I got a request from my mother yesterday, along with enough vegetables to feed a very small army, involving Photoshop. This is a semi-regular occurrence; she will occasionally enlist my help in making door signs or coloring books pages for her students at school and I like it, because it provides me with an excuse to try to do things I would not otherwise have experimented with. But this time was different. She wanted to know if I could photoshop myself into a picture with our dog.
The short answer was, “Excellent question, give me the pictures and a week and I’ll see what I can do.”
Now, most of you are probably wondering (and the very astute of you have probably figured out) why I don’t just take the train back home and take a picture of myself with Schatzie. And, believe me, I would if I could. If I’d been thinking, I would have taken a picture of myself with him on Monday, when I went home to say goodbye for the last time.
On Tuesday afternoon, my mom took Schatzie to the vet and had him put down. He was 13 years old and dying of cancer. And, out of 26 pictures of him. I’m not in a single one.
There is a good reason for this. We got Schatzie six years ago, during my year abroad in seminary. I was so annoyed when I found out that, four months after I left home, we were looking into getting a dog. My parents had decided to go through the Guide Dog Foundation and get either a reject or a retiree. After one disastrous fortnight with a labradoodle named Misty during the winter, who did not have the temperament to live in suburbia, they found themselves waiting until April, at which point I happened to be home and the Foundation called and said that they had this dog who was being retired early, for reasons relating to his owner, and would we be interested in coming out and taking a look?
We never found out what those reasons were (and rightfully so); the Guide Dog Foundation is very good about protecting the privacy of the people it serves. Once we knew Schatzie a bit better, though, we found ourselves speculating.
We went out to meet him and were greeted by a large Labrador who was clearly very excited to be out of the kennel and taken for a walk. We tried walking him around the grounds for a while and my mom was worried, since he seemed quite strong and would pull on the leash and she wondered whether my little brother, who was then nine, would be able to walk him.
But, we decided to take him anyway, and if it didn’t work out, well, we weren’t committing to forever just yet. Famous last words.
The first thing you have to understand about Schatzie is that he would eat ANYTHING. Absolutely anything. You leave a chocolate cake on the counter – gone. Trail mix – gone. I think he drew the line at garlic, but even then I’ve seen him go for it. He had that Labradorish need to always be eating and always be gazing up at you pathetically, never begging, just suggesting that he’s sitting here suffering and would greatly appreciate it if you could see a way to transferring some of that chicken from your plate to his bowl.
He was that kind of dog—always there but never intrusive. He always came to greet visitors at the door, but never jumped up, never barked. When you enter the side door of my house, there are three steps up and then you go into the kitchen. Schatzie would stand at the top of those steps, which put his head at about the same height as a visitor’s, and if he recognized you, he would sneeze happily. If you put your face up close to him, he would offer kisses, but never without you moving in first. He was a bit of a gentleman.
But only a bit. He certainly didn’t have the table manners of one. I have never seen food disappear as quickly as it did from his bowl. I think he inhaled it. My dad used to say that he had been retired for stealing all the food out from under his previous owner’s nose.
Of course we knew that wasn’t true. But sometimes, we wondered.
He was also a bit of an idiot. Not necessarily in a bad way, but Schatzie was only able to put two and two together when the answer was food. Or so he led us to believe. Maybe he just enjoyed playing dumb. He was certainly capable of figuring out who was home and where to sit so that he could keep an eye on everyone upstairs and know when his humans woke up. He needed to know where we all were—he was that kind of dog.
He just liked people. He would go out into the back yard, and then stand pathetically by the gate until someone came out there with him. They didn’t need to play with him or anything, he just wanted to know they were there. Of course, a game of fetch wouldn’t hurt or anything...
The Guide Dog training is very rigorous and they train them out of noticing anything and going after it – cats, squirrels, balls, other dogs, people, anything. When they’re in the harness, they are at work. Supposedly, this training sticks, and some of it did. Schatzie could care less about squirrels and cats, but he slowly began to bark back at other dogs when they barked at him on walks.
Some things, though, he dropped like a hot potato. Even from the beginning, he would love to play and never seemed to remember that he wasn’t supposed to go haring off after a ball, even when it sent him careening into the couch. He was that kind of idiot.
He also had some catlike tendencies. He loved to be petted and would purr when you scratched him under the chin or behind the ears. When you came over to stroke his fur, he would just fold his legs up under himself and fall over with a thump, baring his stomach for you to scratch, with his tail thudding against the floor in a steady drumbeat.
Over the last two months, he stopped doing all that. He never really wagged his tail anymore and would barely roll over for a tummy rub. And he stopped being interested in food. Well, he stopped being interested in his dried dog food. When my mom made him chicken and rice, he ate that happily and still seemed content when she switched him to the canned lamb and rice.
