left behind: Harriet's eulogy

In every damn movie I ever saw some wiseacre walks into the station house or up to the campfire or out of the boardroom and says "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is..."

I get sick of the jackass always treating his audience to mood whiplash by throwing out a hope spot and then negating the nugget of good cheer with some apocalyptically bad tidings a moment later.

So here's the bad news:

My dog died.

Yes, my dog. Harriet. The lovable Chow-Shepherd cross I've had since I was thirteen years old.

We were together for twelve years, that mutt and I. She was thirteen when she died (I'm going to use the word "died" instead of a euphemism like "passed on" or "pegged out" or "kicked," and you may thank George Carlin for it).

When I met her, she was squished into the corner of an enclosure at the old animal shelter down on Zuni Road. That was 1999, the year when everybody was still in a flap about something called "Y2K," the year The Matrix came out in theaters, the year Bill Clinton was acquitted of being a large and unfaithful ham, the year Nunavut (Canada's third territory) was created, the year Joe DiMaggio died, the year Napster debuted, the year the Columbine shooting took place, the year the euro was established, and the year that my brother and I first went to see a movie unescorted (Star Wars, Episode I if you want to know).

I found it to be an odd picture: the cutest dog in the world was being oppressed by the ugliest, in the same cage, no less. Harriet, who used to look like this (she's the brown one):

...and who had an expression on her muzzle akin to this...

...was being bullied by this thing. I can't even describe it. I went to Google and typed in "ugly dog" and nothing the cybersphere threw at me could even come close to encompassing this animal's unsightliness. Seriously, this was an ugly dog. Gray skin, like an anemic walrus. Woolly white fur that was flaking off in bundles. Stubby legs, a tubular body, a hideous, angular head, and a mean look in its sunken eyes. If Harriet even looked as though she was about to budge out of her corner, Old Butt-Ugly would let out a blood-curdling growl. Harriet would freeze in place and give a plaintive stare to whomever walked by the cage at that point.

And, at some point, I happened to walk by.

They say dogs can't talk, but it would've been harder for Harriet to say "Get me out of here!" any more clearly, even if she'd opened up her mouth and yelled the words in a Flatbush twang.

It was the Bambi eyes that did it, though. Harriet gave me one look out of those dark, somber, tear-jerking eyes and my heart was gone. I had to have that dog. I had to save her from Whizzo the Crazy Ugly Dog-Thing. She had to be mine. I had to be hers.

So we brought her home.

She was an unusual dog. Unique, maybe, is the term. You can't say "all pets are unique," because that flouts the very definition of the word "unique." But Harriet was, all the same. She didn't like to run or play fetch like most dogs did. She was a tug-of-war kind of girl. She loved rope toys and pig's ears and other things you could chew on. She had some bad habits at first, too. She liked to bark and she liked to dig. I can't tell you how many times I had to get up in the dark of night and go yell at her to quit barking. She dug so many holes under the perimeter fence that I began to wonder if her previous owners hadn't been Mexican immigrants.

(I'll pause a moment while you boo and hiss at that awful joke.)

We never had to go far to look for her when she escaped the yard. She always came back. It was filling in the holes that was the problem. They were many and they were deep, and if they weren't properly filled in and barricaded, she'd re-excavate them the next night. I used anything I could find: scraps of plywood, walkway tiles, rocks, whatever we had lying around. It drove me to distraction.

But finally, after repeated lessons, coaxing, persuasion, and some harsh disciplinary action, Harriet was trained. She didn't dig out anymore, and she shut up barking (almost completely). She was a healthy, amiable pup, and though she had some annoying habits (like jumping up and putting her paws on people's stomachs) she had some whimsically cute ones, too. On hot days (it frequently got up to 105 and higher in the summer) she liked to dip her front paws into her water bowl. With all her fur, it was all she could do to keep cool, short of me brushing her. I even sheared her completely sometimes, right down to the skin. She looked ridiculous (like a sheep or a poodle) but she was cool for a while.

She never forgot about me, even when I left her for months—even years. I saw her every Christmas and summer for three and a half years while I attended college. She never failed to greet me at the door or the gate, chasing her tail, hopping about like a mad thing, sniffing me all over to take in some of the exotic scents I'd picked up in my absence.

