2004-07-27 - 12:30 p.m.
It’s been raining again, so I’ve been spending time going through pics and making some prints. Mainly pictures of Teddy. There is one I especially like where he is standing on a rock ledge high up on Wiscoy Falls. He is half-turned, looking back at me, and by the contented expression on his face you’d never guess anything was wrong.
It’s strange to think that day was little more than a month ago now. It was the last time Teddy visited the falls, a place he loved dearly. All the dogs have always liked going there, of course. But Teddy loved the water like no other dog I’ve ever known. He would trek back and forth across the stream just to keep his feet wet. And he would eagerly fetch and retrieve until your arm wore out, as long as you knew the trick to getting him to release the stick in his mouth was having a stick in reserve you could show him.
There is another picture taken close to the location and time of the first picture. It shows Teddy and Beau looking out over the falls, both of them turned away from the camera. I like to imagine what is going through their heads, but I know such an exercise is pointless. I doubt dogs think the way we do. I doubt anything was going through their heads other than an acute awareness of that moment. So, rather than ascribe my--inevitably false--point of view, perhaps the more valuable exercise is for me to simply try to imagine again fully that very particular time and place.
I am on the verge of losing my composure.
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What kills me is how quickly it happened. From the time any of us noticed anything wrong until the end was less than four months; it scares me how rapidly his days of running abandon changed into a marathon of nearly immobile, interminable standing until--because he refused to lie down--his legs started to give out. The first indication that anything was amiss came this spring with the discovery of a dark discharge that looked and smelled like cow manure emanating from his right ear. It was caused either by an infection or an infestation of ear mites, or both. And then a slight sore on his cheek bloated into a gout-like bulge on his neck. But the antibiotics got him back to normal, or seemingly so, and by the time May came around he was healthy enough to accompany me one last time as I rode home.
He would camp out under the crabapple where I parked the bike and wait until I was ready to go, and then jump up eagerly when I emerged from the house and dart off in whatever direction he thought I was taking, turning his head to make sure I was with him. He would run alongside me the whole three and a half miles and only stop to plunge here and there into a ditch, slumping down momentarily in the places he knew contained water. Then he would get up and take off again without shaking, flinging off a shower of droplets with every stride.
Only later, after he began to cough and wheeze and lose weight, did we notice the swollen lymph nodes on his neck. It wasn't long before he could do little more than stand in the yard and watch me ride away.
The literature I’ve read on the subject tells us that cancer is a leading cause of death in golden retrievers, and as a result the average life expectancy of these dogs is now a mere decade. Teddy had less than half that time with us. It seems too short a life, and it was.
Mom is adamant. She says, “No more pets,” and I understand. I have two dogs of my own remaining, and still there’s a void. There’s no filling it.
It’s drizzling, but I think I’ll let the dogs out and follow them up the slope to the place where Teddy now rests. And then I think we’ll all take a very long walk.
