Wendy and Alby in 1987
[See both in Animals I've Known and Loved, Chap.31]


Chapter 4 (Freedom and Animals, cont.)

Old Dog

Wendy lived to be a very old dog. I could measure her age against Alb, as I got her when my son was two; and he was 19 when we finally had to have her euthanized. (How I hate that word. Why can’t old pets just die in their sleep?)

It’s a memory I regret having. No matter how caring the vet, it’s a horrible experience to have it done to an animal I‘ve nurtured from four weeks old until seventeen years. If I’m impersonal about the process, I’m convinced it’s the most humane, so when Wendy’s life had no more quality--when she was humiliated by her incontinence, and too feeble to walk comfortably, Tom and I decided to take her to a kind old vet in Johnson City, as Dr. Norris had retired. Although the most loving hands led her into the office, and kindly had the vet administer the shot, Wendy looked at me at that point and her eyes said, “So, it has come to this. How could you!” I think I cried for the rest of the day. We had bought the land in Pennsylvania by then, and had even dug her grave weeks before, and buried her there, in back of my new rock garden at the edge of the woods. I wrapped her in the blanket she always slept on… it had changed throughout the years, but was the size of a stadium blanket that one keeps over their knees. Just right for a dog to lie on, and her blanket for her eternal rest. Again I say, "Couldn’t she have just died in her sleep?" Life sometimes seems cruel.