It’s a Cold/ And It’s a Broken/ Hallelujah

There are no dogs in this house anymore. Jethro _{<who never existed in OD time, which I still cannot wrap my head around>} has been finally interred _{<what little is left of him. What we got back after the dirt was already frozen>} all the way up back next to the fence where he used to go on weekday mornings to try to desperately keep me from leaving for work. Anything to prolong being alone and afraid. He was, always, afraid. I’ll try to come back to that, but I don’t want to. I have to put it down sometime. I have to. But I have been sparing everyone hearing it since November. Henry Three Legs. _{<typing that made me cry>} Henry is off the northeast corner of the house now. Now we can never move. My boyfriend is here, I will stay here. It is what I must do for the best boyfriend I will ever have.

Falling asleep last night, friends around me and a concerningly abandoned fire in the Grotto up back, I saw them around us. Two hounds like long dragons. Around the house. Swimming half-through the earth like they swam through couches swaddled in blankets. They are still here. I am still here. They would not leave me if they could. But, really, we are alone now. Mister and I. Two humans rattling through this wood box. Alone. No one to feed except the bird who will never die. No one to let out, to comfort. No one to worry about us except each other. _{<trust me, that bird does not care to enter into an emotional bond beyond her access to popcorn>} The last time I was this alone, I was 19. Henry has loved me that long. Even before I stole him back, during that agony without him in my house, I knew he was there. People kept an eye on him for me. He was somewhere, loving me. Now he is just quiet. In a hole.

Now.
He is gone. He is gone and I planned it. I paid money to kill him. I am in charge of killing people.

I can’t find the thread here.

Look. I don’t have to justify myself to the literal no one here. I don’t. But I do have to keep an honest count for my own memory. It was indisputably time. I promised _{<WE promised>} when he lost a leg but didn’t die when he was nine months old _{<eleven years ago. 2007>} that his second chance would be everything it could possibly be. I promised his life would be as good as I could make it. And that included killing him before his suffering hollowed him out, scraped out his dignity, and left him a crying husk. I almost missed the mark. He cripped up at the end of last summer. August. We put Jethro down in November. Henry started laser therapy….sometime in there. It helped. And we added gabapentin to his drug regimen. I honestly don’t truly understand how it worked, the lasers. It was like an ultrasound therapy, but it wasn’t actually ultrasound. He had to wear doggles, and I had to wear yellow glasses _{<Mister took him to almost all his appointments. We scheduled them so I didn’t miss work>} and it obviously felt good. He liked the vet after the first set of six visits. I never, ever thought my reactive-ass dog would tolerate the vet like that. Much less try to barrel into the exam room he considered his and settle in for each appointment. _{<what I’m saying is that this dog did not stop surprising me ever in his life>} It bought us six or seven months of limited mobility.

I’ve learned, between these two hopeless, broken hounds that the real mark of when it’s time is when you find yourself saying
.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        ;Hey. I’m here. I’m right here.;
.           more than three times in a day. Henry was different. He was even more tied to me than when I stole him back from my ex in the last month or so. He keened nervously with seemingly no provocation. He was uncertain, frail. In clinical terms, I suppose what I’m saying is that his quality of life had broken down. He cried when I left for work. He was only happy when we were on the couch next to each other. He didn’t relax otherwise anymore. Though he did supervise Mister doing yardwork and sat 6 1/2″ behind me while I gardened for two days straight. He didn’t like either of those, but the only thing he was doing at the end was looking after me. Doing his most important job in his life with grim resolve right up until the end.

He died with dignity _{<I didn’t dare hope for>}. We sat in the yard and I scritched and scratched and groomed him for two hours. Pulling tufts of winter fur I won’t let anyone touch in the lawn now. I took that cruel stab of a photo in the last entry. A Dog Before His Grave. Then the vet came, later than scheduled, and he _<improbably> didn’t seem like he was going to get up and interrogate the interlopers. The smell of vet swept over us at the same time on the breeze, and he decided to posture and investigate. So we all sat around in the lawn and fed him treats and tried to chat with as little strain as possible _{<don’t ever believe they don’t know your internal state. Half of his life was trying to protect me from anxiety that I didn’t even know was readable>} until he felt drowsy and warm and snuggled in the sun. I refused the two shot euthanasia because, and I cried a little as I explained, Jethro’s killing was horrifying because of it. I won’t do that to another dog. Paralyze them for my own convenience. He was cranky about having his rear leg shaved. I was completely prepared to be bitten in his last offense, if that’s what it came to. I won’t suckerpunch another person I have to kill. I won’t. He was brave, though. And, at the risk of anthropomorphizing, relieved when the shot hit. I tell you, something swept over his dying eyes. Mister held him and I held him, and I watched his tired eyes fade. There wasn’t the rage, or the betrayal I feared. He was tired, tired tired.

He has been tired.

It has been almost twelve years, and this was the first time I ever saw Mister cry. As soon as the vet _{<very politely, crying>} withdrew, he was gasping big gouts of sobs. It turns out I didn’t want to see it like I had thought I did. We held each other over Henry’s body for efficient seconds before we gently _{<so tenderly>} shifted him onto the blanket the hospital gave me when I got stung by a bee and learned I was allergic, and tried to carry him with aplomb and dignity to the hole we made.

We buried him with his egg. The favorite toy. He will never have to share it with a baby or another dog again. We buried him with silent, bent efficiency. I say we. I buried him. I put every shovelful of dirt over him as though I were decorating a masterpiece cake. I did not knock his silent body with the shovel. Not once. I did not dump a single load of dirt callously. We piled rocks above him.

He is in the stand of tall grass he loved. He can see the driveway, the road, the compost pile, the back woods where the deer loiter, the gardens front and north, and he can see into the backyard. If he wants to, he can almost see Jethro’s grave. I can see him from the living room window in any season. He will never be alone. He can keep an eye on the bedroom window. Even if he can’t tug his dogbed closer to my side of the bed anymore in the middle of the night so I step on his hands when I get up to pee.