Okay, I get it: like your partner/children/house/whatever, your dog is the Bestest Dog Ever. And that may well be true, for you. But for us — the Ottlets and me — the BDE is …
Aesop.
(This is not to diminish others such as Oscar the Pug, the Younger Ottlet’s companion of more than fifteen years. But Oscar, like most Pugs, was bonded to her; with Aes, on the other hand, while the Elder Ottlet was “mom,” he regarded all of us as his pack.)
Aesop, a mini Australian Shepherd, joined the family in November 2009 (he was a birthday present) and remained with us just under seventeen years. To EO, he was Bubba; to YO, he was NephPup; to me, he was GrandPup. He was also the World’s Oldest Puppy™, a title he maintained almost to the end. Like a puppy, he was full of life and energy and usually sported an infectious grin. He was always up for an adventure, and chasing a tennis ball (or if it was bounced, jumping up to bop it with his nose — usually over a fence). He was also an expert cuddler when the need arose.
Time, as I have said before, is an absolute bastard and needs a good whipping. But even as his beautiful dark and russet fur turned dull grey, and arthritis settled into his hips, and the adventures and ball chasing became less frequent and then stopped, Aesop kept his sunny nature and infectious grin and seemed determined to make the most of each day. While it was apparent he was starting to decline (he could no longer negotiate stairs, though he moved well enough when carried out to the yard), we still hoped he would remain relatively healthy till his seventeenth birthday in September. Alas, no.
It began Monday evening, when he hardly ate his dinner and started walking kind of sidesaddle, his hind legs not following his fores (in retrospect, he may well have had a stroke). He spent a mostly sleepless night, then around six Tuesday morning he collapsed in the kitchen and vomited a pool of blood. His gums had also gone pale, indicating he was probably bleeding internally. I made an inane comment about the emergency vet, though I knew that even if they took him — not at all guaranteed — it would mean a multi-hour wait in a place he hated. So while EO held him and tried to comfort him, I started looking for in-home euthanasia and finally got one booked for that afternoon. His remaining time was spent with his family (EO, YO, YO’s partner, EO’s ex, who had been part of Aes’s life for more than a decade, and me). While there were a lot of tears (I don’t recall crying as much since my mother died almost fifty years ago), there were plenty of reminisces of good times and reminders of how much he was loved — though that paled in comparison to the love and joy he had given us. He spent most of the time sleeping.
The doctor arrived about 3:30 and confirmed that the time had come. After the preliminaries and paperwork were done, she administered an initial sedative and left us for a while for the final goodbyes. He stopped breathing almost as soon as she began the second injection. She took clay paw prints and ink paw- and noseprints and saved a lock of fur, then wrapped him in a blanket and carried him out to her car. One final pat and he was gone.
I’m agnostic about the existence and nature of an afterlife (insufficient evidence). It may be that whatever made him what he was went where the candle flame goes — a tenet espoused by the religion I grew up in, since Aesop and his kin are supposedly “brutes” without immortal souls — but even if that’s the case, at least he’s no longer in pain. On the other hand, I hope that his spirit has found a place where he’s once again the puppy of his youth, one where there are endless tennis balls to chase/bop and nary a vacuum cleaner to be seen. And if the Universe is kind, perhaps one day (far off, I pray) EO can be reunited with — her words — “the best thing that ever happened to me.”
A couple of final notes. First, I apologize for the length of this account (though it’s less than a third of what I was initially going to write). I just wanted to convey, not just the basics of Aesop’s life, but at least a glimpse of what that life has meant to us and the void it leaves behind. There will be other dogs — Good Dogs, hopefully Very Good Dogs — but it will take an absolutely exceptional dog to take Aesop’s title away. And second, I’m not posting this in expectation of hugs and/or condolences. I’m actually doing it for myself: it’s something I feel compelled to do, since a life such as his needs to be celebrated and this is my way of doing so.
Thank you to whoever made it this far. If you’re willing, give your companion(s) an extra skritch in Aesop’s memory.
Now I think it’s time to post this and go have a bit of a cry. Farewell, Aesop. Bubba. NephPup. GrandPup. The Bestest Dog Ever.
