Rerun

Two years without Hank

My dog died on December 21, 2023. Below is what I wrote about him the next day. I still miss him.

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December 22, 2023

The day before I brought my dog to the vet to be euthanized, I thought often of being in labor with my son. Certain parallels were obvious: the anticipation of a medical event, tedium shot through with terror, the sense of enduring a moment after which nothing would be the same. There was also the dog’s role in my labor. Hank knew it was happening before I did. At two in the morning, he climbed into our bed where he hadn’t slept in years and pressed the length of his spine against my abdomen. He stayed until a contraction woke me fully around six. We have pictures of the dog stretched beside me on the living room rug, where I labored on my hands and knees, and of him resting his head on my thigh while I counted the seconds between contractions. In the pictures Hank is robust and curious. He has lived exactly half his life.

Our friend Kate came to pick up the dog and keep him overnight. I’d fantasized I would be the one to leash Hank and walk him to Kate’s car. At the time I believed maintaining composure throughout pregnancy and childbirth would buy me ease and competence in parenthood. This turned out not to be the case (or wouldn’t have been, even if I’d managed it). By the time Kate arrived, my pain was shameful and private; my husband brought the dog to her while I hid inside. Hank, whose main preoccupation was anticipating what would happen next, wagged his tail hopefully. I share his preoccupation, but I’m worse at it. Alone in the apartment, I thought, I’ll love the dog less when I’m a mother. This, too, turned out to be wrong.

The birth of my son was the most chaotic, violent event I’ve lived through. In my suffering I realized I’d never previously suffered and would definitely suffer again—when I begin to die, if not before. It was the memory of pain that enabled me to end my dog’s life sooner (by days? weeks?) than was absolutely necessary. Hank’s soul and his vitality were inseparable. He was a large, beautiful, dignified dog. Daily he experienced a level of satisfaction with which I am unacquainted. Picture Hank at the edge of Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto, panting with the machine of his body after a rigorous game of fetch. Hank leaping into a snow-rimmed lake at eleven-thousand feet in the Sierra Nevada, indifferent to the cold. Hank recognizing my mother on the streets of New Haven from several blocks away and deploying a shrill, victorious bark. My dog never peed on the floor, until he began to suffer. He ate every morsel offered to him and lifted his head when I held out my hands—until he began to suffer. I wanted to keep him alive, because I wanted to touch his face. I wanted to look across the apartment and see him asleep in a slant of sunlight. To keep him alive would have been selfish, and in a matter of time (days? weeks?) cruel.

Because I had cared for Hank all his life, ensuring comforts and pleasures beyond what an animal receives in the wild, and preventing any death that might be considered natural, it was my responsibility to end his life. And because planning his death was such a daunting, all-consuming responsibility, I managed to do so without anticipating that after his death he would be gone. Yesterday, I sat on the floor of an exam room with my dog’s head in my lap. He was looking at me and looking at me as the vet administered the injection that stopped his heart. I don’t know if he knew he was dying, but he knew I was with him. And wasn’t that the question all along? Where are we going? Will you be there? I am shocked to discover the answer is no. He’s gone and we are not together. The trunk of our car, in which Hank rode cross-country and back twice, is covered in his fur. The couch has too much space. Our other dog, young and a little dumb, ambles up to me and hangs his head in confusion, or sorrow, or because he notices my hands are free.

Six and a half years ago, we were nervous to introduce the dog to the baby. We worried he would bark at the baby, or chew on the baby, or jump heedlessly into the baby’s crib for sport. No. We got home from the hospital and Hank bounded into the apartment, sniffed the baby’s head, and memorized the smell of him. He ran toward me, toward Dan, drank an entire bowl of water and curled up on the couch. My dog looked at me with his wet, orange eyes that would stay wet and orange when the rest of him turned thin and gray. The baby is here, he seemed to mean. What did you expect?