Tonight we took our 17 year old terrier Pepper to the vet, and had her put down. It's the bitter bargain we make-- there for them at the beginning, there at the end. Over the past summer, she became a very old dog, seemingly all at once--blinded by cataracts, deafer than me, crooked in her back from arthritis. She lost her house-training, and even seemed to lose her personality, which had always been formidable. She trembled much of the time, and often seemed not to recognize us. I have been feeling like Bob Cratchit this evening, looking at the empty place by the fire.
The following is something I wrote about her a few years ago, entitled
Our Wedding Dog:
Tonight, I have been sitting in my chair with my little dog curled under
my arm, and we have spent a long time looking in each other's eyes, as
we have been wont to do for many years. Pepper is 14 years old, a
Yorkie/Schnauzer mix, and her formerly brown face is white now, and she
spends most of her days drowsing on chairs and couches, or on any
convenient lap. She is a stubborn old gal, and if she wants to jump up
into my chair, and wriggle and push till she claims half the seat for
herself, well, who am I to argue? Such a venerable old lady deserves all
that she wants, and mostly what she wants is to be allowed to nap and
feel the old clock inside her wind its way down.
We
got her the weekend we were engaged. Dani and I were living in an attic
apartment on the Hilltop, and the guy in the downstairs apartment raised
and trained little terriers, and when Dani and I came home from a
weekend's touring performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream (where
we had announced our engagement to the stunned cast), he was outside
with his kids playing with some little dogs, and when he saw us he asked
if we wanted a dog. It seems he had given his mother one of his little
puppies 2 years earlier, and when she moved to an apartment complex that
didn't allow pets, she had to return Pepper to her son.
I
think he was asking out of reflex, just something you say as a
conversation starter, especially if you are a dog trainer. But I looked
at her, and though it sounds lame, something passed between us. Maybe I
was open because I had just gotten engaged to a woman I was deeply in
love with, and had just finished a wildly successful weekend's worth of
performances, and here was an offer to begin something like a little
family. It felt right. I looked at Dani and she laughed--she later said
she could tell right away this was going to happen. So we took her
upstairs.
I spent a week holding her like a
baby, protecting her from my cat Sugar, who was deeply offended that a
dog had been brought into the mix. Sugar never warmed to her, and never
missed a chance to swat her and send her yelping into another room. That
whole week we looked into each other's eyes, bonding the way I imagine
parents do with new-born babies. When the weekend came, we had to leave
to do another set of shows out of town, and I asked the fellow
downstairs to watch her for us. All weekend I worried she wouldn't
remember us, that the week-long bonding hadn't been enough, but when we
came home, it was like a scene from a movie: Pepper was in the yard
playing with one of the neighbor's kids, and when she saw me, she ran
top speed and launched into my arms and licked my face all over. That's
when I knew she was ours for keeps.
Right away
she established herself as my chair companion, and later she became part
of our sleeping arrangement as well. Dani on my left, Pepper on my
right, under my arm. I became quite used to this--in fact, once when I
was in the hospital for a surgery, Dani was concerned I wouldn't sleep
without a little creature nestled under my right arm, so she bought a
little stuffed dog to tuck in with me during my week long stay.
Pepper
has endured many moves, and many comings and goings of other pets, and
not always happily. In fact, never happily. I don't think she has quite
understood what we thought we were doing bringing all those other
critters into the house. Especially Sonny, out Golden, who spends a
generous part of his day, every day, for the last 6 years, finding ways
to annoy her.
It has always been Mark, Dani and
Pepper to our families. When my mother calls, her sign off is "give my
love to Dani and Pepper." Family members have actually had her for
sleepovers--she used to go with my sisters on their camping trips.
Actors I worked with years ago, after getting back in touch, will ask
after her health--she had a brief career on the stage herself, playing
Toto in WoO, Sandy in Annie, and the family dog in Cheaper By The Dozen.
But she's retired now. She lies on her warm blankets and dreams of her
former stage glory.
Someday soon, the
unbearable will happen. She has a bad heart murmur, and the vet assures
us this will be the thing that takes her out. The day I got that
diagnosis, two years ago, I drove her home from the vet, after first
stopping at the store for some treats. I held her for a while, and we
looked into each other's eyes, as we often do. Her bristly intelligent
gaze was a bright as the day we got her ( and still is). I felt better
that the knowledge of mortality is not a gift given to a dog. They live
entirely and utterly in the moment. This makes it easier. We are
entrusted with that knowledge for them.
So,
these days, I let her have her way. She eats when she feels like it,
goes outside whenever she asks, and sleeps when and wherever she
chooses. She has given great value, our little wedding dog. She
deserves our respect, and our love. Some of us who are childless need
an outlet for our parenting instincts, I believe, and Pepper is in many
ways my first child.
