Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
― William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
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There is never enough time.
Or is it just enough?
I am someone who believes in the power of dichotomy, that we cannot truly understand something unless we also comprehend its opposite. How can we understand light if we’ve never been in the dark? How do we comprehend satiation if we have never been hungry? It goes beyond just obvious opposites: to use a topical example, never experiencing injustice can make you blind to your privilege. And it wasn’t until I left Seattle for college in vastly different Florida that I truly understood where I came from and how it shaped me.
What is life? “The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.” Without death, we would be as rocks: slowly, slowly, slowly transmuting over billions of years, a sea floor one eon, a mountain peak another, our shape and fate dictated by the vicissitudes of weather and the slow creep of plate tectonics. Such an eternity would strip all emotional meaning from matter. When all is undying, why cherish anything?
As dogs are precious.
To love a dog is also to lose a dog and to lose a dog is to grieve a dog: these things are all inevitable. The last thing I want to suggest is that the unavoidability of death somehow negates any need to mourn. A loss is a loss.
I have taught myself this lesson: that my dogs will die, and that is as it should be, and that I will mourn them, and that is as it should be, and then I will move out of my grief, and that is as it should be, too. Because dogs, for me, provide a bulwark against dying by suicide. I have been in the position where I have needed to find external reasons for living and I know that in order to be there for my dogs, I would seek the care I needed should my currently successful mental health management fail. I am adamantly clear to myself that no one dog stands between my life and death, that it is a continuity of dogs that are loved and lost and mourned that give me strength. I can’t risk being blindsided or devastated by a loss that is written into the contract, so to speak, of loving a canine companion. I have been doing extra mental and emotional preparatory work regarding Nala’s certain approaching death. At an estimated age of fourteen, she’s an old dog by any calculation. Senescence is upon her. It is unlikely that she’ll live more than another couple of years.
But it is Bixby who was first to die.
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American Staffordshire Terriers are hardy dogs with a typical lifespan of 12-16 years. We estimate that Bixby was eight years old. I had every reason to expect to have him by my side for at least four more years. While he had a lot of health issues, they were all related to allergies—none were of the sort that shorten a dog’s life. Yet there was death on a Thursday evening, a death, in fact, some time foretold, but silently, until the fatal rupture.
It is a comfort to me that there is nothing I could have done. The spleen is an organ rich in blood but not vital to an adult dog’s functioning. My veterinarian told me he usually only finds hemangiosarcoma masses before they rupture is if he's palpating a dog's abdomen for some other reason. Even then, by the time a splenic hemangiosarcoma is detectable, 90% of the time the cancer has already spread to other organs. It’s possible to take the view that it’s just as well that Bixby went so fast. This aggressive cancer impacted only two and a half hours of his life.
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Pumpkin, I called him at the last, lying nose-to-nose with him on the floor of the emergency vet hospital. “Oh, Pumpkin, you are so loved. Oh, Pumpkin, I’m so sorry.”
I could not give him more time. I could not give him more life. I could not give him more of my heart, since he already had the entirety of it. I could not even, as I was able to with Abbey, give him a beautiful death. He stared to cry under his breath, there at the end. It’s the memory of those barely audible whimpers that broke me then and breaks me still. So I gave him the only thing in my power: I took away the traitorous heartbeat that was, with each pump, painfully draining away the substance of his life.
I did not linger long with the body of the beautiful caramel-colored dog, blood red beneath the skin of his distended belly. It wasn’t Bixby. Bixby was the spirit, the animating force, the character, the personality. I walked out into the twilight with my shock and my grief; I walked out of one story and into another.
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Cancer, for all that it may be frightening and fatal, is unremarkable. Forty percent of people, like me, will develop cancer in their lifetime and roughly 17% of us will die of it. Nearly 50% of dogs die of cancer. Bixby’s type of cancer, hemangiosarcoma, accounts for approximately 5% of annual canine cancer deaths. The dogs most likely to develop hemangiosarcoma are large male dogs in their late middle age or early senior years, with pit bulls being among the breeds that are genetically susceptible to it. As emotionally shocking as it may have been to lose my Bixby to hemangiosarcoma, statistically, it was a very normal death. An individual but unremarkable tragedy, the price I knew I would inevitably pay for loving my dog.
