Of Men and Their Dogs

I had to have Grace, my first RRidgie put to sleep because she developed a spinal neuropathy that made it so that she could not keep her hind-end from falling over. She was otherwise perfectly healthy. Because it was worse some days, the day before we had her euthanasia scheduled she seemed pretty okay; Cheryl and I could tell that she wanted to be released from her struggle, so it was an obligation to her faithfulness of 9 years to set my own selfish desire aside.

Did I struggle and second-guess myself? I still do today but I am confident that holding on to her would have been cruel and childish. I have missed her every day. It was still the right thing to do, for her.

Letting Grace go was the hardest thing I have ever done and the most painful; I would cut off any of my own fingers for another year with her. We buried her in my friends' back acreage; She meant enough to him that he dug the grave himself. I cried for a couple of days. I could cry now.

What is this hold that our dogs have on us? The dog gives without reserving any of its' own self-interest; it is totally invested in you. Nothing on earth offers us that level of trust and so, deserves the very best loyalty that we can summon from our otherwise scoundrel pathology. The faithfulness of your dog never wanes; it never loses its' enthusiasm for your presence.

I guess the fact that we cannot ever achieve that level of focused commitment makes us admire our dog more than our hearts are capable of protecting us from abject misery when they are torn from our life. It is so much more so when the hand that does it is our own. Grace and Dixie, Terra, Dolly, Daisy... they are irreplaceable and so our suffering at their loss is implacable.

I feel your pain, Derrick.

'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred Lord Tennyson