For the last week of his life, though, he could barely manage that. He just wanted to sit outside and rest. His back legs had neurological damage, he had cancer on his pancreas and spleen and he was dying. You could see it when you looked at him.
I don’t envy my mom the choice she had to make, especially since my siblings were both out of the country. They had known, when they left, that the dog probably wouldn’t be there when they got back. I don’t know how they did it.
By not believing, I think, the same way that when I went out to see him one last time on Monday, I don’t think I believed that he wouldn’t be there the next time I came home. He was so sad and tired, but he still came to lie down at my feet and still gave him his patented “why did you stop?” look when I ceased petting him. It still worked.
I’m sitting here, crying, and I still don’t believe he’s gone. I can’t think about going home and not seeing him standing at the door. I can’t think of family dinners without him wedging himself under the table and waiting for everyone to slip him some bread and occasionally getting kicked when someone moves their foot the wrong way because, as I said, he was a big dog. I can’t think of waking up in my old room and going out and not seeing him sitting sentry by the hall.
I never really lived at home while we had him, except during the summer, when my siblings were at camp, and he was my dog, just for a month or two. Not long enough. Certainly not long enough to remember to take pictures.
I used to joke, to get out of walking him, that I shouldn’t have to because they got him after I went away to college, so he wasn’t my dog. Who was I kidding? He was mine, alright. He had stolen my heart just as quietly and surely as he had taken everyone else’s. He was the kind of dog who people liked despite not having dogs, he was the kind of dog that inspired other people to go and get a dog. He was just that good.
And now he’s gone. There was a reason I told my mom to expect a week before I could provide anything remotely like results—I can’t sit down at the computer and stare at my pictures of him just yet. I’m lucky I learned to touch type, since half of this was written with my eyes too clouded by tears to see.
My mom has set aside a small corner of the living room picture table for him. There’s a photo of him in the backyard, and one of him with each of my siblings. And his collar, sitting empty. She wants one of him with me, too, but that means I have to put one together. Part of spending most of my time with him on Shabbat means that picture doesn’t exist.
But I want there to be a picture of us together, to remind me of all those snail-paced walks, tummy rubs, dog-breath wake-ups and scarfed-down pieces of chicken. He was my dog, too, even though I wasn’t home.
I already miss him.
~~~
Note: This post may eventually be edited for style, but writing and telling his story is how I say goodbye and I'm not always that articulate when I do so.
The short answer was, “Excellent question, give me the pictures and a week and I’ll see what I can do.”
Now, most of you are probably wondering (and the very astute of you have probably figured out) why I don’t just take the train back home and take a picture of myself with Schatzie. And, believe me, I would if I could. If I’d been thinking, I would have taken a picture of myself with him on Monday, when I went home to say goodbye for the last time.
On Tuesday afternoon, my mom took Schatzie to the vet and had him put down. He was 13 years old and dying of cancer. And, out of 26 pictures of him. I’m not in a single one.
There is a good reason for this. We got Schatzie six years ago, during my year abroad in seminary. I was so annoyed when I found out that, four months after I left home, we were looking into getting a dog. My parents had decided to go through the Guide Dog Foundation and get either a reject or a retiree. After one disastrous fortnight with a labradoodle named Misty during the winter, who did not have the temperament to live in suburbia, they found themselves waiting until April, at which point I happened to be home and the Foundation called and said that they had this dog who was being retired early, for reasons relating to his owner, and would we be interested in coming out and taking a look?
We never found out what those reasons were (and rightfully so); the Guide Dog Foundation is very good about protecting the privacy of the people it serves. Once we knew Schatzie a bit better, though, we found ourselves speculating.
We went out to meet him and were greeted by a large Labrador who was clearly very excited to be out of the kennel and taken for a walk. We tried walking him around the grounds for a while and my mom was worried, since he seemed quite strong and would pull on the leash and she wondered whether my little brother, who was then nine, would be able to walk him.
But, we decided to take him anyway, and if it didn’t work out, well, we weren’t committing to forever just yet. Famous last words.
The first thing you have to understand about Schatzie is that he would eat ANYTHING. Absolutely anything. You leave a chocolate cake on the counter – gone. Trail mix – gone. I think he drew the line at garlic, but even then I’ve seen him go for it. He had that Labradorish need to always be eating and always be gazing up at you pathetically, never begging, just suggesting that he’s sitting here suffering and would greatly appreciate it if you could see a way to transferring some of that chicken from your plate to his bowl.