Some people say that losing a dog is akin to losing a child. While not having a child myself, I find this comparison unlikely. But I don’t think it detracts from the grief to say so. When a dog dies, you lose someone child-like.
Someone innocent.
In the months since Bixby died, I’ve returned again and again to the idea of innocence being one of the attributes so many of us most value in our dogs.
Dog ownership has changed dramatically in the past century and even more rapidly in the past twenty years. Just calling it “ownership” seems wrong, as it implies that a dog is a thing. Currently, 97% of dog owners consider their pets part of the family. You’re now a “dog mom” or “dog dad.” People refer to their dogs as “furbabies.” It’s a change even from when I was growing up in the 1980’s-90’s. Dogs went from companion animals to kids. This is in some ways surprisingly literal: instead of being bred for performing specific tasks or even for conforming to specific “breed” requirements, most pet dogs are bred to be as puppy-like as possible. Playful? Goofy? Trusting? Joyful wiggles? Wagging tails? Giving kisses? These are all the attributes of canid puppies. A dog bred for companionship is a dog that has been arrested in a state of permanent childhood. In uncertain times, when we marry later, have children later, and live more isolated from extended family, dogs can fill the gaps in our hearts. Dogs are creatures of a fascinating level of plasticity at multiple levels and one result of our coevolution is that they will take on any role we ask of them.
Including being our babies.
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Someone innocent.
In the months since Bixby died, I’ve returned again and again to the idea of innocence being one of the attributes so many of us most value in our dogs.
Dog ownership has changed dramatically in the past century and even more rapidly in the past twenty years. Just calling it “ownership” seems wrong, as it implies that a dog is a thing. Currently, 97% of dog owners consider their pets part of the family. You’re now a “dog mom” or “dog dad.” People refer to their dogs as “furbabies.” It’s a change even from when I was growing up in the 1980’s-90’s. Dogs went from companion animals to kids. This is in some ways surprisingly literal: instead of being bred for performing specific tasks or even for conforming to specific “breed” requirements, most pet dogs are bred to be as puppy-like as possible. Playful? Goofy? Trusting? Joyful wiggles? Wagging tails? Giving kisses? These are all the attributes of canid puppies. A dog bred for companionship is a dog that has been arrested in a state of permanent childhood. In uncertain times, when we marry later, have children later, and live more isolated from extended family, dogs can fill the gaps in our hearts. Dogs are creatures of a fascinating level of plasticity at multiple levels and one result of our coevolution is that they will take on any role we ask of them.
Including being our babies.
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| Eighty-five percent of pet owners give their animals winter holiday gifts. I am among the 60% of pet parents who hang up a stocking for my dogs. In 2019, Bixby got a bowtie, along with treats, in his stocking. I am also among the 45% who give my pets gifts "from Santa." That's who left him the bed he's snoozing in on Christmas Day. |
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| Mutual oxytocin production in action. |
A dog is such a gift in that regard. It’s no wonder that we attempt to give our “babies” so many things in return.
I never felt like Abbey’s “mommy”—that didn’t fit our relationship at all—but I have at times felt like a "mommy" to Nala and Bixby. In the case of Nala, it is because she’s needed so much special, nurturing care. I’ve remarked that the older she gets, the younger she seems, because helping her overcome her trauma has allowed playful, silly, puppy-like behaviors to emerge. In the case of Bixby, it’s because he was so clearly cherished as a puppy that he decided that being a baby doggy was the best thing ever. If he was a baby, that made me his mommy.
