Life Without Dogs

Say it ain't so. Tell me I didn't wake up today to a life without a dog. Fifteen years is not 'like a part of the family', fifteen years IS a part of the family. The night we brought him home, he got carsick on the drive. We got him from a sweet lady named Nora who had a boxer and a toddler. Nox (the Latin personification of night, she said) apparently bullied them both as a five month old puppy. He was already trained to poop only in the gravel part of the yard. He checked out his new home by first peeing on our kitchen floor. That was his parting shot at the vet last night when we took him in to send him off; peacefully and not painfully. One of the harder decisions one has to make in life but the right one. We'd have  preferred if he just went quietly in his sleep but someone recently told me that 'experience' only means not getting what you want in life.

Tell me I'm not sitting here eating his last two hot dogs. The 2 boys from across the street came by for a hot dog sendoff party with cards for us. He had bacon for breakfast and hot dogs for dinner. When we picked him up that first night Nora told us "he'd do anything for a hot dog" and she was right. I actually taught him to go out to the driveway and fetch the paper with hot dogs, but he was still a pup and the Sunday paper weighed half of what he did, so I let him off the hook. The paper should land on the porch every day anyway...at least if they want a Christmas tip, it should. I  was a paperboy, but Lesa still thinks I'm a hardnose over that.

There was that time in Utah when he got me off with a warning. 68 in a 55. As young Trooper Brown approach my window he began with "Sir, do you know how.. MAN, that dog's got the buggiest eyes I've ever seen! Is he a Boston?"  Nox was hanging out the window on my lap waiting to greet him, tail whipping like a little antenna in the wind. The trooper and I talked dogs for 10 minutes and he sent me off with the warning, "Welcome to the state of Utah. Now drive safely and take care of that little guy."  I did.

Every Christmas she got him a stocking and a sock monkey. He ran miles with me around the bike paths. Sat in the middle of the South Platte while I fished for trout and under my chair when I worked. She dressed him up ridiculously for Halloween - the bat and prisoner were the best.

He was quite athletic, addicted to the ball and drove our guests nuts with his relentless pursuit of a thrower. You couldn't get him to sit in your lap in the day and couldn't get him off you at night.  I called him a 'spare parts bin dog' because he looked like God made him from the leftover dog-parts He had.

He was king of the back yard and would not only never back down from a fight, but pick fights with dogs who could break his neck in a single bite. One massive, gentle Golden Retriever, who happened to be a Colorado mountain dog and lived mostly outside in Alma, put two stripes down his belly with her front teeth as a warning when he crossed the line. She wasn't angry with him at all, just a shot across the bow. He learned his lesson and staying in his lane with her after that..

Our postwoman, she loved him and wept with me at the mailbox yesterday when I took him out to say goodbye to her. She had her usual pocket full of 'slim-jim' treats ready for him, but he hadn't made it down to the fence to bark at her for months. 

He was a swimmer. We spent a weekend at Lake Powell one summer and he jumped off the little cliffs all day. He burned his paws in the hot sand and the girls laughed at me for holding a cold washcloth on them in the hotel that night.

The first fall break we had him, we took him with us to the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado  and like us, he ran up and down them for hours and ingested so much sand it came out of him for days. Everywhere.. eyes, ears, front, back. You name it. 

He was a joy but was also there with us, comforting us in times of death, tragedy, loss, fear, uncertainty and pain. Hospitals and funerals. 

His breath stunk, his teeth were brown, he walked in circles and got lost in the back yard and under the kitchen table. He peed on the rug. He crapped on the floor when he couldn't find his way to the door. He howled when he couldn't find his way in or get down the stairs. Worse when we came home from a trip. The kitchen floor is cleaner than it's been for years.

But still, say it ain't so. Tell me I didn't wake up today to a life without a dog