Living In Dog Years: The Gift Of Saying Goodbye.
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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. He’s my dog, but he’s not the same version of my dog that I still can see so clearly in my mind. I’m having trouble with that. I’m having trouble with seeing him hurting and knowing he’s deteriorating. I’m having trouble finding how to let go.
It’s easy to say we all get old. Or to say that it’s the right decision because it will ease 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 are mirrors into our souls.
A young dog howling
I love my dog but he’s never really handled being alone well. Baxter is a Vizsla, a breed notorious for wanting to stick close to their owners. They’re even jokingly known as Velcro Vizsla for the adorable yet also aggravating need to be right by your side, no matter what. The Vizsla, I soon discovered, is notorious for suffering from separation anxiety.
{Photo credit: Patrick Linder}
Baxter’s symptoms were clear. When I first brought him home, he’d go to the bathroom on the carpet while I was in the shower. It was maddening. I was right there, still in the house.
Barking and howling as soon as the pet parent leaves is another typical symptom of separation anxiety. Yep, we can check those off the list. Baxter would bark and even sound like a seal as soon as the front door closed. Occasionally, he’d howl when the sense of separation and fear of being alone hit the hardest.
A crate abandoned
Clearly, something needed to be done. I couldn’t have him going to the bathroom on the carpet all the time. And I hated knowing he was so anxious. I heard that dogs love having their own den, and that crate training can help create that sense of a safe place for a dog. 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.
I abandoned the crate approach. Eventually, the separation anxiety lessened. I’d love to say I have a magic formula to share with you, but I don’t. It just gradually got better. Baxter still hated it when I left, but it wasn’t quite as debilitating (for either of us).
Finding a rhythm
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 lasting longer than my failed first marriage. He’s seen me with my heart broken in pieces.
He’s seen me find the love of my life (although he almost made me miss my first date with Katie).
We’re best friends, you and I. 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.
Watching it slip away
Age has stealthily crept up and taken away that young guy. He’s now 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 have clouded his eyes. His hearing has deteriorated. He usually can’t hear much at all, and when he does, he turns his head in the wrong direction, as though he recognizes noise but not where it’s coming from. 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, a day where I see him sprinting across the yard. Those good days make the bad days harder to accept, and make it easier to gloss over the pain that he otherwise feels. But I know I can’t do that. He’d do anything for me. Somehow I need to find how to help him go.
He’s dying, and I have to be the one to see it done. Next Monday’s the day. I think.
Fear of what’s to come
Seeing Baxter age has been tough on so many different and related levels. 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.
Counting in dog years
The common belief is that every year of a dog’s life is equivalent to seven years for a human. 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 also returned. He doesn’t do well when Katie and I are gone. 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 1000 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 that I’d be back. I knew that I’d return and life would continue. But Baxter didn’t. I get that now. 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.
Reaching areas that we often leave walled off from contact with other people, dogs touch us deep within our hearts. Baxter’s deterioration and approaching death have reached deep within myself as well. That separation anxiety I feel is first and foremost about losing my best friend, but it spins and tumbles into a darker place.
Losing a dog 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 becomes 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. I can’t do that. But as I step back, I see there are lessons dogs offer to us.
{Photo credit: Patrick Linder}
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 think about these three lessons and come to one bittersweet conclusion: love is more important than loneliness. I need 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.
You let me carry you again the other day. 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. Your hips now hurt so much that you’ve started to let me carry you to put you on the couch. I know we have one final moment to carry each other. Love and being loyal to my friend means letting you die.
So, with tears in my eyes as I write this, I know it’s time to say goodbye to my best friend, my staunchest supporter, my oldest companion. No longer just a man and his dog. Now, just a man missing his dog. And thankful for what he taught me.
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