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I don’t go in for regrets. I believe that every one of us is doing the best we can given who we are and what circumstances we are in at any given time. It’s not necessary to like who we are/what we do at any given time, but the fact is that we are, at each moment, the sum of ourselves. But we can change that sum! This is not a magical prescription, of course. There might be any number of limiting factors, both external and internal. But still, we can accumulate changes that lead us to different circumstances. One thing we can't change is the past. Ruminating over it, being embarrassed by it, clinging to it: it doesn’t help anything or anyone. Learn what you can, change what you can, forgive what you can’t, going forward.
My disabilities mean that I truly am, at any moment, doing the best I can. And that best is often so very limited. I have no cushion. I live each day pared down to the bone. I have to be utterly unflinching and entirely forgiving in my assessment of who I am and what I can do. So I regret nothing.
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This applies to Bixby.
But, oh, I am so very sorry I ended up so sick from first COVID and then cancer. It was so hard on my sensitive buddy. The impact it had on his emotional state led to terrible health issues at a time when I was completely unable to support him. It damaged his belief that the world was always wonderful and that it was always good to be a Bixby and I am incredibly sorry that he lost his innocence.
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| Self-Portrait of the Photographer Hairless from Chemo in Glass Door with Dogs |
We were working so hard on getting him healthy again. When I was finally well, I prioritized getting strong enough that I could fulfill my longtime dream of doing agility with him. Agility was even more awesome than I thought it would be and it did wonders for his mental health. If we'd had another year, I'm sure I could have brought him back to a state of physical, mental, and emotional wellness, even if I could never restore his innocence. I'm so sorry we didn't have that time, that he never had the chance to fully heal.
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| We had so much fun doing agility! |
I’m sorry, too, that due to a series of injuries and disability-related complaints, I hadn’t played his favorite game with him after dinner for a couple of months. Every evening he would ask and I kept having to telling him no. “Soon, buddy. Soon, I promise,” I told him on the evening before he died. I couldn’t play that day because it was too hot. I have limited heat tolerance and it was hot enough outside my air-conditioned room to make me sick if I lingered, so I really, truly, absolutely couldn’t. But if I’d known that he was going to die in July, I would have played with him on a couple of the days when I felt too tired in the weeks before his death. But how could I know? And I really was tired on those evenings and the amount of activity it took to play Bixby’s favorite game—which involved making one of his toys dance and swoop and then playing tug with him when he caught one of the arms—could have make me sicker. So every day I was doing the best I could and I can’t regret that I didn’t play with him more. And while I'm sorry that there weren’t more days, more days have never been in my power to grant to any dog I’ve ever loved.
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If I could undo one thing, it would be COVID. Not because I was in bed for months, not because of the lasting health issues it has caused me, not even because it delayed my cancer diagnosis and treatment by half a year, but because it broke Bixby’s heart. I was isolating in my bedroom. Nala had decided that she was in charge of me and let him know he wasn’t welcome. My mother was working out of our dining room where Bixby couldn’t join her in case he saw some critter on the front lawn and had a barking frenzy while she was teaching. And so he spent roughly three months alone in the family room during the day, growing increasingly depressed and increasingly ill because affection and a feeling of belonging were critical to his well-being. By the time my mom retired and my sister started working out our dining room while my mom cared for my little nephew, by the time the house was once again full of people and fun and company and activity, Bixby’s psyche was damaged to a degree that he never fully recovered from.
