The Story With the Dead Dog

I always hated dog books. They always ended the same ridiculous way, with the dog dying, and I knew that dogs didn’t die. I had a dog, and he would live forever, regardless of what those cat loving bastards wrote.

Reilly. I’m not sure why we named him that. At the age of 8, I was inexplicably hooked on the idea of giving our new puppy a people name, but my suggestions of Steve and Carl tossed away alongside my little sister's cry for “Mr. Flufferball.” It ended with my dad. He wanted to give him a good Irish name; I think he had been saving it after losing the battle to name me. And so we had Reilly and we were glad.

I was there. At the end, I mean. I shouldn’t have been; if I had been the least bit responsible the previous fall, I would’ve missed the whole ordeal. I shouldn’t have been the one picking him up and carrying him back into the house that first time, the first time his legs gave out. I shouldn’t have been the one sleeping downstairs so he wouldn’t strain himself going up the steps that night, the night his body began to shudder with every movement. I shouldn’t have been the one who cleaned his vomit and washed urine stains out of that bed, the bed he hadn’t defiled since he was a puppy.

But I was. I dropped out of college that fall and was stationed at my mom’s house as I got my life back in order. So as my mother left for work and my sister left for school, we were all that remained – me and my dog. I wouldn’t do much, not usually, meandering around the house for food and the occasional smidgen of productivity. But he would always follow me, no matter how insignificant the movement. He had always followed us. Always.

My two sisters and I were walking to an ice-cream store; this was before we moved to the clustered suburbs, back when we were in the idyllic tiny town of Harmony. We were walking and talking and scuffing our shoes against sidewalk, about two blocks from our house, when we heard this rattling sound behind us. As we turned, we jumped a little at first, unsure of our eyes. Then the blur of that first impression became clear, and we saw Reilly galloping toward us, dragging behind the stake he had been tied to and subsequently ripped out of the ground to follow us.

He wanted to be with us that much.

It all happened in a span of five days. The falling down, the throwing up, the not eating, the collapsing before he could get next to us in front of the couch. On the second trip to the vet’s office in those five days, they took a blood test. We were shooed out of the office when they actually drew the blood; all we heard was the yip, and Reilly never yipped. My mom and I sat, both fearing the worse, but still having the slightest sliver of hope that the vet would come out and give us medicine and a strict diet and we would follow his instructions to the T and Reilly, he’d be fine, fine for years to come.

Instead, the word “cancer” came out of that back room. It had come quickly and quietly without introducing itself, and it had taken the dog that would never let himself leave us. We had a choice: treatment that could possibly extend his life six months – six painful, sad, crippled months – or putting him to sleep. My mom and I both knew there was only really one option.

I held him when it happened. I couldn’t leave the room; it’d be hypocritical after he’d done so much to try and stay with me. I held him and I felt his body tense and I felt his breathing quicken as they inserted the needle. I felt it and I held him and I told him it would be okay and I said it over and over and over again, until a vet gently tapped my shoulder and told me it was over. I was no longer holding Reilly, I was holding a body, some dog’s body, and I didn’t know where it had come from.

The reason all dog stories end the way they do is because they serve as a microcosm for humanity, their lives concentrated into ten quick years. Through dogs we can experience the inevitable combination of life and death in a way that is more comprehendible than with people. A dog’s life encapsulates so much of humanity, so much of the joy and the sadness and the love and the frustration, and it only is able to fully capture it because the life also includes the death. And so here I am telling the story I always hated. I guess I’ve become one of those cat loving bastards.