Another goodbye -- RIP, Shadow

Goodbye old friend.

Shadow left this world today. He had been declining for the last year, but over the last week it was apparent that he didn’t have long left. He had lost a lot of weight, and his hair was falling out. Then the day came when he just didn’t eat anymore.

Within a couple of days he was unable to walk very far without collapsing. He would groan when struggling to get up, then just give up and lay in the spot where he had fallen.

I did what I could to make him comfortable, putting a blanket on him at night and offering him food and water. He’d drink a little water and then throw it back up. Pus was starting to ooze from his eyes and nostrils. These are not the things I want to remember about Shadow, though I’m certain the images will haunt me forever.

I want to remember him as the quite, older brother to Whiskey, his longtime companion. The two were inseparable. Whiskey and Shadow. They survived the fire together, as Sharon and I did. They used to have fun times play fighting and eating the random road apples left by the neighbor’s horses. I took them both for long walks in the wildlife area behind the house, letting them run free and explore. They got to drink out of every mud puddle and piss on every mailbox along the road.

The gravity of his passing has not yet sunk in to Whiskey’s consciousness. He won’t probably figure it out until he has looked for him all over the property for days without finding him. He will probably look to me more for attention than in the past, as it finally dawns on him that he is really alone in this world, and his long time friend isn’t coming back.

That’s what I’ve been living with for the last year after Sharon died. Sure, I knew it was coming. Not as surely as Shadow’s passing, which was done by appointment. But we all have an appointment, we just aren’t aware of when it is.

I waited in a chair next to him for the vet to show up. His breathing was faint, but still steady. He really didn’t want to die. He just wanted to feel better. But that just wasn’t in the cards for him, at least not in this world. I felt the guilty weight of responsibility for his lack of well being, and for his imminent death, which I had arranged after many phone calls to local vets.

I could have taken better care of him. I could have not scheduled him to die today. He could have (somehow, miraculously) recovered. But it was not to be. I took the easy road. I felt as callous as a Nazi giving the orders for execution. A Nazi with tons of regrets and a conflicted conscience, so I don’t know how good of a Nazi, really. The hardest part wasn’t the decision to put him down. That part was disturbingly easy.

Watching him decline and choosing not to take him to the vet, when I knew he was going downhill, wasn’t so easy. I kept telling myself, “What can they do to reverse this? What would a recovery and rehabilitation look like?” He would still be an older dog, living outdoors, under the deck, sleeping on dirt. How, suddenly, would he become a pampered senior dog with an indoor life? All he’s ever known is the outdoors and dirt. The first six years of his life weren’t my doing, but the last four were on me. I could have made him survive, had I only done just about everything differently.

The hardest part is now. It’s trying to explain to a confused Whiskey, that his buddy really isn’t going to show up for dinner anymore. He keeps walking around looking for him in the usual spots. Then he looks at me, as if I’m going to tell him, “Yeah, Whiskey, it’s just a game of hide and seek. Shadow will be along in a minute.”  

 

It is going to take time for it to sink in that it’s just him and the birds in the back yard. And me, the guy who brings him the milk bones which he seems to love more than anything right now. I break them into tiny bits so I can feed them often, so that he will have something to keep looking to me for when I see him throughout the day. 

I can’t explain to him that I went through this with Sharon a year ago, and my heart still hasn’t healed up from it. And that I don’t expect it to. I can only put my hands on his face and tell him, “You’re a good boy.”

But if that’s true, then why is his buddy not showing up? This shouldn’t happen to a good boy. Good boy means “happy” and this feeling is not happy or good. It’s rotten. So, I must not be a good boy. You must be lying to me. Good boy doesn’t mean shit if Shadow isn’t coming back.

These things can’t be reconciled in the innocent mind of a dog who can’t understand the feeling of loss, except that it hurts and is confusing. And I’m no closer to understanding it myself. My eyes are broken from crying so much. Another day, another milestone. One day you are here and the next, gone forever. Who’s going to miss me, I wonder?