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| Bixby had finally gained some couch privileges in the beginning of 2020, but he lost them not due to any misbehavior of his own, but because we discovered that Nala was discretely using the rug in that room as a bathroom. Because I wasn't well, the easiest way to deal with the issue was to shut the door. That meant no more couch for Bixby. |
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| In an attempt to draw me out from my COVID isolation, Bixby took to dragging his brass-studded collar along the wall in the upstairs hall because he discovered that I would get out of bed to stop him. Sadly for Mr. B., I took away the studded collar instead of rejoining the family. |
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| The dynamic between Nala and Bixby changed when I got sick. She decided that she was in charge of my care and he didn't get to be part of it. In this photo, Bixby stress-yawns after he's asked if he can come up on the bed and I've said yes but Nala has said no. |
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| Facebook post from 2/21/2021: I have to say, I miss Bixby. Yes, we're still in the same house, but I've been under orders to isolate as much as possible because my white blood cell count was so low that I managed to get a cold despite masking in the house and no one around me being sick. Nala has made it clear that Bixby is not allowed to be on the bed with me in the daytime and I had enough nights where I didn't feel well enough to have a large dog in bed with me that Bixby is now choosing to sleep in my parents' room. I say hello to him whenever I see him, but it's not nearly the same. It's going to be another three months before I'll be in a position to spend a lot of time with him. Sigh... Nala, of course, is with me pretty much 24/7, either curled up on my feet, snuggled next to me and using me as a pillow, or sleeping during the night on the bed next to my bed. |
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| In this photo from July of 2021, not long after I'd finished chemo, I'm down on the floor to try to give Bixby the cuddling I knew he desperately needed but would no longer seek out from me. Nala inserted herself into the activity by vigorously licking the stubble of my re-growing hair. |
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| Facebook post from 5/21/2022: Bixby has been refusing to sleep with me for a year and a half after being banned while I was going through chemo. It hurt his feelings and I think he was also afraid that if he came back and got used to it, he might then get shut out again. (To be fair, that happened when he was banned after my mastectomy, was invited back after I'd sufficiently healed, and then banned again a month or so later when I started chemo.) So he's been sleeping in a dog bed in my parents' bedroom all this time and flat-out refused to sleep in my room even when I've asked. But a few weeks back he gave himself a phobia—he got scared on a windy night and then was scared to be in my parents' bedroom and so he ended up sleeping his crate for a few nights, during which he licked his rear end raw. So I said, "Enough is enough." He is now back sleeping in my room, on my bed, and I am SO happy and he's happy, too. Nala might be slightly less happy, but he is pretty good for cuddling with before I turn my light out and she doesn't sleep on the bed at night anyway. Last night, Bixby fell asleep his great big lovely warm head on my chest for the first time since being back in my room—I'd missed that so much! |
This makes him sound clingy and needy, but it wasn’t the case at all. Before 2020, Bixby was a canine ray of sunshine. He did everything with gusto. I’ve never seen a dog nap exuberantly before, but he did it with the same joyful abandon he brought to everything. He so firmly believed in life’s abundance that he didn’t even bother licking small crumbs off the floor. His motto was “It’s Good to be a Bixby!” His theme song was “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers,” with his name subbed in, of course! My other saying for him was “It’s not that Bixby isn’t deep, it’s just that the water is extremely clear.” His embodiment of sensuous leisure made it easy to forget that he was extremely intelligent until he snapped into training mode and demonstrated his capacity to focus and learn quickly. I did hurt his feelings terribly once early on when I used a squirt bottle to stop him from trying to climb up on the leather chair in our family room, but we quickly reconciled and it was back to la dolce vita: decadent naps, gleeful zoomies, passionate snuggles.
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| My favorite photo of Bixby doing agility is not any of the ones where he is doing an awesome job, but this one where he's SO EXCITED that he's got the zoomies and I can do nothing but wait until he's run off some of his overflowing joy before we can resume working on the course. |
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| A sick Bixby curled up tight as can be in my lap. |
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While it may be a new role, a lot of dogs discover that the inside pet life is a good gig, though it can be challenging for a dog that retains a lot of its original working drive to fully adapt to being a placid perpetual puppy. It's irresponsible on the part of people to expect, say, an intelligent, high-energy dog to be able to settle into all that luxury without a ton of exercise and mental stimulation, but it should be noted that genetics are not destiny: you'll find absolutely all kinds of temperaments, intelligence, athleticism, and other traits among dogs of a single breed. When genetics do still play a role in behaviors, it can be quite fascinating. For example: my childhood dog was a Basset Hound-Springer Spaniel mix whose genes, when he once found a dead bird in the yard, instructed him to pick it up very gently and bring it to us. My mother had a colleague whose Shetland Sheepdog was a real handful until she found a place where the Sheltie could herd sheep every weekend. I've never forgotten how a coworker's Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, a type of gun dog used for hunting birds, instinctively zeroed in on the smell of a bag of dyed decorative chicken feathers in a drawer in a very large space with lots of scents despite never having been used for hunting. It fascinates me that recognition of a smell was hardwired into his brain! Otherwise, of all the dogs I've known, only Jazzy the Mini Aussie, who didn't really come with an "off" switch, and Cutie the Pyrenees, who retained many livestock guardian traits—such as barking loudly in response to anything "suspicious," much to the chagrin of the neighbors—were driven by their DNA in ways that could only be mitigated rather than overcome.
