FRED: THE INSUFFICIENCY OF TEARS

Our dog Fred died a couple of days ago. He was about 15 years old - ours for 14 of those years - blind, diabetic, arthritic, incontinent, he trembled, had trouble standing, limped when he walked, had to be carried outside, was disoriented, confused, sometimes (often) needed to go outside in the middle of the night but sometimes still peed on the carpet because he couldn't help it, had begun to pant when he walked even short distances. After years of living fearlessly as a blind dog in a big world, his world grew smaller and more insecure by the day over the past few months. Many days lately he seemed to labor at simply staying alive and by the end he didn't have energy for much more than that. We decided it was time to take that little bit away too.

Fred begging for cucumbers

We think people who call themselves pet parents insult both pets and parents. We are dog owners. Ending Fred's life would not be like killing one of our children. But it would be killing something we loved, something we had worked hard for years to keep alive. It was not an easy decision.

I do not believe the dead go to a better place. This is the place and this is the one life any living thing has. After that there is nothing. Of course, the good thing about nothing is that we do not know we have arrived when we get there. But taking away life is taking away everything. Forever. That is not an easy thing to do. We wrestled with it, discussed it, worried it, measured his life and ours, measured his pain and ours, measured his loyalty and ours. "It is what I would want you to do for me. I expect it," Dauna said. I expect nothing less from her. There comes a time when the best thing to do is an act of terrible kindness that never can be undone. We decided it was the best thing we could do for Fred.

We made an appointment for 11:30 last Saturday (making such an appointment was disconcerting). Fred loved to ride in the car and we decided that is where it would be appropriate for him to spend his final minutes. He was calm as we drove him to the veterinarian's office. We parked in the shade of a juniper tree. His bed was in the back seat. Dauna sat beside him. We petted him, talked to him. He was quiet. He never particularly liked strangers touching him, but he remained calm when the vet leaned into the car and petted him, too. She explained the process and made sure we knew what we were doing. It was clear that she understood the difficulty of our decision. She gave Fred a sedative. He slept deeply, quickly, and we could only hope he heard our final goodbyes. The vet came back about 10 minutes later with an assistant, found a vein, gave him another injection - at any time up to that very moment we could have stopped what was happening, but we had agreed it was time to do what we were doing and had labored over the decision for weeks, even earlier that day. Neither of us said stop. In a few minutes, peacefully, quietly, his heart stopped beating and we were in tears.

I had dug his grave between two cactuses the day before. It seemed an appropriate place because Fred had a knack for stumbling over cactuses when he went out hiking with us (something else he couldn't do any longer). It wasn't easy because there is so much disintegrating granite in the soil here and my back still aches a little from swinging the pick and hoisting the shovel, but I dug it deep enough and wide enough, comfortable enough (that's how I thought about it). We brought Fred home and gently put him in the grave wrapped in a favorite blanket and covered him up. My wife fashioned a marker from dead cholla cactus branches, attached his tag to it and we walked away. It was a sad afternoon.

A little later I walked across the arroyo and up the hill alone. Why? I wasn't sure. But it felt like the right thing to do. I stood over the grave and made sure the dirt was snug around him one more time, pressing, packing it with my foot. I turned to walk away. Stopped. Looked down and said, "I'm sorry." I didn't intend to say that, but it was all I could do with my sadness when tears were not enough.