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The date was February 12, 2021.
Our precious Shih Tzu, Queenie, had been exhibiting signs of dementia for well over a year. More often, than not she would do her "liquid business" on the hallway carpet. And she would cower in corners, or hide behind the full-length blinds of our double sliding glass doors.
It was simply time
And as was my custom, I put her in the car that morning, and rode her around our extended neighborhood, while all the while telling her how very special she was, and how much joy she had lent to my wife and me the past several years.
Suffice it to say the veterinarian was, well, a jerk. (After thirty years one would think he might have possessed some sort of bedside manners). For you see, as he carried out his gruesome task, he was sure to tell us not to dispose of our precious pooch next to the road, (as any creature which ate her carcass would die from the chemicals which permeated her body). Not the sort of thing he should have been sharing with us during the very act. Extremely tacky. Queenie jerked once after the initial sedative was administered. However, after the lethal dose, she left us like a lady.
I had selected a round, ornate hatbox as her resting place. Lifting her from the exam table, I placed her in it, set the lid in place, paid our bill, made our way to the car, and drove home.
Arriving home, my wife and I walked through the garage, and set the hat box down on the living room floor. Lifting the lid, I placed a single red rose, Queenie's favorite toy, and a dog biscuit inside her makeshift coffin.
What followed next was a premeditated decision to expose Queenie's counterpart to the reality of her ongoing absence from his life.
I encouraged Toby, our black and white Papillion, to walk over to the makeshift coffin. Peering inside, Toby displayed more than the average curiosity. In whatever way a dog is prone to reason, I could sense his confusion. "Why is she not moving?" (and) "Is she asleep?"
I simply could not allow Toby's canine roommate to "go the way of all flesh" without providing him some understanding of her future absence from the home he had shared with her. To have done so would have been simply unacceptable, and beyond my comprehension.
And now, I re-installed the lid of Queenie's circular casket, and made my way to a large scrub oak tree in our backyard. Setting the hatbox into a pre-dug hole, I said a few words for her, and covered her cardboard coffin.
She rests next to four of her furry, little canine companions; only one of which she knew in life. Buddy, Bobby and Lucy, and an honorary gravesite for Princess, a black and white cocker spaniel which my siblings and I loved and lost a full seven decades ago. (Since that day, I have installed license-plate sized flat, gray slate markers over each gravesite, bearing their photographs, names and dates, and with epitaphs such as, "You were loved" (and) "We will see you again").
In life Toby and Queenie seemed so aloof to one another's presence in the house. They ate, they slept, they sought our attention without so much as acknowledging one another.
However, what followed next was completely unexpected
Toby's demeanor changed. He sulked around the house like someone who had lost his best friend. He left half his food in the dish. The light in his eyes had gone out. He was obviously depressed. He understood Queenie was gone, and was not coming back. Thankfully, by week three, his spirits lifted.
Almost four years later, our little Toby is nearing the end of his days on earth, and it is all too obvious that we will soon need to repeat the process. And we have brought two additional pooches into our home.
They say a dog doesn't live as long as a human being since it doesn't take a dog as long to learn to be perfect.
Well, I'm not sure that little ditty is altogether accurate. But they are special, and they are precious, and they are loved. And when they cross the rainbow bridge, they are not soon forgotten.
by Bill McDonald, PhD
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