Saying goodbye:
Learning to live and love in dog years
My dog is dying. He’s been lucky and I’ve been lucky — he doesn’t have cancer like so many other dogs I’ve known. But age is something you can’t avoid. He has good days now and then. But the bad days are stacking up and resetting what we know as “normal.” I’m having trouble with that. I’m having trouble with seeing him hurting and deteriorating. I’m having trouble finding how to let go.
It’s easy to say we all get old. Or to say that it will take away his pain. Or to say that he’s had a good life. Those are all true. But I’ve never been made more aware of how much I love that dog, or how much dogs act as mirrors into our souls.
A young dog howling
My dog has never really handled being alone well. Baxter is a Vizsla, a breed so notorious for wanting to stick close to their owners that they are jokingly known as the “Velcro Vizsla.” In everyday life, the funny nickname translated into a severe case of separation anxiety.
Baxter’s symptoms were clear. He’d pee in the house when I was gone or simply out of sight in another room. As soon as I’d leave, Baxter would start barking and sometimes even howl when the sense of separation and fear of being alone hit the hardest.
Clearly, something had to be done. I read up on crate training and learned that dogs often viewed a crate as their “den,” a safe and comforting spot. Some dogs, I read, even like to go in their crate on their own.
Baxter didn’t read the same article. He hated the crate and barked even louder once inside. I didn’t have kids at the time, but I’d heard of the “cry-it-out” approach. Surely, I figured, he’d eventually calm down. I made the crate as comfortable as I could, adding a plush dog bed and several of Baxter’s favorite toys. Then I left for work.
I came home to find you exhausted from panic, panting from fear. The bed was shoved aside. The toys were untouched. While I was gone, you tried to dig your way out, leaving claw marks all over the hard plastic bottom of the crate like someone buried alive and looking in panic for fresh air. It broke my heart.
Finding our balance
I abandoned the crate approach. Eventually, the separation anxiety lessened. I’d love to say I found a magic formula, but I never did. The separation anxiety just gradually got better on its own. Baxter still hated it when I left, but it wasn’t quite as debilitating (for either of us).
We settled into a routine. After 15 years, Baxter’s been there with me through everything. I feel like I’ve gone through several lifetimes with him, each transition made easier because of him. He’s my oldest companion, pre-dating my kids and outlasting my failed first marriage. He was with me while I wrote my dissertation, my running partner while I trained for marathons, and even an inspiration for a dog in the novel I wrote. He’s seen me with my heart broken in pieces. He’s seen me since find the love of my life (although he almost made me miss the first date). He’s not going to make it to see my wedding to Katie in October, though. Coming back from a honeymoon to a house without him greeting us sounds impossibly strange and incredibly sad.
We’re best friends, you and I. I taught you how to swim, fearing at first that you were going to drown as you flailed vertically looking for the bottom with your hind legs. Then I feared you were never going to come back, swimming after ducks who were never worried and calmly kept just out of reach. Playing catch with the tennis ball was always our favorite. I remember having to carry you home from the nearby field because you had exhausted yourself in the heat. I think you would have chased that ball until you collapsed. You never liked to be picked up, but you let me carry you home that day.
It always makes me smile when Katie sees us greet one another, pets and hugs exchanged and then sitting together with our faces close as we say hello. “Just a man and his dog,” she says.
Seeing it go
Age has stealthily crept up and taken away that young guy. Nearing 15, he’s above the lifespan range for most dogs of his breed. The wear and tear of those years is clear. For the longest time, people used to confuse Baxter for a puppy, his high energy and lean frame camouflaging his true age. Now people ask me how old he is for the opposite reason — everyone can see the age in him.
It’s not just the white muzzle and paws. Cataracts cloud his eyes. His hearing has deteriorated. I’m most concerned with his back hips. He locks them when he walks, his nails sometimes dragging across the hardwoods when he doesn’t fully lift his leg. After sleeping is the hardest time: he’s fallen over as his back legs give out.
Your entire personality seemed to suddenly shift. You bit me. You bit Katie. We were worried you’d snip at the kids. I see now that you were hurting, biting when I nudged your hips to help you off the couch before bedtime. We’ve adjusted to the new normal of your pain, helping you slowly wake up with treats before those hips have to get you off the couch.
But then he’ll have another good day, when I see him “sprinting” across the yard. Those random good days make it both harder to accept the bad days and easier to gloss over the pain he otherwise feels. I know I can’t do that. He’d do anything for me. He’s dying, and somehow I need to find how to help him go. Next Tuesday’s the day. I think.
The fear of the next
There’s sadness to seeing Baxter in pain and knowing I am losing my friend. But there’s also panic in the back of my mind, shoved deep inside where I normally ignore it, about my own mortality and the mortality of those I love. My mom’s had two surgeries this year. Katie’s mom had trouble too. My grandma’s been in and out of the hospital.
I, meanwhile, just turned 40 and am moving slower. I play catch with the kids and the body won’t get to balls that my mind says I should reach with ease. Our backs ache, our knees creak, our reactions get slower. I see Baxter fall apart and know where all of our annoying small ailments eventually lead. Time wins. Always.
