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Awareness | Earth Letter | Articles |Death of a Dog
Reflections on the Death
of a Dog
by Tony B. Robinson
Our dog, Homer, subject of occasional sermon stories, at least one Pastoral Musing, and a column in the P-I, died last week at the age of eleven. He died on a Thursday, my day off . He had been mopey and disoriented much of the day, recovering from an ear problem that had affected his balance. He was listing to the left.
As evening came Homer laid down beside the low fence that runs around our garden. It was a favorite spot of his. He liked to lie there, roll his tennis ball under the fence rail, and then work at getting it back. That night, with the sun setting behind him, he lay unusually still. His eyes had a far away look. His muzzle was gray. Looking at him, I knew. He was dying.
I wish we had been able to let him die there, at his chosen spot, in the backyard. But it's difficult at such moments to resist the feeling that we must, “Do something!" So I carried him to the car, and we set off for the vet's. Though he was fading fast, he managed one last wag of his tail, a kind of farewell salute, as we got into the car. Like most dogs, Homer was always up for a ride in the car.
At the vet's we went through the options, which included emergency surgery. But before such measures could be taken Homer, mercifully, was gone. We drove home again, a carload of weeping people and a dead dog. The next evening, after our son, Nick, arrived, we had a burial, laying Homer to rest in a grave in the back part of our garden. On the spot we planted a bush, described by the nurseryman as “exuberant." Homer was nothing, if not exuberant. Up until a year ago strangers we met at the dog park still asked if he were a puppy. Homer went from adolescence to old age in the course of single spring season.
Homer's death has not only left me freshly aware of the important place pets occupy in our lives, but also thinking about how we humans die, and how we care for our dead. Modern medicine has taught us to view death as defeat, and as something that requires lots of technology. Sometimes death is defeat and tragedy. Some lives are cut short. But death is not always defeat. It is part, albeit a painful part, of life. As Homer lay dying, he seemed to know this and to be at peace. His time had come. For us humans it has, however, become difficult to die. Various voices insist that we, “Do something!" and so we do. Often the result seems not so much living longer as dying longer.
We were comforted to be able to deal with Homer's death ourselves. He lay in state for the better part of a day, waiting as Nick drove home from Oregon. Linda made up a brief obituary and circulated it among friends and neighbors. Joe and I dug a grave. We all laid Homer in it, sending him off with a brand new tennis ball. We took turns hefting the shovel and tamping down the dirt. Just as it's difficult for us humans to die, it's almost impossible for us to do for our dead in these ways. It was a comfort.
Like our cat, Beast, who passed on last year, Homer was a "found" animal, that is he found us. One day, this stray Golden/Border Collie mix (our best guess) pup, latched onto our then twelve-year-old son, Nick. I always said that Homer was the dog that could read the invisible words on Nick’s tee shirt, "Boy In Search of Dog." After arriving, Homer pretty well flunked obedience school, or maybe it was we who flunked. If he had been a little boy, chances are good he would have been diagnosed with "attention deficit disorder," so active and non-stop was he. He did, however, attend to a thrown tennis ball with a single-mindedness that made me think we should have named him "Kierkegaard," after the Danish theologian famous for his aphorism, "Purity of heart is to will one thing."
So long, Homer, and to all the animals we have loved and who have loved us.
Anthony (“Tony”) B. Robinson is Senior Pastor at Plymouth Congregational church in Seattle.