josie

NEW YORK TIMES
Darcy at Her Days’ End
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By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: December 18, 2009
Not quite 15 years ago, my wife adopted a mixed-breed puppy she found tied to a storage tank behind a gas station in Great Barrington, Mass. I say she adopted it because I wasn’t quite sold on the idea. We had a new pup already — a border terrier named Tavish — and this gangly new addition looked, in comparison, like a badly made dog. Darcy’s feet were too small for her body, her hind knees were weak, and her coat made her look like a wire-haired golden retriever. But who ever loved a dog less because it was ugly?

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And now, suddenly, it’s all these years later. Darcy still lies on the lawn, basking like a lioness, and barks at the pickups going up the road. Much of the day she still has the look of an indomitably gratified mutt. But there are hours now when her eyes, a little misty with cataracts, seem worried, hollow. And she has stopped eating, or rather, she eats with deliberation and reluctance, a spoonful of this, a forkful of that.

Which means that now is the time for a hard decision. According to the vet, there are no signs of disease, other than the disease of age — nothing to force our hand. When Tavish died, four years ago, his liver was failing, and there was no choice but to sit on the floor and hold him while the vet inserted the final needle. It’s somehow not surprising that Darcy raises the matter of our responsibility in its purest form.

I’ve known too many owners who waited far too long to put their dogs to sleep, and I’ve always hated the sentimentality and the selfishness in their hesitation. Last week, watching Darcy out in the sun, it felt as though I was trying to decide just when most of the life — the good life, that is — inside her has been used up. Is it conscionable to wait until it’s plainly gone? Or is it better to err on the side of saying goodbye while she’s still discernibly Darcy, while she seems, as she nearly always does, to be without pain?

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It comes down, in the end, to the pleasure she shows, the interest she takes in the world around her — and not to anything her humans feel. She has not had the life she might once have expected — a far better one instead. My job is to make sure she gets the death she deserves — in her human’s arms.

And so she has. She died quietly last Friday while I sat on the floor beside her at the vet’s. The world is a poorer place without her.

TJandDante

Thank you for sharing that beautiful story. What a love for their dog, and the love overruled their own need to keep their dog alive.
I know it's going to be the hardest but most loving choice I have ever had to make for my dog.

Benpaws

Dear Josie,

Thanks so much for sharing this beautiful yet sad story of Darcy.

How true it is that when we as humans make the final decision for our beloved pets who have shared 5 or 6 or 15 wonderful years with us, it is done out of selflessness and overwhelming love for them.

We have had to say goodbye to 3 marvellous schnauzers and each time it was done out of love. Wolfgang had diabetes for 2 years and he came to me one day and lay his head beside my leg and looked up at me and I "knew" he was telling me it was "time to move on." He had been quiet that last week and not much of an appetite. We held him and told him what a difference he had made in his 10 1/2 years with us and we kissed his soft fur and then it was over, peacefully but how sad we were. He had grown up with our 3 sons and was the BEST dog in the world.

When Wolfie was 14 months old we got Willie, the second litter with the same parents as our Wolfgang. Willie was less dominant so Wolfgang was still the "head of the pack." Willie was just like a little kid, following Wolfie everywhere and even leaving a bit of each meal for Wolf to enjoy. When Wolfgang died in 1999, Willie looked everywhere for him and came to us for answers which we could not make him understand. He missed his brother.

In 2001 after his evening walk, Willie came into the house, ran downstairs and lay under an old desk all night. I lay beside him. He had been full of life the day before and when we took him to the vet on Saturday morning with complete renal failure and we discovered there was nothing which could be done, we had to make a very rapid decision to "let him go." We could not believe that we would not be bringing him back home. He was 13 and the BEST dog.

Coming home to an empty house was so sad. Everywhere I went I could feel Willie.We were not prepared for the decision we ultimately had to make that cold February morning.

After a year without a dog, my husband gave me the best 35th anniversary present I could ever have had....another schnauzer who came into our home on September 14th, 2002 and this one we named Benny. He was from the same breeder as the other two and a combination of both Wolfgang and Willie. Our home was once more filled with overwhelming joy and happiness and Benny was one terrific little friend.

When he was diagnosed with cancer we could not believe it. He was only 5 and he had such energy and zest for living. We did everything in our power to save his life, but in the end the cancer won and on a lovely April day this year, the kind of day Benny loved the most with a clear blue sky and a big sun and cool temperatures, he chased a squirrel, had a marrow bone, lay down on the cool green grass and slept. That afternoon we carried him into the vet and he greeted everyone as he always had done, stood by the scales but today he would not get weighed. We still had high hopes, despite the huge, ugly tumours on his little side that there was one more thing we might be given, but the vet agreed that we were in the right place at the right time.
That day we again made that awful decision and spent about half an hour talking to Benny and crying and telling him how much of a difference he had made in his 6 short years with us. Our hearts were broken when his heart stopped beating and the room was so still.

Now we have Shadow born on the same day as Benny left this earth and even at the same hour. God willing we will have a few more years of knowing that unconditional love that only a dog can give to his master. The others live in our hearts and our heads and are with us every day. We made the right decisions 3 times and each one broke our hearts but released our dogs into a world without pain. Our pain lasted for a very long time without them in our home.

Thank you again Josie for this very special story of "love" and "letting go" at the right time.

Blessings,
Joanne & Shadow