We had to put Dork down on Jan 16. He woke me up around 4:30 in the morning unable to get up, and when I tried to hold him up his legs splayed strangely and he held his neck at an odd angle. We waited together on the floor until the vet opened and took him in. Any options we had were pretty much stabs in the dark, or not options because he was nearly 14. So we let him go.
His decline had been slow in some ways - over the past two years he ran around less and less, finally stopping in late spring not long before he stopped getting on the bed. In the last few months, though, he really started to look old. The day before, he’d been uncharacteristically interested in being close to me (he still always followed me from room to room, but would settle down somewhere comfortable when we got there), and we went out into the way-back yard where the puppy couldn’t bother us, and we took a slow walk around together. I knew that it wouldn’t be long, but I didn’t think it would be that short.
When we got home from the vet, we found that GIR had finally completed his months-long demolition project on Dork’s couch. What was left of the padding was in a shredded pile on the floor. It was Monday, trash day, so we took the couch out to the curb. That was awful, but then there was nothing there to catch my eye and make me look over to see if he was there.
The first few days were horrible. I hadn’t expected the 10 tons of guilt for…everything. For every time I went out of town, or to work, or the store. For bites of my dinner I didn’t give him. For making him get out of bed because he was taking it all up. Then that passed, mostly, because the reality of the situation sunk in. I’d cared for an immobile dog once, one that was a third Dork’s size, and it had been a fucking nightmare every minute of every day for months. I don’t wish that on any dog, and I wouldn’t want to watch another dog die like that. It could have been so much more horrible than it was.
Lately, I’m starting to feel his absence. The weather was nice yesterday, and I thought about going outside and reading, but I got out there and saw the spot I’d deliberately left under the gazebo to put down a bed for him to lay down - he seemed to nap especially happily out there like that - and it seemed easier to go back inside to read. I don’t exactly miss the Nine O’Clock Barking, because I hated it and it pissed me off, but he always appeared to be having a very fine time, laying on the floor barking his fool head off, never taking his eyes off me. Funny greyhound joke ha ha!
I miss him.