Sad news: Carl Buell and Hank Fox have lost a good friend, Tito.
Dogs are easy animals to get to know, sometimes too easy. I haven’t been able to bear the thought of having a dog again since the day, when I was 12, that I stepped off the school bus one afternoon to find my dog, Snoop, crushed and broken by the side of the road. At least it sounds like Tito had a good life and a dignified end.
Carl has put up a short photo essay and testament to Tito.
I can’t bear to read it yet, because we will probably have to have our cat put to sleep on Monday. (Her mammary tumor has spread to her lungs.)
Having pets is very, very hard because you have to make decisions on their behalf that you don’t have to make for humans. We can’t ask the cat what she wants; we have to guess.
Don’t have to? We can’t make those decisions for humans, at least not under the current U.S. legal system. We can’t even make those decisions for ourselves if we so wish.
I guess I got broken in early — lost Max when I was 3+ — saw him hit by a car in CA. I remember I couldn’t whistle. I remember making a “whoot whoot” sound trying to call him back as he was running toward where he shouldn’t be. I remember wanting to run down that hill to where he was crying, but knowing I was not allowed down there. The car drove off (she took him to a vet.) I never saw him again.
And yet, I can never be without a pack. I am a dog person and I belong with dog people. And with dogs.
Still, this breaks my heart. My condolences.
Losing a pet is confusing. Killing them is the kindest thing you can do sometimes. You mourn them like a family member and people treat you like you’re crazy.
You wrap your life around an animal, especially if they’re sick, knowing that someday you’ll lose them. And then you do, and it leaves a gaping ragged hole in your life, because you were stupid and good enough to let someone who can’t even talk into your heart. Some people never let another into their hearts because they can’t stand the inevitable heartbreak, and some let in more so they can have more good times before the bad. Which is better? Which is stupider?
*sigh*
I had to put my guinea pig Einstein to sleep last week. He was the wonder pig with a genetic deformity that made him blind and deaf, with no incisors and deformed molars. I’ve been realizing how much I structured my life around him–feeding him, cuddling him, taking him to the vet every month, tempting him with various flavors of organic fruit baby food–and how hard it is not to get up and feed him first thing in the morning. And just how many vitamins he had.
Anyway, in general, losing a beloved pet is incredibly hard.
PZ, thank you for the kind words. And the rest of you, thanks.
At the end of 16-and-then-some years, Tito lay on his favorite home hill, overlooking the domain of foxes and raccoons and myriad birds, all of which he loved to watch. He had his two best human buddies with him, petting and hugging him through his last moment, and a kind one-in-a-thousand veterinarian who came to the house to help us let him go.
Tito wasn’t in any pain, and he went to sleep peacefully, at home, and dearly loved.
He was the best dog I ever even met.
May we and our loved ones all be so lucky, Hank.
Hank, you’re one of my favourite commenters on religion (and the lack there-of) and society. I offer my condolences at this sad time.
my condoleances to Hank and Carl. there are many, many best dogs in the world ever; i’ll never forget the one i lost about fifteen months ago now. not even though i now have another of them — there’s a great deal of room at the canine top, fortunately enough. we humans would be lonelier were it otherwise.
I tried mouth-to-mouth on the cooling body of my boyhood dog. Thirty years later, that still doesn’t seem icky or disproportionate. She only bore one small nick from the unseen car that had hit her, and any hope at all was enough to try.
Five years ago, when we finally answered our daughter’s pleas for a dog, the sheer naive joy our new little puppy brought me made me wonder why I had let myself be dog-less for so long.
Pets teach us about mortality, not intellectually but in the heartsick emotional way we nonetheless get out of bed and go on the day after they die. The only way to avoid that lesson is not to care about anyone. I choose to love.
My heart goes out to Carl and Hank. Looking at the pictures, Tito looks like he was a great dog.
Our cat Motor died at 13 from lymphoma 5 months ago. I miss him so much.
PZ, I couldn’t write this yesterday because your story of finding your dog dead really tore me up. Life is so fucked up sometime but you meet some of the nicest critters during the short time we’re here. Wish I could take better care of my health so my son doesn’t find me dead when he come home from school someday.
PZ, dogs have been a wildly successful species, I think because their genes have exploited ours. So, are they symbiotes, parasites, parasitoids? I am a happy host and alpha dog stand-in for these guys. Neoteny? Survival of the cutest?
PZ, as hard as it is, I hope you consider a dog again. Yes, it is very hard when they die, and I am crying as I write this, having euthanized our Willie only two weeks ago(http://www.metaphoria.us/Tiff1/th_PIC00014.jpg). But it is still worth it, those many years of love, and there are plenty of used dogs and other pets needing homes (Ben’s person lost his home, Willie’s first owner became ill, Berrigan was a stray with a head full of buckshot, Geordi’s farm went bankrupt and his people could not keep him … the last two are here at my feet, the first two died quietly in our arms.)
Be well,
Skeptyk
PZ, dogs have been a wildly successful species, I think because their genes have exploited ours. So, are they symbiotes, parasites, parasitoids? I am a happy host and alpha dog stand-in for these guys. Neoteny? Survival of the cutest?
PZ, as hard as it is, I hope you consider a dog again. Yes, it is very hard when they die, and I am crying as I write this, having euthanized our Willie only two weeks ago(http://www.metaphoria.us/Tiff1/th_PIC00014.jpg). But it is still worth it, those many years of love, and there are plenty of used dogs and other pets needing homes (Ben’s person lost his home, Willie’s first owner became ill, Berrigan was a stray with a head full of buckshot, Geordi’s farm went bankrupt and his people could not keep him … the last two are here at my feet, the first two died quietly in our arms.)
Be well,
Skeptyk
I’ve had two very affectionate Siamese cats die in my arms now (one at home, one euthed at the vet), and it can be hard. It seems so silly, but damn you do get attached to an animal after 10 or 15 years. It’s quite odd: we have some reasonable expectation of our spouse being around for about as long as we will, and of our kids surviving us (I know, it doesn’t always work out that way :-( ), but we know that this new puppy or kitten will grow old and die in less time than it takes to raise our human babies to adulthood. Yet we invest ourselves emotionally in it, all the same. “Better to have loved and lost….”
(Meanwhile, there’s a cynical part of me looking on and saying: “Silly spoiled Westerners, your house pets have better lives than half the children in Africa!”)
About humans:
Mnemosyne: you can only ask if they’re competent. My mother is far gone in dementia — my cats communicate better — and all I’ve got to go on is a few lines in the Power of Attorney about “undue prolongation” and “extraordinary measures” (whatever that means). When we drew up our own wills, the lawyer had us fill in some fairly detailed Advance Medical Directives, saying under what circumstances we wanted to be kept alive, or just made comfortable.
Caledonian: Are Advance Directives not valid in the US? Or are you referring to the Schiavo case? (She didn’t have one)
“Not been able to bear the thought of having a dog” for twelve years? You have _so_ missed out. I lost my very best friend, a beautiful setter [http://always-love-you.org.uk], about 18 months ago and I thought I could never go there again. I know now that dogs aren’t our whole life. But they do make life whole, so much, that I just would not want to be without.