A Good Dog

A Good Dog

My family lost a good friend and steadfast companion on Monday night. Our little dog Bailey, our four-legged buddy for the past 12 years or so and the oldest of our two dogs, died. He was 13 years old and they say that is a long life for a miniature Schnauzer.

But it seemed too short - way, way too short.

(As an aside, I hate reading dead dog stories. They always make me sad, drippy-eyed and all choked up. I avoid them like the plague. And this is, without a doubt, another one. But the dog in this story was my dog and that makes all the difference. If you want to, you can stop here and I'll not be offended. I'll understand. But if you want to hear about a fine dog, please read on.)

Bailey gave us fair warning that the end might be approaching about a week before his passing, when he stopped eating. We realized something was awry with him and we took him to his vet for a look/see. There was nothing apparent at first glance, but an x-ray soon showed a mass in his stomach which could have been food (if he was eating, which he wasn't) or could have been a tumor. The vet was unsure at that point if this was life-threatening and proceeded to give us special soft dog food to try to get him to eat. He wouldn't touch it. She then gave us some even softer dog food that we could force-feed into him using a soft plastic syringe, but it usually came right back up. After days of his refusing to eat, my wife and I talked over our options and had sadly resigned ourselves to the fact that he would have to be put to sleep, probably early the following week.

Saturday night my wife was preparing supper and Bailey was in the kitchen, staying as near to her as he could. He had always been her dog and was the happiest when he could be nearest to her. During the supper's preparation she had tossed a few small cubes of ham toward the dog, expecting him to turn away from them as he had with most food offered to him in the previous days. To our surprise, he gobbled them down! She tossed him a few more pieces and he also ate them up. We wondered about that, so I tried tempting him with some turkey slices from the refrigerator and he ate them also. We began to wonder if he might be coming out of whatever problem he had. Perhaps it wasn't as serious as we'd originally thought? The following evening for supper we grilled steaks. Bailey was very interested in begging for some of those scraps and we fed him some. He seemed to enjoy them immensely. He seemed to be almost his old self.

We began to hope.

We forgot that dying animals, humans included, usually had a period of time just before death where they seemed to be recovering and seemed to be their old selves.

Such was the case with Bailey.

On the following day, Bailey returned to his rejection of food and became quite lethargic. I tried to force feed him some of the doggy gruel with some medicine mixed in and he threw it all up about 3 hours later. He was weak, had lost a lot of weight and had a difficult time walking. It was a hot day so I left him in our bedroom with the air conditioner turned on to help him stay comfortable when I left for work at 3 pm.

My wife came home at five o'clock from her day's work, checked on him and noticed that he was panting heavily and didn't seem to be very aware of her or of our son who was also checking on him occasionally. She left him in our cool bedroom and checked in on him from time to time during the evening. He was breathing raggedly and seemed unaware of them.

We had an appointment to take him back to the vet the following morning.

I received a call at work from her around 11:30, when she tearfully told me that Bailey was gone. She'd gone up to check with him a few minutes earlier and he wasn't breathing and had started to stiffen up.

It had been about 9 days since he'd stopped eating.

I drove home immediately and hugged my wife while we cried. It's always hard when you lose a loved one and Bailey was definitely loved by all of us. I wrapped his body in a soft blanket and placed him in the trunk of my car for safe keeping during the night. I would take him to the vets the following day to make arrangements for burial.

The loss is still fresh for my wife, our son and myself. Our other Schnauzer, Barney, is a great comfort for us during this time period. He's now the number one dog in the house and he is getting a lot of attention from the three of us. He makes his partner's death seem almost bearable by being around for us to pet and to hug.

But it's still too easy to look at Barney and to wonder where Bailey's keeping himself. When you saw one you usually saw the other one somewhere close by.

Then you realize that there's only one now when there used to be two.

