The Life of a Dog
A very long and sentimental eulogy for the goodest good boy of them all...
Good morning, friends.
This post is coming to you with a heavy heart. Last Sunday--the day before Memorial Day--we had to euthanize our beloved lab Sirius Black.
I wasn't going to write about this. Even now as I type, I'm not sure I should write about this or how many times it will take me to get through writing this. But I feel like Sirius has been in the background of most of my work over the last eleven years. He's been part of my writing process and an occasional obstacle, and I know he's shown up in previous posts. So I'm writing about this even if it takes me several days and a whole box of tissues to manage it.
This is long, and I do talk about his death, so if that troubles you, feel free to come back next week for something (hopefully) lighter. But if you're into sappy, sentimental remembrances of a very special dog, keep reading.
A Dog's Life
Sirius came to us in 2014. We had another dog at the time--Kelly, another black lab mix--and she was getting older, so I wanted a puppy. Our kids were still young enough where a puppy made sense. We were in the throes of our scouting years, we were camping more, and I wanted a hiking and camping dog.
I knew from the minute we met Sirius that he would be perfect for us. The two oldest kids didn't have school that day, so the three of us went to meet the puppy. My daughter sat on the ground, and Sirius toddled over and plopped into her lap in a little ball like he knew he was home. From then on, we said he thought of her as Lap Girl, even though he quickly outgrew her lap.
He was a good boy from day one. Even in the car on the way home, he whined until my daughter put him down on a towel, where he promptly peed. It was like he knew he shouldn't pee on her. He learned to sit after about two days. I only remember him ever chewing on a shoe one time, and it was a cheap flip flop. When I gently scolded him and replaced it with an appropriate chew toy, he just wagged his tail and acquiesced. He never chewed a shoe again.
As food driven as he was, he rarely let his instinct override our rules. Even to his final days, we could tell him to sit in the middle of his dinner, and he would leave food in the dish, sit, and then wait for the signal to resume. My younger son taught him to take a treat gently, and he would use just the tips of his teeth to take a treat from our hands.
We had fruit trees in our old yard, and when my toddler grandson was over one night, he saw Sirius eating an apple from the yard. He toddled over and took the apple right from Sirius, and Sirius just wagged his tail as if he meant to share all along. He loved pears the most. When we put him outside so we could leave for a while, we'd often come back to find him on the deck with one or two uneaten pears next to him, as if he were preparing for apocalypse. We called them his emergency pears.
I only saw him get aggressive once, and that was minor and quickly resolved without incident. He adored everyone. Even people who aren't "dog people" loved him. He had his faults--he licked too much, he barked at everything, he had a lifelong love affair with tissues, used or clean--but he never met a person he didn't like.
When my younger daughter and I volunteered at the local animal shelter, they told us during training that "helicopter tail" was the only tail you could trust completely on a dog. Helicopter tail is when the tail goes around and around instead of just back and forth. I said my dog only had helicopter tail--he didn't know any other way.
He Was There
I never intended to spoil him or to become so utterly attached to him. He was the third dog we had in our married life. The first one, Dakota, was an inside/outside dog until kids came along, and then she spent a lot more time outside. When we got our second dog, Kelly, they kept each other company outside most of the time; I had a toddler and a baby and three cats in an 864-square-foot house. Adding two dogs was too much.
By the time we brought Sirius home, Dakota had passed away, and Kelly was used to being outside all the time. As sweet as she was, Kelly was about 13 when we got Sirius, and the grand old dame had no patience for an energetic little whippersnapper. So, Sirius spent most of his time inside with me. He learned all my daily tasks and rhythms. He did the school drop-off and pick-up with me. He sometimes ran short errands with me. He laid at my feet while I worked and followed me around when I did chores. He became my shadow.
In 2016, when my world crashed around me, Sirius was my rock. He would jump on my lap and give me 85 pounds of grounding while I wrapped my arms around his solid torso. He perfected the lean, offering metaphorical and physical support for whoever needed him most. In the process of putting our world back into some kind of order, he met a lot of people and greeted every one of them with kisses. He adored my grandson and let him drive Hot Wheels cars across his back and side, presumably assuming he was receiving a massage.
By the time COVID rolled around, we had acquired Tonks, and Sirius was never entirely sure what to make of her. They were friends and kept each other company, but I suspect he resented the interference in his relationship with me. Still, if she wanted to lay on top of him for a nap, he let her. His version of playing with her meant that I would throw the football, he would fetch it, and then he would play keep away with her by holding the football in the air and spinning around. Whenever I got up to cross a room, I had one black dog on each side of me. The Man called them my Praetorian guard.
Coming to the End
A couple of years ago, I noticed he was having more trouble swallowing and that he'd occasionally breathe kind of hard. I started putting his dish on a stool, which helped him eat, but since the vet didn't hear anything specifically wrong, I just assumed he was aging.
At his checkup last year--last June--the vet told me she thought he had laryngeal paralysis, which is apparently a common thing in labs. That's why he was having trouble swallowing, coughing more, and breathing loudly. She said there wasn't much we could do except a very expensive surgery, which might also cause other problems. And since it was degenerative, even surgery wouldn't stave it off forever. She advised trying to keep him from getting overheated or over-excited and avoiding swimming.
