It’s a dog’s life

For the last several months, my thoughts – and my time – have been consumed by our elderly dog. 

As of this writing, our Bichon Frise is 17 years, 7 months and six days old. I’m told smaller dogs generally live longer than big ones, but 17+ years is a long life by any canine standard. 

Comet has been showing his age for some time. He lost his hearing suddenly four years ago. He has been losing his vision more gradually and, although he can see light and shadows, he is nearly blind. However, he doesn’t seem to be in extreme pain or have any serious health issues. And he eats like a champ. 

Everyone tells me I will just know when it’s “time.” For the first 15 or so years of Comet’s life, I told my husband that, when it came time to euthanize him, he should see if he could get a two-for-one price because I would want to be put down with the dog. (Sometimes my husband seemed to think that was a great idea. But I digress.) I simply couldn’t imagine going through that. 

But now I’m ready for him to go. I don’t like seeing him like this. He just sleeps and eats and sleeps and does his business and sleeps. It doesn’t take long to eat or do his business, so he mostly sleeps. He doesn’t enjoy walks anymore or car rides or doing tricks or playing fetch and tug-of-war. He moves very slowly and sometimes his back legs give out on him. We carry him most places he needs to go, and sometimes we find him standing in the middle of a room waiting to be rescued and toted off to the sofa where I sit with him until he falls asleep so I can sneak away and try to get some work done. He no longer seems to get any joy out of life, and I can’t be sure that he remembers what a happy life he has had. 

Comet joined our family when he was 11 weeks old. He was the first pet for our family of four. My husband, Gary, and I had been thinking about getting our boys a dog when they were younger. However, we were at a picnic and a dog licked our oldest son on the cheek. Within ten minutes, Jeff’s eyes were swollen shut. It looked like he was hiding golfballs behind his eyelids. After several doctor visits and some allergy patch tests, the pediatric allergy specialist told us our son was so allergic to dogs that we could never live in a house where a dog had ever lived or spend much time in homes where dogs were present. Just like that, our boys’ hopes of getting a puppy were dashed. 

Fast forward several years to when Jeff was a freshman in college. His younger brother, Jared, who was and still is a huge animal lover and occasionally growing up would have preferred a dog to a brother, wanted to know if we could get a dog since Jeff was away at college. I reminded him that his brother would, um, come home from time to time and therefore it might not be a good idea to get a dog. 

But Jared did some research and discovered a few breeds of dogs that are considered hypoallergenic. Bichon Frise is one of those breeds and the one that happened to have a local breeder who had puppies that would be a available in a few weeks. 

Exactly a few weeks later, we brought home the sweetest, softest, cuddliest, whitest little pup I had ever seen. It wasn’t exactly the golden retriever or yellow lab that Jared originally had in mind, but he was thrilled to have a dog. I had never had a dog of my own growing up and I must say, I was pretty excited myself. 

Actually, I was more than excited. I was in love. I marveled at his every move and catered to his every need. I remember my husband said to me, “You know, Jeff will be coming home for Christmas break soon. What if he gets here and he can’t be around Comet?” I thought for a second and said, “I will miss Jeff.” 

But when Jeff did come home, all was fine and we were able to keep both dog and son. 

The next step then was to give him a name. All four of us had a name in mind and none of us was willing to give in to another name. My husband, the banker, wanted to name him Buck. Jeff, the Star Wars fan, wanted to call him Yoda. Jared picked the name Skittles for no particular reason. And I liked JayJay after Jeff’s and Jared’s initials. Clearly that should have been his name. 

But since we could not agree, all of those names were tossed. We told the boys to pick a new name to which they could both agree. Because he joined our family shortly before Christmas, they came up with Comet – like the reindeer. Comet it was. I let the breeder know his name. He comes from a line of champion show dogs and she liked to keep track of the family tree. She was thrilled because the name of her business was Clair de Lune which is French for “light of the moon” and all his siblings had been given space-related names. I didn’t have the heart to tell here he was named after a reindeer and not a celestial object. I have never liked the name and sometimes call him JayJay in private. 

He has always been a good dog. Well behaved, gentle with children and good with other dogs – although he prefers people to dogs. He is fairly smart. He became house-broken quickly, learned tricks easily, and seemed to have a pretty good understanding of the English language. 

He has been with us as our sons graduated from college, got married and got master’s degrees. He has welcomed four other dogs to the family when Jared got a beagle, Myles, and later another beagle, Cami, and Jeff got a hypoallergenic Portuguese water dog, Tego, and later another PWD, Magellan. Comet has been with us longer than Myles, who went missing from his yard four years ago, and Tego, who died unexpectedly two years ago.  

He helped us move into a new house. He has seen our family grow by seven grandchildren. He helped me through the loss of my parents. He let me know whenever a stranger (or a good friend) was at the door, when the phone rang, and if someone opened the cookie jar. 

I already miss so many things about him. I miss driving up to our house and seeing him sitting in the window waiting for me. I miss hearing him bark frantically waiting for me to come through the door. I miss the way he would hop up and down on his back legs when we would ask him if he wanted to go for a walk or a ride. I miss the way he would cock his head when we were having a conversation. I miss watching him run figure-eight laps between the sofa and kitchen table. We called him demon dog when he performed this possessed-like ritual. I miss the tricks for treats he would do every evening after dinner. He could sit, stand, lay, play dead, shake, wave, and high-five. He was so excited to do them, he would sometimes go through them faster than we could command them. 

For the past two years, we have been celebrating “lasts” with Comet – his last Christmas, last birthday, last National Pet Day, last whatever reason we can find to celebrate. But our little Energizer Bunny keeps on going. 

It’s taken me four sittings to compose this post. It’s too emotional. He is laying next to me now. It took a little circling and fidgeting and whining for him to find his comfortable spot. Every once in a while he lifts his head to make sure I’m still there. No, he can’t see me or hear me. But he can smell me. I put my hand under his nose, he takes a whiff and lays his head back down, assured that I’m close. 

Sometimes he sleeps so soundly that I have to check on him, too. Every now and then I glance over to see if he is still breathing. Again, I tell myself I’m ready for him to go. I sometimes even wish he would die peacefully in his sleep. But then, conversely, I often find myself in a panic thinking has died while I wasn’t looking or worry that he is taking his last breaths. 

I know many will disagree, but I am not a believer in the popular Rainbow Bridge notion that says deceased pets go to a beautiful place where they romp and play until their owner dies and then the owner stops by this other-worldly place to reunite with their pet before they cross the rainbow bridge together to, supposedly, heaven. It sounds great. Who wouldn’t want to believe it? But the belief comes from a group of poems by different authors writing in the 1980s and 90s. There is certainly no scriptural basis for it nor is there any other basis. It is just the wishful thoughts of the authors trying to ease the pain of pet owners. But I am not comforted by it and I find no peace in it.

So we continue our long goodbye. I wonder every time I leave the house what I will find when I get home. I wonder every night when I go to sleep if he will make it through the night. And I wonder if we are doing the right thing. If he was in a lot of pain or he had a disease or needed an extensive procedure, maybe it would be more clear. But for now, he’s just old. Very, very old. But he’s still alive so it must not be time.