There’s only one bad part of having a dog. It’s the part that comes at the end.
We said goodbye to our dog Sherlock yesterday. He was fifteen. We adopted him when he was three. We knew it was coming. We thought we had at least a little more time though. Losing him was like Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy: slowly, then all at once.
This is Sherlock. He was a good boy.
Years ago, back in 2009, I made myself a five-year plan. This was when I was living in Charlottesville, finishing the dissertation, and trying to sort out my whole goddamn life. The five-year plan had only one bullet point: “within five years, I want to get a dog.”
There was more to it than that. Of course there was. Before I could get a dog, there were an all these things I had to change. I would need career stability. I would need to stop traveling so much, and try to establish myself in a community that felt like home. I would, ideally, find a life-partner who could take care of the dog with me. The life I was living circa 2009 didn’t accommodate a pet. “Get a dog” became sort of a winking self-reference point for getting my shit together and building the type of adult life I saw for myself.
The punchline is that my wife (by-then-fiancée) and I adopted Sherlock in February 2014. Alison — who is, among her many other wonderful qualities, a much better researcher than I am — found him online. She found me online too. But I was the one with the five-year plan, and that entitles me to some share of the credit.
Sherlock was a beagle-basset mix. He liked to sleep and lounge like a basset. When he wanted to play, he played like a beagle. He was sweet, gentle and empathic. His previous owner had abandoned him, so he had pretty intense separation anxiety. So long as we were with him, he was happy. We were with him pretty much all the time. I’d like to think he was pretty much always happy.
He would get scared by loud noises or intense moments. I used to joke that his one and only weakness was “sounds.” This had a notable calming effect on me — I used to get agitated and yell at the refs on the television while watching basketball games. I stopped doing that after we got Sherlock, because I could see how it bothered him. For twelve years, he has been a part of my life. I became a better person through his companionship.
He was also just the right type of high-maintenance. In the years before we had kids, having Sherlock meant organizing our schedules around the needs of a dependent. He was such a good boy, but we lived in an apartment building and he would start howling if left alone for too long. So we learned to think about how to wrap our life-routines around his needs. This too was a skill we would need for what came next. Making space for him in our family made us a better family.
My daughters have known him their whole lives. They’ve never been part of a family without a dog. More to the point, they’ve never been part of a family without this particular dog — a dog who was calming and gentle and undemanding. He has been good for them too. We’re all going to be a bit shattered for an indeterminate amount of time. The last thing they are learning through him is how to grieve. I wish they didn’t have to learn this particular lesson, even as I know it’s a part of growing up.
That’s part of the bargain, right? You learn how to live with a pet, and then you get to live with them, but then later you have to learn to live without them.
It was during the big snowstorm in late January, I noticed a growth on his leg. It was a nasty-looking thing, foreboding. I brought him in to the vet, who ran some tests. A few days later, the vet called while we were on a walk. …Y’know how, during college application season, you could tell whether the news was good or bad by the size of the envelope? It was like that. If the growth was benign, it would’ve been an email.
I’ve been pre-mourning ever since. The kids have no experience with this sort of grief. So we’ve been more focused on helping them through it rather than processing our own emotions.
Sherlock always had a wonderfully expressive face. I could read those expressions pretty well. I knew when he was hungry or happy or alarmed. I could tell when he wanted scratches or treats, or when he wanted walks. The look he was giving me yesterday was a new one. His body wasn’t working anymore. He didn’t know what to do with that. He was ready for it to be done.
I think we gave him a good life. I wish I had taken him to the dog park more. I know he made my life so much better. It’s going to be a long time before I get accustomed to him being gone.
…Incidentally, not even two hours after he passed, The New York Times sent me the email below. I get that this was just a coincidence, but I would like it to be stated for the record that this is the worst email message I have ever received from anyone at The New York Times. (Congrats, Bret. You’ve fallen to second place.)
Not the right time, NYT. Not the right time at all.
I’ve lost a family member and a best friend. I was lucky to have him, and I am so much better for it.
Goodbye, buddy. I miss you so much.