Coming home without the dog
Iam an old hand at this grief. For decades I’ve been performing the actions: the calls, appointments, drives. The waiting outside, going inside. The “it’s OK” and “I’m so sorry”. Then the sitting on the floor, the spending some time. The crooning of things like “sleep now, darling” and “you have been such a very good dog”.
And the coming home; clearing away; doing not very much at all.
Today I do it all again, this time because Range has gone.
The vet says it may have been a tumour or a slipped disc that stuffed his back legs, but more likely it was something neurological.
When his paws are bent gently backwards he doesn’t seem to notice, just leaves them there.
The vet gives him a pat, gives me the jar of treats, says “let him have as many as he likes”.
Range, a glutton, likes to have a lot of them. Range dies with a belly full of dried liver.
A good dying is the final little kindness we owe our friends. The vet I trained under does a particularly good death: gentle, quiet, painless.
And his wife, a nurse, taught me about holding an animal for the end; any animal, be it a docile pet or a scared little stray.
“Let all your love flow through your hands,” she said, “let them know how you love them.”
I loved Range. It took a while, but I loved him.
Done well, going to sleep and dying are two separate things. First the anaesthesia, a wee pain in his back, then the sleeping in my arms.
“Do you remember that time ...” I begin but, of course, he does. When the vet and nurse return, in goes the blue juice, the overdose to stop his heart.
The vet starts to tell me there might be a bit of sighing now, but I interrupt to say “I know, I know”. Range does sigh and it’s lovely because that’s what I’m used to hearing in the night.
Then the three of us sit around him, his head in my lap, and wait.
I used to play a different role in these tableaus. The vet says she’d suspected that because I’d said “euth” instead of “put to sleep”.
Range’s great big gentle heart is still beating when I tell her how I burnt out; how I’d hated those selfish pricks too cowardly to be with their mates in the end.
So I swapped my veterinary career for journalism, I say, and she asks what sort of things I write about.
“Him,” I say, telling her about the road trips, beach visits, how he put up with no end of shit from the toddler.
“He’s gone now,” says the vet.
I am no stranger to the masochism involved in adopting old dogs. They arrive, I say I’m not going to get attached, then when they die a year later I swear never, ever, again. But Range was mine for only six measly months. We went off-grid in Raglan; toured in a campervan; the toddler has just started saying his name. “Range,” he yells, “come.”
I come home without Range, leave his collar in the car. I put away his bowls; throw his bedding in the bin.
I send his food down the road to another dog; lob the poo bags deep into the pantry.
And when it’s dark I pull the blankets back out of the bin, bring them inside.
I hold them to my face; make up his bed, curl up on it a while. I am an old hand at this grief, these terrible first few nights.