Tell Me a Sad Dog Story: Part One

Our dog died in the dining room. That’s not exactly accurate. He started dying in the dining room but he finished at the vet’s. Or he was finished. Like every aged dog we’d had before, six, in fact, I held his head while the vet gave him two shots. One was to put him to sleep and the other was to stop his heart. I sat on the floor with him on an old blanket the vet tech had spread there ahead of us coming. The whole place was ready for us, staff coming out to the truck to lift him out of the back seat, the clinic’s back door unlocked just for us, and a room with quiet lights and a candle burning.

            His name was Punchy. He was a retired sled dog born in Alaska and named after a kind of snow where there is a crunchy top that gives way to soft snow underneath.  The top crust of punchy snow is difficult for mushers to manage. You can’t walk through punchy snow, you can only clomp. Put a foot down and then lift it up from the same hole. So, mushers hate punchy snow because it is impossible for dogs to run through. I don’t know how that applied to our dog when he was a puppy. Probably just a name without meaning.

            Punchy was black with brown places, floppy ears, and very big feet, great feet for a sled dog it was said. He was friendly but wary, sure-footed but nervous. Sometime in his life, there had been a cost to doing the wrong thing. So, he was tentative even when he wagged his tail. We didn’t worry that he startled easily, whatever happened was a long time ago.

            After his time in Alaska, Punchy was bought by a sled dog kennel in Michigan. There, he was part of a racing team for a while, not a leader, a middle of the pack dog, and then worked as a tour dog. He was a dog’s dog, sturdy and tireless, minded his own business, and stayed out of trouble. Then, when he got pretty old, ten or eleven, they were never quite sure, he was retired  and came to live with us, me and my husband. We’d owned plenty of dogs in our forty years, always in pairs. The other half of this pair was a retired sled dog named Swirl adopted six months before Punchy showed up. Swirl was older, white with brown markings, regal and tall. He got all the attention at the dog park while Punchy darted in and out of the trees.

            But back to Punchy’s dying.

            A few days before his actual dying began, Punchy was diagnosed with old dog vestibular disease. He was 13 years old. He walked with his head tilted and couldn’t keep his feet square. There was no treatment for this, it was just a wait and see disease. By itself, this wouldn’t have been so bad but he’d already been diagnosed months earlier with a mass on his liver that the vet said was likely to rupture at any time and when it did, that would be Punchy’s end. Six months, the vet said, that was all the time he would probably have, maybe not that much.

The end began with a start. Punchy stumbled on the porch steps, fell hard, stood up in a crooked, unnatural way, and then inched his way into the house. He laid down on the dining room rug and didn’t move until we carried him out the door three days later.

            It was Christmas Eve.

            Our regular vet’s office was closed and not due to reopen until the day after Christmas. The animal emergency room was open though, so we called to ask for advice. After describing his symptoms on the phone, the ER vet said there was nothing they could do but if we wanted to bring him in, they would put him down. No heroic measures would mend his liver or make right his inability to stand. Was he in pain, we asked. Probably not, you’d know if he was, they answered. We decided to wait and see.

_____________________

Note: This is the story of our dog Punchy’s passing, the day after Christmas, 2023.