Writing is cathartic.
It helps to arrange your thoughts and emotions, and forces you to think both of them through.
I find it also helps with grief. I would write a little something (some nights quite a bit) almost every night after my Dad died.
I knew I had worked through my grief when the sessions became shorter and further apart.
What brings this up? Thursday I lost my dog.
We have had him since he was a pup. I helped him draw his first breath, and was there beside him when he drew his last. In between were 13 years of him being my best friend, always.
He was a true mutt. His mother (my dog also until her death 5 years ago) was an Australian Shepherd. His father was (if I remember correctly) a collie/shepherd/St. Bernard mix. His father was also a dog with a history. He too had been in the family since the day he was born, and was himself the son of a dog we had adopted when I was in high school.
It’s true what they say; dogs don’t judge. He didn’t care what I had (allegedly) done, or failed to do. He would sit beside me, where ever I was, and accept an ear scratch. Long nights when I was working in the basement he would be beside me, when everybody else was upstairs watching TV. He hated the table saw- the shop vac even worse- and would usually slink off to a corner while they ran, but otherwise he was under foot, and covered with sawdust.
If I was in the yard or the pasture he was with me. Eyes on the horizon, watching for a squirrel or a rabbit; then he was off. He was a big dog, as his breeds usually are, but he was fast and off the mark in an instant. He never caught a rabbit that I am aware of, but he sure gave several a run for their money.
He was also a great watchdog. I never worried about the house while I was gone; I knew he would defend my family to death. He sometimes protected it too well, from things he considered threats that may not have been. Like the meter readers, and the trash man.
I also swear he could talk; if you listened closely enough. I would ask “where do you want to go?” and he would answer “owtsyde”. Yeah, you had to listen closely, but he would say it. At least, I heard him say it. He also had one bad habit. He firmly believed that an ambulance was a karaoke machine, and the law required him to sing along. Long before I could hear the siren coming down the valley I would hear Junior start to howl, and he would continue until after the noise of the siren would have long faded away.
We named him Junior the day he was born, because he was the spitting image of his grandfather, so much so that in pictures of the two them it’s hard to tell which one is which. Two other things he inherited from Grandpa Champ; he hated baths and he couldn’t tolerate a car ride. He got car sick every time we put him in the car. It got to the point that the only time he got in the car was to go to the vet. So then he had a second reason to hate car rides.
The last few years I could tell he was getting older (he was 13 last Valentine’s Day). He would take a few extra seconds to get up from the cold basement floor, and he chased fewer rabbits, but he still greeted me every evening when I came home from work like the puppy he used to be. Barking and dancing in circles, he would lead me up the walk from my car to the back door. Yesterday I came home and he didn’t greet me. He was in the middle of the family, gathered by the front porch, where my wife had found him a couple of hours earlier.
We took him to the vet, and were told that based on his age, and as ill and wounded as he was that the best thing was euthanasia. It was a hard decision, and one I heartily disliked. His chances of a full recovery were slim, expensive and long term. The doctors were willing to try, but were not giving high odds.
We buried him on the hill beside his mother yesterday morning, in a spot I can see from the window beside my desk. He has his eternal rest, and I’ll probably miss him that long.
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