Email
Print
FeedMan’s Best Friend
Or at least mine.
Illustration by Tom LaBaff Published January 22, 2010 at 11:36 AM
(page 1 of 4)
Engulfed in emotion, I walked my oldest and best dog around the perimeter of our 18th-century property for the last time. A month more, and we would have celebrated a decade since settling Hamlet House Farm together. Instead, though the acreage is rectangular, we’d come full circle.
I had gut-wrenching requests. I made painful promises. I asked Dolphus Raymond (D.R.), my English Chocolate Labrador Retriever, to leave his spirit—to let it envelope the farm, infuse the other animals, and guide and protect us all. I promised that each summer I’d name every sunflower in a corner garden “D” or “R” or “D.R.” I promised I’d always write about him. I promised to never call another Chocolate Labrador my dog.
It rained all day. The world, I thought, was crying, too. But when it stopped, I knew what I had to do. D.R. had thrown up three times that last 24 hours. The little food he ate, the high-powered meds and the water he insatiably sought were poison for a dog who couldn’t fully empty his bladder. The struggle had lost its dignity.
That night, D.R. laid down for me for the last time. As a compassionate vet, a friend, honored his profession, I blessed D.R. with holy water. With a whimper, he passed gently and humanely. He was 11 years, 3 months and 20 days old—not nearly the age I’d hoped he’d become.
D.R. was—and will always be—a knight in white satin. Wrapping him in a white sheet from my mother, I carried him from the farmhouse, an emotionally excruciating escort. Vividly, I’ll always see his eyes staring back at me, like the two red taillights of the make-do hearse that carried away his physical body.
I’m reminded of Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” D.R. was pure Labrador and pure gold. Still, almost daily, I whimper—an unrelenting, unleashed, universal grief dog lovers harbor. My eyes fill, then blur. Sometimes, I tremble.
What’s so important about our dogs? How do we become so attached? The highs and lows both create and cripple us. Our dogs teach us to live in the moment, to soak in every streak of white light.
