Dead Dog Walking

It’s 4:00 a.m.  The stars aren’t so twinkly tonight because the moon paints the fields and road in a color only Armani could mass produce. The swishes in the snow look like something choreographed by Twyla Tharp. Only my dog made them; the flailing steps and slides of his failing back end. He’s a dead dog walking.

It could be 2:00 a.m., or 5:00 a.m. One loses track when your dog loses his ability to control his bladder and bowels but still cares enough to wake you up and say he might need to go out. Only tonight is different because everyone has agreed it’s time and the vet comes tomorrow to put him down. Or as I told the dog after the last time she examined him: “that’s the lady who’s going to kill you.”

I’m told by several folks: “You’ll know when”.  You’ll see it in his face; this look. The look that he’s ready. I’d like to ask him about this, but he doesn’t speak English. All I ever see is this drool-y mug begging for another treat. Sometimes I see his killer Yoda imitation.

Still. We sit atop the food chain. In a very limited way we get to play god. Like when we abort babies. Or, in some countries, perform assisted suicide.  Though you never hear it called that in this case.

Imagine a house call in this day and age. We’ve been briefed on what to expect. We gather round the beast on the rug he frequented.  A giant Restoration Hardware towel – deemed to pilly for human use – wraps his behind like a giant diaper. (There’s the expectation of discharges.) Happily, the towel color is more blendy-blendy than matchy-matchy with his beautiful coat.

The vet finds a vein in my love’s dead leg and puts him to sleep.  The second shot will stop his heart. For some reason I need to know the name of the drug being administered, but I can only make out that truth serum word you hear in spy movies.

The vet says that his spirit has now begun its journey, or something like that. And I want to tell her to shut the fuck up, but that just seems rude. We’re in the last period of waiting for the end and we’re supposed to spew sweet memories of our lives together. I just want to change my mind about the whole thing.  Rig up a little red wagon his butt can ride around in. (We didn’t put my sister down when MS messed up her legs. Medicare bought her an EV of sorts)

Or just break out my dead dad’s shot glasses.

Finally we unwrap and rewrap the ginormous towel and it forms a kind of hammock we can use to carry him out to the vet’s car.   She’s so kind.  I could never repay her for this morning. She’ll take him to get cremated.  And in “about two weeks” we’ll have his ashes.  Or ashes of some kind. It doesn’t matter.

The next day while telling one of the neighbors about putting my dog down, I had the first hallucination.  The beast would always come up and sniff the neighbor’s butt. Probably a really interesting smelling butt though I don’t roll that way and have no firsthand knowledge.

And there’s the dog.  Sniffing the butt. Not. Dead dog walking.