This past winter was really hard on my poor Sirius. When the weather was very cold or the snow very deep, he struggled with going out to the yard to do his business. A few times, I had to lift up his back end to help him in the house; it was like his joints got so cold they just stopped moving. I didn't think the winter of 2024-25 was especially hard, so I worried about what might happen this coming winter and whether he could get through it.
A month or so ago, I felt like his laryngeal paralysis was getting worse, so I took him back to the vet, and she prescribed a steroid to try to manage it a bit longer. The last couple of weeks, The Man and I thought it wasn't working very well, and I said he was due for his shots in June, so I'd take him back and ask about it then.
Our two friends came up to visit for Memorial Day weekend, and on Sunday morning, I fed the dogs and pottied them and then put them in my office so we could go spend the day with our guests. We've done this dozens of times--left the dogs alone for hours in my office. They've always been fine.
This time, when we came home, we found Sirius in severe distress. He was throwing up and couldn't get a full breath. We couldn't get him to calm down, so I drove as fast as I safely could to the emergency vet in Coeur d'Alene. The vet gave him a steroid shot and oxygen, but he wasn't stabilizing. X-rays showed that he may have aspirated fluid into his lungs, too. I finally was able to reach my husband, and he agreed it was time to let Sirius go. He raced to the vet to be with me, and by the time he got there, my poor boy was already fading. The procedure was just a formality to ease his passing; I don't think he would have lived the night.
Staying with him was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but there was no way I was going to let him go alone. He deserved better. He deserved to smell me close by in that scary place. He died with his mama hugging him and telling him he was a good boy--the best boy who ever was.
Now and Next
I knew losing this sweet boy would hurt like a mother, but damn, I did not know how traumatic it would be. Listening to my poor sweet boy gasp for air for an hour in the car, finding him in a pool of clear vomit when we got to the ER vet, knowing he was holding on even when he was exhausted because I was there and he couldn't leave his mama--I will never forget that whole night.
I once lost a beloved cat--Hobbes--in a similarly rapid situation, and in that case, I couldn't get to the vet in time to be with him. He was at the vet for treatment, and the vet called to say he had died suddenly. I could not do that to Sirius--I couldn't risk leaving him alone to pass without me. He deserved to have me there--he deserved as peaceful an end as I could give him. I'm glad I gave him that.
Everyone who knew him has cried--or at least teared up--when I've told them. I texted my mom, and she called me about 30 seconds later crying. My girls cried. My stoic younger son teared up. The eldest was on a ship somewhere between the Red Sea and Virginia, so I could only message him, but I know he's sad, too. The Bestie was still in Idaho during my whole trauma, and she was ready to come be next to me in the middle of the night. She said she could barely tell her husband about it.
Sirius was the kind of dog even non-dog people love. Aside from his prodigious kisses, he was gentle and sweet and just wanted lots of pets and cookies. We said he was composed entirely of love and cookies. And tacos--he loved a homemade taco! When I made taco meat, he would start drooling the minute he smelled the taco spice mix.
My house is so quiet. Tonks has been very confused. We've seen her sniffing his bed, his preferred potty spots, his collar. Bingley, our flame-point Siamese, sniffed all around my office floor where Sirius used to lay, then went to his bed and crouched there for several minutes as if he were processing. Atlas, our newly adopted floofy feline, hasn't been with us long, but he seems to know something is off. He likes dogs, and there's one less dog than there used to be.
I think one of the hardest things about this passing is that it marks a bigger end for me. Tonks will be my last dog, and I think our two cats will be our last cats as well.
My kids don't believe me when I say this. "Grandma said the same thing, and then she got Gretel," they tell me, referring to my mom and her current German shepherd mix. I tell the kids that they're scattered all over the country, and if I'm going to travel to see them or any of the places around the world that I want to see, I won't be able to manage that with pets.
But truthfully? My heart can't take it again. I don't think losing our current pets will hurt quite as much as losing Sirius, but it will still hurt. I just don't think I can sign up for that again.
Tonks and I are figuring out our new normal. She didn't get enough exercise with Sirius aging because I was always trying to keep him from overexertion, so now we're going on walks and playing fetch more, which she loves. She looks for him when I tell her it's time for bed, waiting for him to lead the way up the stairs and then remembering he's not there. Morning scritches have become morning hugs when she burrows into my lap and I wrap my arms around her chest and tell her she's a good girl. She no longer has to share; I have two arms all for her now. We made tacos last Tuesday and gave her one in honor of Sirius, the canine equivalent of pouring one out in honor of the lost loved one.
All dogs are unique, and we love them in unique ways, but Sirius was my special boy. He was the best boy in the whole world--the best dog I will ever own--and I miss him.
Sweet Sirius, I hope you're with Dakota and Kelly and Hobbes and all the others who have crossed my path. I hope you have tacos and pears and cookies in abundance. Most of all, I hope to see you on the other side of the rainbow bridge. Rest in peace.
Big hugs. I never got to meet him, unless you count the barks in the background of our phone calls, but I know he was the goodest boy.
I teared up reading this. Sirius had beautiful, soulful eyes and the taco drool story is the cutest.
Much like you, I lost my goodest boy ever a few years ago. He was my shadow and soul dog, just like Sirius. The loss of Mojo rocked my world...partly because it was unexpected and partly because it left such a big gaping hole that my aloof cat couldn't ever fill.
Please give yourself a lot of love and a lot of time to grieve this momentous loss.