know my family was worried about how I was going to handle this day when it came.  This dog had been my dog and mine alone for all these years and was the last of our dogs to have made the journey with us from Connecticut through our years in Arizona and finally to our present home in Missouri.  He was the last readily visible and living link to those other parts of my life and a part of every event from the mundane to the miraculous for well over a decade.  He was my loyal buddy and my constant companion and pal.  He was MY dog.

He was also the most difficult, high-strung, neurotic, hyper-attached and temperamental dogs I have ever owned in my entire life; destroying countless pieces of furniture and assorted objects when he was young; utterly and completely losing all composure during thunderstorms and otherwise windy, unpleasant weather days; and utilizing the unfortunate defense strategy of nipping or biting when feeling threatened or fearful.  Unfortunately, the latter was a trait he never outgrew (his recent deafness ended the thunderstorm hysteria) and which was lately made more of a conspicuous problem commensurate to his increasing level of discomfort.  It could only get worse.

But I let him be and merely observed.

The joke had always been that Arlo had bitten everyone in the family except for me.  The joke can now be abandoned.

This morning after he had been initially sedated, with his warm, limp body draped across my lap as we both sat on the floor of the examination room, the vet and her assistant came in to shave his back leg and apply the final dose that would ultimately lift him out of all his pain.

In those wrenching and protracted minutes before their return to the room,  I remained motionless; stroking the side of his old mutt face, studded with the white hairs of a useful passage.  Right then within my body I held twelve years of gratitude, elation, forgiveness and sorrow bound up like padded wounds in the soft void of my next breath; so that my breathing, now thin and shallow, was in perfect measure a  mirror of his own.  Yet in every other way I was doing as I had always done at every point of rest or moment of quiet for longer than time could understand; silently loving my good dog.

And as the assistant gently reached for the old boy's hind leg to prepare it this final step, without warning and in a state of typical, neurotic, Arlo panic with the defensive drive of a cornered beast, he frantically lifted his head and clamped down full and hard on the thumb of my hand that had yet to cease its furtive caresses.

He bequeathed me a stunning blood-blister bruise on the nail side, a neat little puncture wound on the other and a royal throbbing pain that now extends from my thumb wrapping around my wrist, down my arm and continues to this very moment.

Of course, he had no idea that it was me he was attempting to censure or even precisely what he was doing, but in some small way the visceral and excruciating nature of his parting gift has made it a little bit easier for me to sit here now and remember the tension and challenges loving this dog presented; which, in turn, has given me a slight respite from the bellowed suffering of pure, unadulterated grief.  As much as I adored him and as devoted as he was to me and to my every movement; it has also been thirteen years of apprehension wondering, "Who will Arlo attempt to bite next?"; particularly when someone came to the front door.

I suppose my worn little mongrel did me a favor by yielding to his neurosis one last time and leaving me with an aching, searing reminder that sometimes death brings with it a mixed blessing:  I have released him from a lifetime of anxiety and a dotage of pain and infirmities; he has released me from perpetual worry and the underlying stress attendant to the ownership of such an unpredictable animal.  The pain of injury to my wounded thumb has blessedly mitigated some of the pain of loss in my temporarily unconsolable heart.

All these thoughts gelled like a healing emotional balm in my mind as I continued to cradle Arlo's head in my lap and wait for the second sedative injection to take effect.  (It was decided after the biting that this was the next best course of action.  Anything was better than a muzzle.)

And by the time the final injection was given, what had first been for me a nearly uncontrollable outpouring of raw grief and bottomless despair had now become a bloom of great calm and gratitude for his long years of devotion, and a willingness to accept the loss of him while at the same time embrace the unrestrained freedom each of us would now own.  It was his parting gift to me at the perfect time.

So I let him be and merely observed.