The Big Barn, after the snow

Been snowing for two days. Good for my writing. I’m writing a short story about a woman who works in the “Surrender Bay” of an animal shelter, the place where people go at night to drop off pets they can’t keep or don’t want to keep.

Speaking for dogs when they most need it

It seems to me, when we talk about dogs and dying, that dogs never need us more than at the end of their lives. Dogs are voiceless, blank canvases. We are free to paint any portrait we want on them, projecting our own ideas, emotions and need on their faithful spirits. But when they most need us, we need to speak clearly for them. They need advocates. We need to speak for them.

Many people have great trouble letting their dogs and cats go, and when they die, of moving on. Vets have a lot of horror stories about people who can’t accept the loss of a dog or a cat. One woman on a radio show told me she had spent $11,000 on surgeries for her cancer-ridden Boston Terrier.  She sounded quite proud of herself, as if this money showed how selfless she was.

Was there any limit?, I asked her. None, she said. I will never give up on him, never let him go. She was praised by other callers for her heroic fight to keep her dog alive, as if this showed a kind of heroic compassion, yet I thought the story sad, and her quite selfish. The dog had been through chemotherapy and six surgeries and on heavy medications and special diets. Was this all for him? Or for her?

It seems to me that I need to be an advocate for my dogs as much at the end of their lives as at any other time. Maybe more so.

It’s a personal decision. I have to speak for the dog, and let him go. Keep him from living unnaturally, beyond the life of a dog. Keep him  from suffering. To remember that there are limits to what is appropriate in terms of cost and care of a dog in a world where so many people are suffering so greatly. To keep perspective. To acknowledge that he or she had a good life, and that it is time for both of us to move on.

And to honor the death of an animal by grieving proportionately, and in different ways than I would grieve for a human being. I have lost human beings. It is not the same, and ought not to be the same for me. I always grieve the loss of my dogs.  I am always mindful of the need to speak for them, and not for me.

Come to me, in the snow

I might not always love the snow, but my dogs always do.  I call “come to me” and they tear down the path, chasing after one another. I am beginning to use that high voice I hate – the chirpy training voice. Because it works.

Another note on grieving. I think intense grieving for animals is quite often a projection of losses and sorrow in our own lives. I spent a lot of time at the University of Kentucky working with attachment theories, and also researching this subject for years.  There is much alienation and loss in our society, and most of us don’t really know where to put it. We love our animals, of course, and sincerely and deeply grieve them. But sometimes it isn’t the only thing we are grieving, especially when it is so deep and prolonged.

I believe we need to be more self-aware in our dealings with dogs. We need to understand the emotions working in us, rather than simply transferring them or projecting them – or anthropomorphisizing them – onto the animals we love. We do grieve our dogs and cats for sure, but we are also, I think, grieving for parts of us, our families, our own lives. I think we need to know that, just as we need to know that when we rescue a dog, it is not entirely selfless. We are doing something for ourselves.