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| Every dog I've ever owned or cared for. |
In other words, the collies and retrievers, ratters and herders, the crosses and mixes, had all effectively been transmuted into a single category: pet dog. Pet dogs of various levels of intelligence, of energy, of sociability, with the typical gamut of opinions on subjects most dear to a pet dog's existence: people, other dogs, toys, baths and nail trims, car rides, the vet, treats, the vacuum, being on the people bed, getting their feet wet, walks, strangers coming to the door, mealtimes, cats, thunderstorms and fireworks, children, preferred forms of physical affection, squirrels, taking medication, the location of the best sunning spots, and so forth.
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| I was Abbey's purpose. |
It is interesting (and relevant) to note that while all the dogs were firmly and only and quite dedicated to being canine companions, a few of the dogs I've known have gone a step further and designated a role for themselves in their family. This is not what the family necessarily has envisioned for the dog, but what the dog has envisioned for his- or herself. It is not a particular skill-set, it is not about hierarchy, but something deeper about a dog's sense of purpose. Nala, notably, found a higher purpose while I was sick with COVID and then chemo: she knew I was sick (I'm sure I smelled very different, for one), she knew that I was in bed all the time in a way that was different from me being in bed all the time due to chronic health problems, and while all it looked like was her spending the days snoozing on the bed just as she did on days when I was in bed due to my disabilities, her purpose shifted. She became more. (It's also why she started being rude to Bixby and letting him know he was not welcome to join us on the bed during the day.) When I got better, she went back to being her usual self. For most dogs, though, it's their life's work. It's hard to describe, but people who have loved a dog like this will know what I mean. A lot of these dogs are what are referred to as "heart dogs" or "soul dogs," where the depth of the bond is one monumental and fundamental, dogs that forever change your heart and your soul. Not all heart dogs are dogs with a larger purpose; I recently spoke with Goldie's mom who hasn't adopted another dog and may never will because no dog will ever compare: Goldie, she said to me, was an angel in canine form. That may well be true. But it wasn't Goldie's purpose. She didn't choose to be an angel, she simply was.
Abbey was the dog-of-my-heart and always will be. A dog similarly special to me is Sweetheart the German Shepherd. We only had a year together, but during that time, we connected not as dog to person but soul to soul. Sweetheart's love was vast and pure and our love had no higher purpose and none was necessary. If you'd asked her if she had a purpose, she would likely have told you it was to look after "her" kids. But I hesitate to ascribe the knowingness that animates the sort of purpose I'm talking about to Sweetheart's love for her family—it was in her nature, an intrinsic force. It's the difference between, "I watch out for my family" and "I am the one that watches out for my family." This may seem like a bunch of nonsense, but during six years as a dog-sitter, I cared for fifteen dogs in addition to my own, and I will solemnly swear that some dogs see themselves as having a deliberate purpose that goes beyond the purely instinctual, that is animated by a greater sense of self, a belief in "I am."