Then came the big one: Korea. I was gone for a whole year, and then some. For all that time the most I saw of her was the pictures I had brought with me, and some which my parents sent me electronically. She had some adventures of her own while I was gone. An ear infection affected her balance so much that she went around with her head tilted at a crazy angle. Fortunately it was cured quickly.

She wasn't the same dog she'd been when she left. Her muzzle was grayer. Her movements were slower. She had less tolerance to cold. She didn't chase after thrown toys anymore, didn't play tug-of-war with as much enthusiasm. Two more years went by, and she had become...old. Undeniably old. Even I could see that she wasn't the doe-eyed puppy dog she'd been when I brought her home. She was stiff, bent. She spent most of her time sleeping. She hardly ever barked anymore, unless my parents' new dog, Dash, stirred her up.

And soon it was time to make the Hardest Choice. At some point I had to ask myself whether her quality of life truly justified her continued existence. And ultimately I decided it didn't. She was in constant pain. Cataracts clouded her eyes, forcing her to look side-on at anything she wished to examine closely; she could no longer find dropped treats in the dark. Her arthritis was so paralyzing that she could no longer bend her rear legs; and sitting and laying down were painful, torturous, lengthy concepts for her.

I couldn't stand seeing her that way. Not my dog. Not the excitable pooch who used to spin in circles so fast she became a blur. Not the mutt who used to take naps in snowdrifts in Wyoming. Not the jealous girl who'd leaped headlong into the lake after Molly just to keep her from getting the stick first. Not the digger, the barker, the paw-dipper. Not my Harriet.

So I took her to the vet to have her put down.

I can't tell you how often I considered scooping her up, scrambling out of the vet's office, throwing her into the back of my Jeep, and just running away with her somewhere. About once every two seconds, probably.

I even thought of trying to end her life myself, but I knew in my heart that I didn't have it in me to load a gun and point it at her. What if I missed? What if I didn't kill her with the first shot? What would go through her mind in her last few seconds of her life? Would she wonder why her master, the boy she'd grown up with, betrayed her? Hated her?

I couldn't bear the thought.

I think it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do: to sit on the floor of the vet's office with Harriet while the poison went into her veins, and she let out one final sigh and went limp in my arms.

I'll spare you the details. You can guess the rest.

I buried her myself. I insisted on it. It seemed the least I could do. She wasn't the first dog I'd ever owned, but I'd known her the longest, and loved her the most. This was the dog I'd spent twelve years of my life—half of my entire existence—getting to know. The same dog I'd patiently trained to sit, to stay, to shake. The same one who used to dig out of the paddock and go running all over creation while I, heart in my throat, searched and called for her. The same one I couldn't stand to brush, because she had the coat of a musk ox and I always got enough fur off her to stuff a mattress with. The same stocky, fluffy, bull-nosed girl who'd come up behind me when I was sitting on the back porch and poke her head under my arm. The same one I'd dreamed of entering in the Iditarod one day, she had so much fur. The one I hoped to take flying sometime. The one I wanted to come to Alaska with me and live out her retirement chasing moose off my property.

So the veterinary staff wrapped her forlorn little body (she seemed so much smaller now, in death) in a black plastic body bag and handed her to me. I put her in the back of my Jeep, closed the door, and leaned my head against it for a moment, trying to get a hold of myself. Miss H, much more honest with her feelings, laid a hand on my arm. It helped so much. I could never find words to thank her for being there, nor what she did to help me along. I squared my shoulders and drove us home. I backed the Jeep into the horse paddock (next to the big one-acre paddock where Harriet had run in olden times). I selected a quiet spot between the yucca plant and the old corral. With Miss H helping, we dug a three-foot hole in the hard-packed sand and grit. Miss H went in the house to let me pay my last respects. I lifted Harriet out of the Jeep, laid her in the hole, arranging her legs and head as comfortably as I could through the black plastic. I hesitated a moment longer, then put the first shovel-load of dirt on her.

After that, things were easier, a little.

I filled in the hole. I put a chunky clump of dirt on top, as a sort of marker. Just so I could find the spot again if I wanted to. I poured some water over the hole, to help tamp down the loose earth and make sure no one disturbed her. Then I put the tools back in the shed, closed the rear door of the Jeep, parked it by the garage, and closed the paddock gate.

That was September 2, 2011.

I haven't visited her grave since.

I think I might be able to sometime soon.