This is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago in honor of my first dog, Boo. It’s one of my favorite stories I’ve ever written, and a timely reshare today. Even five years after she died, it’s still hard for me to talk about her without fighting tears. Thanks so much to everyone for reading.
My family and I are driving into a local arboretum with our smiling, loving, and slightly-panting cockapoo, Boo. She’s had a trying couple of months, but looking into her enthralled and focused eyes, you can hardly tell.
After two rounds of antibiotics, a case of giardia, and her life’s third battle with Lyme disease, it’s finally beginning to look like she might fight to see another year. She’s got a weak and tired gaze stained by 17 years of adventure, but a warm, tender, and enduring smile. A tongue droops gleefully over a dappled chin of white, brown, and black. Her hair is fluffy and disheveled, and her tail is wagging back and forth with a virulent intensity. If she has a care in the world, she refuses to let it show.
Tomorrow, we’ll learn that Boo’s kidneys are failing. In three days her pain will grow so immense that we’ll no longer be able to bear watching her suffer. Through labored, agonized breaths she’ll let us know that it’s finally her time to go. And for the fourth and final time, we’ll make a fateful call.
As the phone rings, we’ll watch a seventeen-year-long road wind its way around a final bend toward a cut and defined terminus. Through sober lips and glassy eyes, my father will schedule the lethal poisoning that will end her pain. We prepare to allow her loving presence to evaporate. Piles of clothes jumbled onto solemn, twilit sofas will start to remind me of the precious, black furball that would emerge from a cocoon each morning to moan and commune with me before I’d hurry quickly off to the bus.
As the phone call ends, a dead end I thought I’d never reach comes plainly into view: it reads November 30th at 11 AM — the moment the syringe will enter her bloodstream, and her little soul will depart from this world.
I’ll hold her in my arms, say final goodbyes, and watch with the greatest pain I’ve ever felt as her lights go out. I’ll watch as the tired limbs of the creature that brightened my life fall limp at her side.
And I’ll spend the next three years wondering off and on about the small things that might have gone differently — about the reality that our family didn’t fight day and night for this caring, loving, gray-muzzled creature just to lose her in a foul twist of fate.
But today — November 26th of 2020… here in this memory — she’s alive and well. And she’s trying so very hard to remain a part of this world. She’s spent the last month hardly able to walk. We’ve carried her to and from our backyard just so she could pee and poop with her decrepit, shaking legs. Only a few days ago, the idea of her ever walking again looked like an almost impossible dream.
But in this moment, she’s at my side with worn, affectionate eyes as I fight tears and rub her fur. That she and I are still here spending time together after all of these years is hard to fathom.
I got her for my eighth birthday. She was there for first crushes, heartbreaks, injuries, celebrations, disasters, and adventures. For each turn my life took during these tumultuous years, she’s been a stagnant source of love, whimsy, and warmth.
It’s with unsteady legs, a couple of labored breaths, and a playful, unbothered smirk that you emerge from my mom’s Honda. We don’t expect you to go for a walk today, Boo. We had to carry you down the stairs. At best, we hope that you have the energy to hobble or be air-lifted to a sunny spot of your choosing. A park full of dogs within the arboretum is busy at play, but we don’t approach them. I can smell the light scent of wood burning and see my breath in front of me.
We start walking toward a bench beside a pond, but you pull back. We assume you just don’t have it in you to walk today. And it breaks our hearts, but we understand. We know you would if you could. You stand there, resistant, and we begin debating whether we should simply take you home.
But instead, you begin to pull us in the opposite direction. The trickle of a nearby tributary enters into earshot, and suddenly, we have an idea of where you’re taking us. Stubby little legs of fur accelerate to a frenetic pace. We can hardly believe our eyes as a puppy-like passion fills your ancient incarnation.
If there have been three cornerstones to this wonderful life of yours, they’re the family you love, all of the beautiful places you go with them, and the pebbles and rocks that they throw for you to chase each time you near a shallow stream.
As the nearly frigid water of the nearby brook gently flows, it’s with a flailing little tail and an adamantly pointed nose that you begin guiding us toward it.
A couple of days ago, you could hardly hobble. And now you’re doing everything you can to gleefully guide us toward the stream on this final walk we’ll ever take. My parents chat idly through their masks about politics as they keep their eyes fixed on you. I hold the leash in my hand and feel the frictions of each tug on her retractable blue leash.
“And with all these conspiracy theories going around these days…” my mom replies to a statement I don’t quite hear. My attention is elsewhere.
“It’s hard to believe just how much the political landscape within this country has changed in just these past couple of years,” my dad muses and watches as his muffled words hover there on the brisk and autumnal afternoon. My mom doesn’t reply and he doesn’t mind. They’re just happy to have another election cycle behind them and a hurried, eager, and four-legged companion guiding them toward the tiny tributary that flows along the arboretum’s outer edge.
“I have a suspicion where she’s taking us…” my mom says a little more like a skeptical mother than a dog owner. There’s no denying that you’re a part of the family, Boo.
“You make me so proud!” I congratulate you with a vigorous pet as you look toward me with the venerable face of a wizened, old cockapoo. Cataracts color your windows to the world, but it doesn’t soften your smile even slightly. You look toward me with an elated grin and pick up your pace as the sound of the stream steadily crescendoes. Compliments have always given you a confidence boost. What exactly each meant was never important to you. You took solace in our supportive tones and never needed more.
You power through the rugged, rock-covered terrain and jagged roots that checker the path toward the creek.
“I don’t want her drinking this water right now… not with everything she’s been fighting off,” my mom continues maternally. She watches you with a cautious eye as you attempt to dart across the stream bed faster than your aged legs will carry you. You falter under your weight a couple of times as we throw rocks back and forth, but your smile and joy never fade for a single second.
As you look toward us with unflinching determination, we continue throwing rocks. Each pressing look spurs another splash and loving, labored dash. My mother, father, and I each exchange teary-eyed glances.
While Thanksgiving hasn’t always been the year’s most meaningful holiday in our family, your impassioned and unwavering love for life instills it with a new purpose. To see you doing what you enjoy most today is a blessing beyond words.
Leaves fall against the stones along the stream with light, little crunches. Some land silently in the water and meander idly in the current without a care. Rays of refracted light permeate the forest full of dying trees surrounding us. The whole arboretum sways and glimmers like a phoenix for a few final days before descending into monotony.
There’s a perfect sort of serenity to the afternoon. You try one final time to teach us the value in each and every moment.
Oh, Ben... that really made me tear up. Ugh, I'm sorry.
I cried through this whole piece. I too lost my soulmate, my best friend, my constant faithful companion. It’s been 5 years and I miss her every single day. I have her picture all over my house and in my heart forever.