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| Child at heart. |
I believe that Bixby was such a dog. Out of the all dogs I've known, he was the most childlike. Loving to cuddle, wanting to be on the bed and the couch, being fearful about certain things, and having plenty of goofiness are all standard features for today's canine companions; what was different about Bixby is there was something so strikingly youthful about his guilelessness and his joy, not just in how he appeared to others, but how he viewed himself. It goes beyond the effect of being adored as a puppy; after all, most dogs are adored as puppies. For Bixby, it was a higher calling. (Not every purpose is a great ennobling one, though I'm sure he would dispute my characterization of his higher calling to be anything less than epitome of canine achievement.) I adopted him to be Nala's service dog by modeling how to be a be a pet. That he did, by firmly believing it was his role to be cherished, that he existed to be loved. He was not at all immature and I've known far sillier dogs. He was observant and intelligent. But in his soul, he never grew up.
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This is all a narrative. A story created by me about a dog I called Bixby.
Bixby's story of himself, if dogs are capable of stories, may well have been different.
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| A memento of his suffering. |
It is also a fact that there remains, on the wall of my bedroom, a spray of the anti-nausea drug Cerenia where it squirted when I depressed the plunger on the syringe too hard when prepping the dose before injecting it into the nape of Bixby's neck at 3 a.m. during one of his worst stomachaches. It is a fact, likewise, that when it's windy, my first thought is, "I'm glad Bixby isn't here for this anymore," because I spent so many exhausting nights dealing with his anxiety—an anxiety, it should be noted, that hadn't been severe until the stress brought on by my sickness.
And this is my narrative: I believe that, as pet parents, we must honor dogs as who they are. Bixby had been bred to have a canine companion's arrested development, he'd inherited the emotional sensitivity common to pit-bull breeds, his first family doted on him and he grew up in their laps and beds and arms; through a combination and nature, Bixby's wellbeing was wholly dependent on human affection and he lacked the emotional fortitude to cope without it. I may not have seen him as a furbaby, but I do believe he was an innocent. I wanted that for Bixby in a way I haven't for another dog: a life where he was always bonny and blithe, good and gay. It's tantamount to a sin, I feel, that a heart so pure and so joyful should be broken. I couldn’t prevent that breaking any more than I could prevent his dying, but I am so sorry that he suffered that terrible fear of being unwanted when he was, in fact, so loved. What I grieve is not that he died of cancer, but that he lost his sunshine in the years prior. It wasn't that he was never happy again, but there had not been time enough to fully restore him to a state of belief that it was good to be a Bixby.
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But in the end, Bixby was just a dog.
I forget that sometimes, caught up in the story of Bixby. I'm glad to have videos of him not doing a great job at agility because it reminds me that he was just a dog. "Just" may seem dismissive, but only if you think that being a dog is not enough. He was superbly a dog. He was everything I asked for and more than I ever hoped for. He gloriously fulfilled his purpose. As a friend put it, "He managed to achieve peak dog early and had to move to his next stage of being." Born a pet, lived a pet, died a pet. Bravo!
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I wish we'd had more time. Of course I do. But death is absolute. Battering away at death with powerless wishes will do nothing but further break your heart. My heart is broken enough.
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I mused, at the beginning of this piece, if we get just enough time with our dogs rather than too little. Dogs can help us change and grow. When I ask myself if I would want to have Abbey, dog-of-my-heart, by my side forever, I don't think I do. After twelve years together, her work was done. She'd help to transform me completely, but to change and grow more would require a different dog. That's what life is, by definition: a capacity for growth and continual change. I wish very much I had a couple more years with Bixby, but I'd rather love and lose dogs than stay the same forever.
And so, the tragedy I purchased for Nala in August of 2017 has come to pass. Yet, I continue to choose love and I will choose it over and over because to choose love means to choose life. My life. That life will forever be lit by the glow of my golden boy. He has set the standard for canine rays of sunshine very high. There will never be another like him; there will be others. This is the story of my life: choosing and being chosen by dogs, again and again, knowing that every dog will die, knowing that every loss will be worth the love.
Bixby, you were so worth it.
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