He was that kind of dog—always there but never intrusive. He always came to greet visitors at the door, but never jumped up, never barked. When you enter the side door of my house, there are three steps up and then you go into the kitchen. Schatzie would stand at the top of those steps, which put his head at about the same height as a visitor’s, and if he recognized you, he would sneeze happily. If you put your face up close to him, he would offer kisses, but never without you moving in first. He was a bit of a gentleman.
But only a bit. He certainly didn’t have the table manners of one. I have never seen food disappear as quickly as it did from his bowl. I think he inhaled it. My dad used to say that he had been retired for stealing all the food out from under his previous owner’s nose.
Of course we knew that wasn’t true. But sometimes, we wondered.
He was also a bit of an idiot. Not necessarily in a bad way, but Schatzie was only able to put two and two together when the answer was food. Or so he led us to believe. Maybe he just enjoyed playing dumb. He was certainly capable of figuring out who was home and where to sit so that he could keep an eye on everyone upstairs and know when his humans woke up. He needed to know where we all were—he was that kind of dog.
He just liked people. He would go out into the back yard, and then stand pathetically by the gate until someone came out there with him. They didn’t need to play with him or anything, he just wanted to know they were there. Of course, a game of fetch wouldn’t hurt or anything...
The Guide Dog training is very rigorous and they train them out of noticing anything and going after it – cats, squirrels, balls, other dogs, people, anything. When they’re in the harness, they are at work. Supposedly, this training sticks, and some of it did. Schatzie could care less about squirrels and cats, but he slowly began to bark back at other dogs when they barked at him on walks.
Some things, though, he dropped like a hot potato. Even from the beginning, he would love to play and never seemed to remember that he wasn’t supposed to go haring off after a ball, even when it sent him careening into the couch. He was that kind of idiot.
He also had some catlike tendencies. He loved to be petted and would purr when you scratched him under the chin or behind the ears. When you came over to stroke his fur, he would just fold his legs up under himself and fall over with a thump, baring his stomach for you to scratch, with his tail thudding against the floor in a steady drumbeat.
Over the last two months, he stopped doing all that. He never really wagged his tail anymore and would barely roll over for a tummy rub. And he stopped being interested in food. Well, he stopped being interested in his dried dog food. When my mom made him chicken and rice, he ate that happily and still seemed content when she switched him to the canned lamb and rice.
For the last week of his life, though, he could barely manage that. He just wanted to sit outside and rest. His back legs had neurological damage, he had cancer on his pancreas and spleen and he was dying. You could see it when you looked at him.
I don’t envy my mom the choice she had to make, especially since my siblings were both out of the country. They had known, when they left, that the dog probably wouldn’t be there when they got back. I don’t know how they did it.
By not believing, I think, the same way that when I went out to see him one last time on Monday, I don’t think I believed that he wouldn’t be there the next time I came home. He was so sad and tired, but he still came to lie down at my feet and still gave him his patented “why did you stop?” look when I ceased petting him. It still worked.
I’m sitting here, crying, and I still don’t believe he’s gone. I can’t think about going home and not seeing him standing at the door. I can’t think of family dinners without him wedging himself under the table and waiting for everyone to slip him some bread and occasionally getting kicked when someone moves their foot the wrong way because, as I said, he was a big dog. I can’t think of waking up in my old room and going out and not seeing him sitting sentry by the hall.
I never really lived at home while we had him, except during the summer, when my siblings were at camp, and he was my dog, just for a month or two. Not long enough. Certainly not long enough to remember to take pictures.
I used to joke, to get out of walking him, that I shouldn’t have to because they got him after I went away to college, so he wasn’t my dog. Who was I kidding? He was mine, alright. He had stolen my heart just as quietly and surely as he had taken everyone else’s. He was the kind of dog who people liked despite not having dogs, he was the kind of dog that inspired other people to go and get a dog. He was just that good.
And now he’s gone. There was a reason I told my mom to expect a week before I could provide anything remotely like results—I can’t sit down at the computer and stare at my pictures of him just yet. I’m lucky I learned to touch type, since half of this was written with my eyes too clouded by tears to see.
My mom has set aside a small corner of the living room picture table for him. There’s a photo of him in the backyard, and one of him with each of my siblings. And his collar, sitting empty. She wants one of him with me, too, but that means I have to put one together. Part of spending most of my time with him on Shabbat means that picture doesn’t exist.
But I want there to be a picture of us together, to remind me of all those snail-paced walks, tummy rubs, dog-breath wake-ups and scarfed-down pieces of chicken. He was my dog, too, even though I wasn’t home.
I already miss him.
~~~
Note: This post may eventually be edited for style, but writing and telling his story is how I say goodbye and I'm not always that articulate when I do so.
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