How to count in dog years
Every year of a dog’s life supposedly equals seven human years. By that reasoning, my almost 15 year old dog is nearing 105. But how do you reason the time saved in your soul from the love that a dog gives? What abacus can translate those memories of happiness — both that you felt and that you could see in his eyes and wagging tail — into seconds, minutes, hours, years?
Or, to take the “water bowl half empty” approach and give myself pause, if minutes and hours stretch longer, how do I measure the hurt you feel? Does the pain feel endless to you?
Baxter’s separation anxiety has returned. He now gets Prozac twice a day for anxiety, two meds for hip pain and a diaper for inside the house. It’s a regimen that would strip the humanity from most people. In true dog fashion, Baxter seems to trust we know what we’re doing.
As much as I hate to see him in physical pain, I’m torn apart by the return of his separation anxiety. I know the feeling of panic, of being stuck in an anxious mind racing a thousand miles an hour while each hour drags on forever. What if, my own anxious brain asks, this feels even longer for a dog? What if being in the middle of separation anxiety feels like loneliness that will never end, emptiness that never stops?
I understand the howling
When Baxter was a puppy, his separation anxiety was frustrating. I didn’t understand it — I knew I’d be back soon and life would continue. But with Baxter’s death near, I finally understand the grip of his separation anxiety. It’s a fear, terror-creating and howl-inducing, that a moment of being alone will freeze in place and become absolute and infinite. I’m blocked from helping my dog die because I’m scared to lose him. Because I don’t want to be alone.
While my own sense of separation anxiety starts with thoughts of losing my dog, it spins and tumbles into a darker place. It slips into broader fears about being alone, about losing those I love, about a heart abandoned. There, at last, is the ontological rub that a dog’s impending death has brought to me.
It’s easy to say that death is something we all eventually face and I should stop navel gazing. It’s equally easy to say that he — and we — will be in a better place after death. But for me, those answers feel incomplete and overly easy. Just because we all die doesn’t mean that I’m ready for my dog to go. And it doesn’t mean that I’m ready to stare at my mortality or that of my parents or that of my soon-to-be-wife or that of my kids.
And what if there isn’t anything beyond this life? What if Baxter and those who depart before me won’t be waiting? What if I won’t be able to wait for those who I eventually must leave behind? In that case, the separation is complete, with loneliness permanent for those left behind. Just, as it seems, Baxter has always feared.
I hope there is more, but I fear that death is a lonely traveler, bringing along nothing and nothingness. The razor edge that separates death from life then whispers with soiled breath in my ear: what if nothingness and loneliness are part not just of dying but also of living? What if, fear atop fear, I lose the love of those I hold dear? Knowing loneliness and abandonment are always one step away, I finally and completely understand the howling.
This is the bright feel of panic during moments when thoughts that must remain unthought surface. These are the unspoken fears that crawl into consciousness only to be tamped back down as firmly and as quickly as possible. And so the love and friendship Baxter has brought have invited something more troubling as well: a gaze into the dark, cold unknown.
Coming to terms, with the help of a dog’s wisdom
I think too much, my brain both friend and enemy. Dogs of course don’t suffer a crisis of self every time we leave for work. It’s not an existential moment for dogs when their owners run errands. Baxter’s sense of separation anxiety is not filled with the same self-absorbed angst that his upcoming death and separation have sparked in me.
Baxter has, ultimately, taught me how to come to terms with all of this. The answer to my own fears isn’t simply to be more like a dog by not thinking so much. I know myself better than that. But as I step back, I see there are lessons that dogs offer to us.
Lesson one — canine Zen. Dogs show that the present moment is the most important moment. You can’t change yesterday. You can’t change tomorrow. But you can love your family, friends, wife and kids with all of your heart in the present moment.
Lesson two — love, above all else. Though his hips hurt a bit too much now, Baxter used to give me the “hero’s welcome” when I’d come home. He’d bound off the couch, slide across the hardwoods in his excitement and jump up with his tail wagging like a windshield wiper on the highest setting. His favorite thing was simply to be together. The flipside of thinking in dog years is that maybe we can make each moment of love feel like it’s lasting forever. If the present is all there is, let’s fill it with love for one another.
Lesson three — take care of your pack. We’re not hermits. We’re social creatures who depend on others and need to feel part of our broader group(s). Baxter can always tell when I’m not feeling well, whether because I’m sick or sad and would do anything to make me feel better. His nuzzle when I don’t feel well makes a difference. Don’t ignore your pack. Check in on those you love. Help them when they need it. Nuzzle when opportunity arises.
I’m sure there are many other lessons that dogs can teach us. But I think about these three lessons and come to one bittersweet conclusion: love is more important than loneliness. It’s time to put the comfort and happiness of another above my own. It’s time to help say goodbye.
This is the final gift Baxter has given me. The gift of letting go. It’s not a gift I wanted to find or was ready to find. But leave it to a dog to take me to the abyss and lead me out with a reaffirmation of love and loyalty.
Your hips hurt so much that you let me carry you again the other day to put you on the couch. It brought back that moment when you were a young dog and chased the tennis ball until near collapse. You trusted me then and let me carry you home. I know there will be one final moment when I carry you. Love and being loyal to my friend means letting you die.
So, crying while I write this, I know it’s time to say goodbye to my best friend, my staunchest supporter, my oldest companion, my dog. No longer “just a man and his dog.” Now, just a man already missing his dog. And thankful for what he taught me.
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