10 April, 2024
It was always hard to believe that my little dog descended from wolves. She was not much more than a mouthful for a hungry wolf. I bought the little dachshund for $75, and the man who sold her said he thought she was about two years old. He had named the dog Shilo, but when she joined my family she was renamed Skippy. That name derived from her habit of trotting on three legs, holding one hind leg up for a while as she ran, and then switching to her other side.
Skippy joined a household that already had two dogs: a miniature poodle named Roxie, and a Bichon named Bingham. She was a part of the family for 13-years, and she outlived both her canine companions. But for almost a decade the three small dogs shared their lives with me and my family, and with one another, romping and rolling and yipping and yapping and loving one another to the end.
Skippy's end came this week, on a table in a small room in a veterinarian's clinic. As I stood by, petting and stroking Skippy's head and back, the doctor gave her a shot, a sedative that eased her mind and body. As the medicine began to take effect the vet left me alone with her in the small room that suddenly had become even smaller, closer. In the silence I continued to stroke her soft, short fur. She couldn't hear me when I said I loved her. She was totally deaf by that point in her life. But she knew.
Her eyesight had begun to fail. Where once she could chase after three or four little treats sliding fast across the hardwood floor, by now it was all she could do to find a single treat just five feet away. She could no longer jump up into a chair, and she would often trip when walking, for no apparent reason. Life had become a chore. Her joy for it had faded. She spent her days sad-eyed, or sleeping.
The doctor returned and softly asked if I were ready. I nodded yes. She shaved a small patch of Skippy's fur and found a suitable vein on her thigh. Then she gave her the second, lethal dose. "This will act pretty fast," she had told me a minute or two before; and in less than one more minute, Skippy was gone.
I brought my dog home in a cardboard box. I took her from the box and carried her down to the switchback in the driveway, the site where her two companions are buried. I dug a place for Skippy, then gently and with such great and insurmountable sorrow I laid her still-warm body there. Then I covered her with a blanket of white paper towels, and filled in the grave.
Love comes always with a terrible price to pay.
I'm so sorry to hear of your loss. I've had to "put down" a few dogs (and one cat) over the years and there is nothing that has caused me more pain. It's a kindness for veterinarians to end our best friends' misery; but, goddamit. Dogs don't live long enough. My 9-yr-old long-haired Dachshund/Yorkie gives me so much happiness. The 10-yr-old Beagle is more standoffish; but they are both always there for me. A dog's love is unquestioning and pure. More than the sun, the stars, or the moon, God's creation of dogs is proof of God's existence and His love for mankind.
Dogs are everything we want man to be. I feel……