Good bye, old friend

I am not sure what is about to flow out of my fingers, but it comes in the aftermath of a very emotional event – we put our dog down yesterday.  I am surely not going to be as articulate as that of a professional writer; this is more just a random series of thoughts to capture the difficulty of the situation and these feelings I have during this “life event”.

Yesterday morning, Christine and I made the difficult decision to put our Black Lab/Sheppard mix “Barkley” down.  Good Ole’ Barks made it 13 years and 2 months, and definitively made an impression on many people over those years, including myself.  I only knew him for half of that time – the same 6.5 years I have known Christine – so it’s very strange for him to suddenly not be here.  He came part of a ”package deal” as Christine called it, a 3-part bundle of Christine, Barkley, and Lilly.  Pretty soon it was the four of us, and we did most things together…long nightly walks, trips to the parks, road trips to see family, baseball games, breakfast on Sunday mornings, etc.  In fact, Lilly has known Barkley for all of her life as well…brother/sister, little buddies, lovers…whatever you want to call it.  And we all sit here a day later, empty…sad…and wishing things were different.

After 42 years, I was never involved in a decision to end the life of a person (thank god) or animal.  Previously, nature had taken its course or someone else made the decision for me.  And Christine and I thought we were prepared for this moment…as we saw Barkley age, we were frequently wondering about his expiration date.  “This could be Barkley’s last Christmas” or “how long do you think he will live for” we said to ourselves on multiple occasions.  From a dog who absolutely loved activity – balls, sticks, bodies of water, etc- to see him barely walk in the grass to do his business was painful to watch.  I can only imagine how he felt.  He couldn’t talk, and if he could, his pride and dignity would have gotten in the way.  Not knowing his pain level made this decision difficult.  He did start whining more, and barking in the middle of the night, so perhaps those were indicators that his body and mind were changing for the worse.  It was increasingly obvious that he was losing his hearing and his eyesight, and had trouble standing up with decreasing muscle mass in his hind legs. He had skin problems which he licked until he bled, and had a couple visible tumors. Could he (or we) have continued on much longer like this?   Most things we read indicated this aging process would be a never-ending spiral downwards.  Other professionals said we can possibly slow down the aging process, but would that be selfish of us?  Is there something we could have done differently – whether it was meds or treatments or acupuncture?  These are the questions going through our head now… and it’s hurtful to doubt ourselves.  It didn’t seem fair, because we believed we thought through everything in advance and knew all our options.  This was the best route – right?

We had a great weekend with him leading up to “the day”, including a BBQ by the pool (Barks loved being outside) and we also bought him some favorites like chicken nuggets, French fries, and ice cream.  He loved the smells, watching the squirrels run around with this “I would have caught you in my younger days” face, and listening to the cars pass by. We recounted our memories with Barks, mostly good times…but also laughed about the “pain in the butt” he often was.  We laid with him, gave him balls and bones, rubbed his belly, took lots of selfies with him, and made him feel like a King.  Feeling like this was our last weekend with him was sad, but happy at the same time knowing he was having a *good day*. It was hard to sleep that night, knowing that when we woke up in the morning the vet was coming to the house. 

We had the chance to change our minds, but after talking through it with the vet in the morning, we decided “it was time”.  We laid there with our ”big black man” who looked at us with mutual respect and admiration, wagging his tail as he always did. He was a good-looking dog, always was (if he was a human, and based on looks alone, I have no doubt he would have been a “lady killer”!).  I didn’t want to stop petting him…but we all knew it was time, and I think he knew it was time as well.  Christine and I had given him some very nice words as we each massaged his head, and I couldn’t hold back the tears as he licked my face.  I never let him lick my face before, but it was like he was telling me things.  Barkley was telling me “make sure you protect Mom and Lilly for me”, “sorry for being a pain sometimes”, and “thanks for taking good care of me, dad”.  Barkley always gave me a hard time, but in his own way he was letting me know that he was mom’s protector and making sure I didn’t harm her.  I liked that about Barks – stubborn, and very alpha male but at the end of the day, a gentle giant who gave his unconditional love to Christine…and eventually, me.

Thirty-six hours have passed since we held Barkley in our arms and painfully watched him take his final breath.  At least he was at peace and looked very relaxed….because my heart was sinking on the inside.  Those final images will never leave my head – and honestly, I haven’t thought about much else since. Situations like this will undoubtedly happen again over my next 42 years on the planet, but I hope they are few and far between. And we hope Barkley makes it to heaven safely, where he can be young again and free of pain.  We hope he is in a land where he can chase balls, jump in the ocean, and always be the alpha male he wanted to be.  For now, there is a void in the house.  It’s certainly quieter and less hectic.  By habit I look over to “Barkley’s corner” of the house and am painfully reminded that he is not there anymore, waiting for me to come play with him.  Lilly is also realizing that Barkley, her friend/boyfriend/brother, hasn’t been seen for a while.  She looks lonely (I am sure I do as well) and I hope her loneliness goes away soon.  Lilly lays on my lap as I type this, and as I try to comfort her during this grieving period (maybe vice versa?).  It really just stinks for all of us.  We aren’t used to it being just the three of us, and as Christine said earlier “I want my Barkley back”.  Ugh. …don’t we all wish it were different!  It’s difficult for me to hold back tears, and understandably more so for my wife who has so many more memories with Barkley.  I hope it gets better for all of us; and I am sure it will..it HAS to.  I view this as a painful reminder that life is short, and death is unfortunately part of life.  Sometimes we are faced with these excruciatingly challenging situations where difficult decisions need to be made. I’m personally committing myself to a dedicated life of letting the people/animals in my life know that I love them, and certainly appreciate them.  I don’t want to ever face feelings of regret for not being as nice, forgiving, or loving as I truly am.  Not that I have regrets in this case, but I want there to be NO DOUBT going forward.  So I look at this event as something which makes me stronger, and provides me with a re-learning experience to which I can make myself a better person.  I hope to one day have our kids practice this same mentality.

As I wrap up here, there is no doubt that we will stick together and become a stronger family, and of course always provide unconditional love to ourselves and our pets.  One of the first (of many) things I learned and LOVED about Christine was her attitude and love towards all animals, not to mention her own.  She was a great mother to Barkley (he really lucked out!) and hopefully I was a good dad to him as well.  I am confident we will one day again be reunited.  Barks knows we loved him very much, and hopefully realizes that we made the best decision for him.  I just didn’t realize that decision would be this hard.