Emotional healing is a most amazing gift that's bestowed
by our furry friends ... The choice to nurture a pet in our
life can bring huge returns on our investment.
Chelle Thompson - Inspiration Line
Unexpected loss is one thing; taking responsibility - holding out hope – at the end of another creature’s life is another thing altogether…
It started like this
We’d had sporadic interaction over the years, but there was much less contact, than more. He and his wife loved cats, and during a recent ‘catch-up’ Dick wrote,
“…Boaz, our cat of 16 years died this week…It was my second euthanasia experience…
we asked for the sedative first so we could say a final goodbye while he slept…
Mar has had a hard few days, but we got O’Toole from Second Chance...on Saturday…”
Recently, a new friend from Los Angeles lost her dog…a companion and friend ‘Fanny.’ She shared her loss on a social networking site and many friends consoled her for her loss. More intimately she wrote about the sorrow and agony of the final decision to end Fanny’s life. Near the end there had been illness and discomfort, but was it really the right time? For pet lovers, this is really the question, isn’t it?
All of this reminded me of Sable, the first cat we had in our household. We lost her in 2001 to renal failure, and like my friends, it was a hard goodbye. Would we let her die of natural causes in painful discomfort, or take her life? While the decision was clear, the humane choice was difficult. She was the fourth animal I had put down in my life, and none of them – NOT ONE was an easy deal.
Big boys don’t cry
When I returned from Vietnam in the early 70s, I still had a year of military service left and found myself in Southern Alabama. Several of us moved to ‘off base housing.’ I lived with a guy named Dave in a trailer, but two other guys – Gerry and Walt – made a foursome for any number of things.
Somehow we acquired a dog that had an orthopedic anomaly in its pelvic area - its hind legs were spread a little further apart than normal...we called him ‘Widetrack.’ He wasn’t particularly attractive, but had a good personality and liked being around us. We laughed and joked about this mutt, but he was, of little doubt, special. We lived near a highway, and as fate would have it, Widetrack got hit by a car. It didn’t kill him, but broke his back. We didn’t know this, and rushed him to the Veterinarian, who gave us the news that he would need to put the dog down.
By then it was a warm and sultry summer’s evening. There was a single light bulb in the small room with concrete walls and floors, where the Vet had worked on Widetrack. It was stark…it was ‘…cold…’ – not temperature – feeling. We understood life and death issues, and said we wanted to be with the dog at the end.
I will not forget the look of trust in Widetrack’s eyes as he gazed at the four of us standing there…I will not forget the small yelp at the prick of the needle when the Veterinarian slipped it into his foreleg, …AND I will NEVER forget watching the life slip quietly from the eyes of that dog as four, tough, recently returned Vietnam Veterans wept with tears of genuine sorrow – and almost sense of betrayal – at the loss of this dog.
There is something special
What is it, about these strangely domesticated creatures, that steal our hearts so deeply? Is it because they love us with no strings attached. Is it because, five minutes after punishing them for an unanticipated accident on the carpet, they climb back in our arms? Is it because they seem to have an innate sense when something is wrong...they ‘know’ how to bring some crystal clear resiliency to absorb our hurt, loneliness or sorrow?
The scientific data are clear…people with family pets have much less stress. Companion and visiting animals in assisted living centers and nursing homes bring a calming effect to those people with whom they live and come in contact. It’s not just dogs and cats, but other pets provide a wonderful relief for loneliness and despair.
Those of you that have and love animals will identify with all of this. Those who do not, probably will not.
In the end it’s personal...
Sable has, by now, been gone a decade. We worked to keep her with us as long as we could, but her time was short…she was listless and clearly in pain. The last day was tortuous, because the decision to end her life had been made…and time seemed to move so quickly. At the end we held her as she breathed her last breath…it seemed so, well…clinical – we wept bitterly.
On the advice of an experienced and dear friend, we went straight to the pound and ‘rescued’ two more kittens. It helped, but did not, of course, take away our sorrow.
For those of you, who resonate with this, here are a few words written at the end of this gentle creature’s life.
Sable
We had wondered how it would be
when the moment of truth came…
She had come so close to ‘being us’
that we felt the same
As if we had lost a child,
or a sister, or a family member with whom
we had come to feel
that we had known ‘from the womb.’
Life is sometimes a strange contradiction
when so much joy and sorrow find
their way into one’s life,
and heart, and surely into the mind.
And so we closed the chapter
on this gentle loving soul
who brought with her nothing more
than giving pleasure to us as her goal.
Goodbye seems so final
and indeed it appears to be
a way to bring to the end
those things which we
have so dearly loved.
It is written in the scripture, “Wisdom is the principle thing, therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding.” In circumstances like this, it seems understanding is not quite enough….
- ted
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