I lost a friend today

His name was Zeus, and he was a black lab.  He turned 15 on Valentine’s Day.  In his last year, he suffered a degenerative hip, atrophied muscles of his hindquarters, a tumor on his left flank the size of a softball, and probably cancer.  He was deaf and nearly blind.  If he laid down on a hardwood or linoleum floor, we had to lift him so he could regain his footing.  My heart broke every time I watched the old guy hobble to his food or water bowls, and I winced each time he moaned or cried.  So it was time to end it, and today was that day.

With help from my son, we lifted him into the back of the car, and I drove to the vets alone.  My wife offered to come, but I knew she really couldn’t bear it, and it would be better for me if I didn’t have to watch her suffer on the trip home.  I learned long ago that I prefer to grieve alone, although when I returned home, my wife and I had our sorrowful moments over Zeus.

Soon after Zeus and I entered the patient room, a tech came in with paper work and said cheerily: “So, this is Stormy?”  I told her no, this is Zeus.  “Oh.  Sorry”.  Geesh lady, let’s not put Stormy down and then return to clip Zeus’s nails.  After the vet administered the drug, he was gone in 10 seconds.  He was lying on the floor and he put his head slowly down as the drug coursed through his body, and he then looked exactly like he did when he was sleeping on the floor at home.  Quiet, peaceful, uneventful.  They left me alone with him for a few minutes while I said my feeble goodbye to a dog who couldn’t even hear me when he was alive.  But I had to say something.  I guess we all do.

I have thought a lot about dogs over the past few years.  To be honest, most of the time I secretly object to the entire phenomenon of dogs and cats as pets (see my earlier blog about cats as killers of wildlife).  The way most people pamper their pets actually disgusts me.  In decades past, when I was a child, dogs were rarely kept in their owners’ houses; they were considered too dirty.  We kept them in dog houses outside.  Remember those?  For better or worse, we have come a long way.  And then there is this.  In 2016, Americans spent $62 billion on these family pets!  $62 billion to purchase them, and for food, toys, collars, leashes, grooming, flea and tick medicine, occasional kenneling and, of course, the never-ending vet bills.  As I write this, teachers in West Virginia are on strike for higher pay and better benefits, but they are meeting voluntarily every day to pack lunches for their poor, hungry students who are now missing that essential meal because their school is closed.  What a pathetic state of affairs.  No civilized country should be able to report such a fact.  So I think of what $62 billion could do to address both of those problems, and I lament.  But, of course, money is never fungible in that way.

We all love our pets, and I loved Zeus.  On the other hand, I was often impatient with him and angry when he relieved himself in the house, or woke us up in the middle of the night, or had to be let out AGAIN, or wouldn’t come when I called to him, or when I tripped over him lying on the floor when I made that important first cup of morning Joe, or when my wife and I decided not to travel because of “the dog”.  And the hair.  Blackish hair—everywhere, all the time. 

But now, I already miss hearing his toe nails clicking down the hallway, the feel of his velvet ears, and the look of those eyes, which were huge for a lab, when he tried to make sense of my human gibberish.  One minute I loved him, and the next minute his existence irritated me. What a confounded and complicated set of emotions come with pet territory.  I have concluded that I love dogs, but dislike being a dog owner.

Will I ever get another dog?  No.  I’ve had dogs since I was about five years old, probably eight or nine.  I’ve done my time.  I don’t want another dog for all the reasons of inconvenience and financial costs that I’ve mentioned already.  But the main reason I will never have another dog is that I can not bear to lose a friend after they have gotten into your heart and become a part of your soul.  Why invite that kind of sadness voluntarily into our lives when there is sadness in abundance already?  I simply can’t do it again.   

The pooping Labrador retriever

(Zeus and DrTom don't know nothin bout no deer leg.)

I have a dilemma that I would like to share.  Our black Lab Zeus needs to go outside to relieve himself several times a day.  I know, I thought I had purchased the model that didn't need to do that, but I was wrong.  I even thought about not feeding the guy any longer so he wouldn't have to poop or pee, but when I do that he gets all lethargic and isn't any fun. 

But here is the real problem.  I want to just let the dog out when he has to go and let him in when he wants back in.  But Management insists that we walk him on a leash each time (the "we" in that sentence really means "me").  This seems ridiculous, because we live on 12 acres of forested land surrounded by more forested land.  Who wants to walk a dog in their pajamas when there is a foot of snow on the ground and it is 15 degrees, and we are over 100 yards away from the nearest house, and the dog likes to have a little freedom, and I enjoy watching him frolicing around the property, and the traffic on the road is not THAT bad.  But THAT is the problem.  Zeus will go down to the road when he follows the scent of deer that have passed through our woods.  My wife is afraid he will get hit by a car and I understand that.  So Management usually wins this argument, like she wins most of our arguments, and I walk the dog on a leash.

But sometimes, when it is really early in the morning, and my wife is still asleep, and there is almost no traffic, I cheat.  SHE will never know.  So on this frigid Saturday morning, Zeus and I got out of bed, and I let him out the back door.  In a few minutes he returned to the door to be let back in, but he was carrying something in his mouth.  (Dogs only carry things in their mouths.  But if you don't add that phrase, "in his mouth", the reader just might picture the dog carrying an item in some other way, and I don't want that distraction right now.)  When he stepped inside, I immediately recognized the item as a deer leg, a fresh deer leg with hair and skin and sinew and bone marrow dripping out from the femur.  Crap!  You see, there are often dead deer scattered about the landscape, and this Lab can smell one a mile away, and he loves the smell of deer. 

Zeus was so proud of this prize, but you see my dilemma.  If Management discovers the leg, she will know I let the dog out without a leash, and I will receive a tremendously forceful tongue lashing that I would really prefer to avoid.  If I just throw the leg in the woods near the house, the dog will simply bring it back again the next time I cheat.  Remember:  I didn't buy a poodle that never has to relieve themselves.  I bought a pooping retriever.  This leg will be like a piece of scotch tape that you can't get off your fingers.  Throw away, and retrieve, throw away, and retrieve.

So I put the leg in our kitchen wastebasket under the sink.  And as soon as the bag is a little more full, I will tie it up and take it to the can in the garage.  Zeus knows the leg is in there and I know the leg is in there, but Management is clueless.  Thank goodness she does not have a Lab's nose.  I know that Management thought it weird of me to be anticipating when she wanted to throw some trash in that wastebasket.  I immediately jumped to her side as she wiped her mouth with a napkin and said, "Here, let me throw that away for you."  And that is the way I played it, although I replaced her napkin six times for one bowl of soup.  I know she thought that napkin:soup ratio was a little over the top, but it worked.  I kept her away from the leg-filled wastebasket, and the secret was safe with Zeus and me forever.  Until Zeus returns for another helping of that carcass that is out there, somewhere.