I still remember how Bailey came into our lives:

We'd acquired him when he was 9-months-old from Caroline, one of my wife's girlfriends. He'd joined her household some months earlier as payment for a baby-sitting fee from a couple that was strapped for cash. He wasn't much more than a puppy at that time and was having a hard time playing second fiddle to Caroline's older dog, Shelby. Poor Bailey'd try to eat some of the dog food that Caroline had available in a bowl on the floor for the dogs and Shelby'd chase him away after he'd only got a few bites. This was an everyday affair at her house. Bailey learned early on to be quick to eat and quick to take off when the older dog came into view.

My wife and I had another dog at that time named Dusty, a mixed breed, Benji look-a-like female. We definitely weren't in the market for another pooch, but Caroline was adamant that Bailey'd be a good fit for us and that we should “try him out for a weekend.” She said that if Dusty wouldn't tolerate him, she'd take him back. She had a house full of animals already (her children were always bringing more in) and would love to give one away to a good home. We'd always liked Bailey when we'd visited Caroline, so we said OK, we'd give him a shot.

Bailey and Dusty hit it off pretty well and, after a couple days in our house, we had a second dog. We'd always been dog people and Bailey was an easy dog to love.

Bailey, being a Schnauzer, had some advantages over a lot of other dogs. Schnauzers do not have fur, but hair. So they don't shed. That's good. On the flip side, since they don't shed they have to get haircuts, just like people. So we gained a groomer and a groomer's bill when we added Bailey to our household. They also, due to the hair instead of fur, don't get that intense doggy aroma if you don't bathe them often. Bailey got his share of baths, but the need for them wasn't as critical as it was for Dusty.

As time passed, Dusty grew old and her bodily functions slowly deteriorated. We had a terrible time having to clean up after her “mistakes” and we knew she was approaching her end. We were concerned about Bailey after Dusty was gone, as he had always had a canine companion in the house. So we purchased another Schnauzer pup to be his new friend. We named the new one Barney. I thought it was appropriate – Barney & Bailey/Barnum and Bailey Circus? They hit it off pretty well and, for a short period of time, we had three dogs. Soon Dusty's day came and we had her put to sleep and it was back to two dogs again. We found out from our groomer an interesting fact about that point in time. She'd told us that Bailey, from his pedigree papers, was an offspring of one of her stud Schnauzers, Rap Dancer. And after we got Barney we found out from his papers that he had the same papa also. Barney and Bailey were actually brothers! The older dog had silver and black markings where the younger one had what was called a salt-and-pepper. But in a dim room you still had a hard time telling them apart.

About two years ago the younger dog grew ill and was diagnosed with diabetes which is, unfortunately, not uncommon with Schnauzers. By the time the vet and us got his glucose under control, he'd developed cataracts in his eyes and had become almost sightless. His disease is now controlled by a strict diet and twice-daily insulin injections and he's as healthy a dog as you'll ever see, barring his blindness. And we just love Barney's independence and his feisty disposition. He's definitely his own dog and not anything like a carbon copy of his brother.

And so here we are. It's been a couple days since Bailey left us and we're still grieving some. We still find ourselves thinking of our old friend from time to time and our tears are still close to the surface. We can, if we listen closely, still hear his soft padding footsteps going up and down the stairway, his lapping at the water bowl, his contented sighs as we scratched in those special spots behind his ears. If we close our eyes we can still see the soft shine in his eyes as he gazed at his beloved masters and can still feel his warm, living body as he settled down close to us when he slept.

If there is a just and merciful God, Bailey will be waiting for us when it's time for us to bid adieu to this vale of tears. He'll be waiting to join us and be our loving companion again.

I like to think that's going to happen. I pray that it will. It gives me comfort.

But in the meantime, if you're visiting us at home and if you happen to catch a quick glimpse out of the corner of your eye of a particularly good-looking dog ducking into another room just out of sight, don't be alarmed. That's just our old pal keeping a watchful eye on all of us.

We're gonna miss him. We're gonna miss him a lot. But our memories will soften over time and the sharp ache of his absence will also fade.

But we'll remember him the rest of our lives.

He was a good, good dog.