Chloe Shaw - What Is a Dog?

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

To the dogs

This is a work of memory. This is an act of love. As such, it comes from my mind, my heart, only. Though I did confer with certain individuals on specific dates and details when necessary, the words, feelings, and interpretationsas meant with the dogsare all my own.

I was lying on the cool black-and-white tile of our kitchen floor, resting my head on Bookers huge, hairy chest. It was late. The house was quiet. He smelled like cinnamon rolls baking in a barn. I smelled like dog.

I went to visit Bookers nook of the room often, lying along the side of his beige orthopedic mattress, which sat these days more like a hospice bed rolled into the heart of our home. At fifteen years oldyour nineties if youre a dog, and a big, big dog at thathe had trouble walking, trouble even getting up. For two years, my husband, Matt, and I had been using a harness, which had become a part of him, warmed from the inside out like his fur, to lift himan act that at some times took on acrobatic grace and at others reminded me of the shame my elderly grandparents showed when they started needing similar help. Its about time to wash it again, I was thinking, his smell now more barn than pastry. As we moved him he licked us as if to say, That hurts, or Thank you, or Its going to be okay. It was a glossy, bleak place at which to have arrived, but there we were every day, trying to figure out if he was ready to die and, if he was, whether we were ready to let him. What do you know about death, dog?

Youll know, people told us. Animals have their ways. Hell tell you when its time.

As I stood in the kitchen washing the dishes at night or packing lunches in the morning, looking over at his bed amid the maze of cheap rugs we lined the slippery floor with so that he could navigate the path to his food bowl and the outside, I wondered, Does he still want to be here? Somewhere down under the sleek white poof of his skull, is he scared? These thoughts would fill up a good part of me until finally Id cue up The Only Thing by Sufjan Stevens so that I could crysometimes in private, thinking I might upset Booker, and sometimes with my whole body on top of his. Fur, wet and matted where my face pressed in.

Explaining Bookers health to our human kids was complicatedyes, he was still with us, and yet a great big part of him was already gone. Historically, the sound of the back door opening had sent Booker leaping up and out onto the lawn. Now he didnt even flinch. His eyebrows quivered in mild recognition of the pressure change, but his body held firm to the floor. Was it his heart that had turned? Matt had the remarkable capacity to approach Booker with the same big grin no matter how Booker responded. I feel like even the dog knew my smile was pretend. Or was it my heart that had turned? Was this feeling proof that it had started making space for the hurt where only love had been?

Nine years. Nine years since Id met Booker and Matt on that downy path in the woods. Nine years Id been feeling myself walk farther away from my old, broken selves toward the woman Id hoped might be out there. For nearly a third of my life Id been Mom to this bucking, benevolent beast, several years even before I had human children of my own. Before kids begged me for more milk, more love, more Baby Beluga, I had Booker begging me for just ten more minutes in the woods, Mom, please? Ten more minutes in this muddy glop? Before panicked visits to pediatricians there were late-night visits to the vetwhy wont he open that eye? Use that leg? Whats this lump on his head? Lying in bed at night, I couldnt quite wrap my mind around it: the dog that had brought Matt and me together was the same dog who might now be looking to us to bring him peace. How could the life that brought me peace be the thing in question here?

There was no baseline for canine happiness anymore. If a dog is a wolf whose heart thumps toward something human, we didnt know what the wolf or dog in him was telling us. What if the wolf longed to slink off into the woods and die, but the dog still felt tethered to the ache in our eyes, the way humans sometimes cant die until their loved ones hop home for a shower?

Id cried through the entire appointment when Id last taken Booker to Heather, our vet. I was too bewildered trying to answer her questions, too stuck in my heartsick search for clues. On which side of comfortable was he? And how far?

Are you making your mom sad, big guy? she asked him, reaching into her white coat pocket, the one always filled with treats. Why would you do that?

He would have wagged at her if he could have, but he hadnt been able to wag in almost two years, having lost nerve control throughout his back end. It was what I imagined it would be like to live with a person whod lost the ability to smile. It wasnt uncommon for us to help him up and get him started toward the door, only to find that hed pooped on his bed.

Hes like a chicken, I said to Matt one morning, trying to make light.

Yeah, he said, except those arent eggs.

Id become increasingly worried about what exactly Matt was taking in. Having focused his lifes work on emotional transparency and presence and not relying on the seductive trap of denial, this was the closest Id seen him come to a defensive dismissal, greeting Booker on his bed at the end of the day with cheer that suggested they might just as easily set out on a five-mile run together like they used to. The at-home parent from the beginning, Id been Bookers primary caretaker for eight years, feeding him, walking him, driving him to the vet. While Matt was at work, I spent my days now buried in the nuts and bolts of canine geriatrics. He was surely aware of Bookers age and limitations, but as much as I wore these things like a layer of burdensome skin, I worried about what he wasnt facing in the inevitable loss of his old beloved. It did feel like a gift my deep involvement could allow them: their time together could be solely focused not on death, but on dog, man, friend.

Herein lay the dilemma: In almost every way, Booker was a hearty, healthy dog. But structurally, he was like a building whose central I-beam had collapsed. There were times when he stood in one spot for long enough that his back end sank so low he looked like a sea lion or furry mermaid out on the lawn. And so what we were really wondering was whether he was happy even sowhether hed still choose these physical discomforts in exchange for more of life with us.

Id returned from that appointment preoccupied by what he might begin telling me. Loss of appetite. Loss of interest. Loss of lakes reflected in his eyes. But, happily, none of this was happening. He panted a lot, but it was springit was shifting hotter. He stranded himself in all corners of the house and yard when his feet gave out on him and he couldnt pull himself back up. But when we found him, he licked us. He made his best dog face. When hed last jumped into his favorite lake, the one hed jumped into for fifteen years, hed immediately started sinking, no longer able to swim. Matt and his brother David had had to jump in and rescue him. But was it fair to say that he seemed happy for having tried? Within the panic was there still the exquisite, cool smell of the lake?