Duds

About two years ago, I wrote about our dog, Dudley, who was aging and was beginning to play upon my nerves.  He was 14 at the time; a good and loyal friend who was beginning to show his age.  That sweet boy died last month at the age of 16.  Our whole family is a little bit pitiful without our faithful friend and family member.  The house is quieter; vacant without him.

What could I possibly say about dogs that hasn’t already been eloquently said by countless writers?  Quite simply, dogs are better than we are.  Kinder in a lot of ways.  More loving.  More open and inviting.  What you see is what you get.  They don’t judge.  They just love.  They treat you like a rock star when you come home after having only been gone ten minutes.  They are fiercely loyal.  They forgive.  They offer themselves completely.  True, they sometimes offer gifts from their bowels in unexpected places, but it’s a small price to pay for what you get in return.

Dudley became the standard by which Mike and I will forever judge other dogs.  He was in our lives for our most important life events.  Our wedding.  Our move to Chattanooga. The births of our daughters.  The purchase of our lake home (which I still contend Mike bought specifically for Dudley).  He was the constant.

 Our girls loved him very much – he’d been with them their whole lives.  But our next dog will be the one they will more identify their childhood with.  We will get a puppy at some point and the girls will be involved in his or her life from the beginning.  Duds was grumpy in his later years.  He didn’t love the girls as much as they wanted him to.  About a year ago, Kate was talking about the fact that Dudley wouldn’t be here forever and would we get another dog someday.  I told her yes and she suggested that we get the type that “doesn’t bite at me”.  He was simply growing tired and they were rambunctious.  A puppy will LOVE that rambunctiousness and that will bind them to a new puppy to a bigger extent than they were to Dudley.  But Dudley will be the dog Mike and I talk about for the rest of our lives.  Sure, we will love other pets, but not like Dudley.

In his absence, I am finding that we talked about him all the time.  We would give him this elaborate back story on pretty much a daily basis.  We’d be watching a movie and one of us would say, “Remember when Dudley did that?  Remember when he was the head of that drug cartel and killed all of those people?”  Or I’d put his little Christmas jingle bell collar on him at the holidays and Mike would fuss at me: “Maggie, why do you do that every year when you know Dudley is Jewish?”  We did this EVERY DAY.  Our girls did it too.  “Guess who had to go to the principal’s office today.  Dudley.”   If we couldn’t find him inside the house immediately, one of us would suggest that he was outside smoking with his “bad seed” friend, Robert.  I didn’t really realize how much we talked about him or somehow inserted him into a story or event but I find myself about to do it now and I get that little pang of sadness.

He had too many nicknames to count.  He was, of course, Dudley.  Duds.  But early on in our relationship, Mike thought he looked like a goat due to the scruff under his chin, so he became “The Goat”.  Then Goatey.  Then, in some intricate tale I don’t even remember the origin of, Goateres Banderas. He was Buddy Budders.  Buddy Butter Bean.  Smallest Friend.  Señor.  And the list goes on.  In fact, we called him so many things that it has occurred to me that maybe he didn’t lose his hearing as soon as I thought he did.  Maybe he just didn’t have any idea we were talking to him.

 We also incorporated him into songs.  All songs and TV themes could and would be routinely Dudley-ized in our house.  We also had some songs we had written (not written down, mind you - that would be pathetic and not “cool” like the rest of this that I’m sharing) and continued to sing over the years.  I’m not saying they were great songs, but certain occasions called for a good homespun Dudley ballad.  Again, I didn’t realize how often we would do this but now that he’s gone, I catch myself doing it all the time. 

 It makes me profoundly sad that he is not here anymore.  Sixteen years is a long time to have a pet.  I was 24 years old when I got him.  His routines were my routines.  There is a void there now that he’s gone.  I now fix the girls’ lunches for school and expect to hear his little nails scrape across the floor as the scent of the lunch meat proves too hard for him to ignore.  When I roll over in the bed, I expect to hear the tired little grunt he would let out when I was disturbing him.  I feel like I still need to let him out at night before bedtime.  I don’t quite remember life before him and I’m having a hard time adjusting to life without him.

We had known for a while that he was not long for this world.  He had been in decline as you would expect a 16 year old dog to be.  That said, he was very healthy right up until the time he… wasn’t.  It was not a long and dragged out process, thankfully.  It was basically one bad weekend and then I knew.  He wouldn’t eat the scrambled cheese eggs (his favorite) I had put in his bowl on Friday morning and then I cried for the rest of the weekend with the knowledge that he was coming to his end.  On Monday morning, we made an appointment for that afternoon.  I drove him there.  I took him out of his crate.  I carried him in.  There was something so personal about it.  I was the one carrying him to his death.  That’s the worst part about it.  With a dog, you have to determine when it is time.

We had decided to have the doctor examine him just to be sure we were making the right decision.  If he was simply sick and we could give him some meds and get a good 6-12 months out of him, we would do that.  But if there would be no quality to his life, we would not put him through that.  I knew when we took him in that he was more than likely not going to be coming home.  I had prepared the girls and they got to spend some time with him before I left for the vet.  Mike was coming in from out of town and was trying to get me to put off the appointment until Tuesday morning.  I was against that because I didn’t want to go through having a “last night” with him.  I felt like it would be too painful to go through a big production of saying goodbye.  So, he met me there at the vet’s office.

The vet examined him and found several large masses in his intestines and possibly in his liver.  It was bad.  It was time.  That actually made me feel better.  We had no choice but to let him go.  I had always pictured holding him – being there with him in the end.  I wanted to do that, of course, but now he was as much Mike’s dog as he was mine.  I didn’t want to rob Mike of the opportunity to also be a part of it, so he and I held him together.  A few times, Dudley looked around; searched for my eyes.  We told him to relax.  We pet him.  We told him we loved him and would miss him.  I’m not sure what all we said to him, but we just wanted him to feel loved - cuddled - in those last moments.  They first gave him a shot to make him peaceful.  Then they gave him THE shot.  He closed his eyes.  We cried.  The doctor put the stethoscope up to his heart and she looked at us and nodded solemnly.  He was gone. 

People have been very kind since we lost him.  Most of them simply understand what it feels like to lose a beloved pet and can relate to our grief.  But the people who knew him – or us – (to know us was to know him) recognized how quirky and silly he was and what a huge part of our lives he was.  We have been told by many people that it was obvious he lived a good life.  He had a lake house.  He slept in a king-sized bed.  He went to the beach, the mountains, and everywhere in between.  And he had a family who adored him.  In truth, he may have had the best life of any dog ever in the history of pet ownership.  Mike and I were fairly obnoxious about him.  It’s kind of embarrassing.  But we loved that boy.  If you think about it, our family started with Dudley.  We simply added on from there.

Yes, he had a good life, but we were the lucky ones.  He brought so much joy to us.  His sweet little face and his silly little personality – he really brightened our day.  I know he was “just a dog” but to be just a dog is to enhance the lives of the people who take you in.  And he certainly did ours.  Will Rogers said, “If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”  The girls have heard that dogs don’t go to heaven and so they are sad that they will never see him again.  I told them that I believe that heaven is where you are reunited with the people and things you cared about in life.  That said, I believe he is there, waiting for us.  I picture him in a big expanse of water, swimming after his racquetball.  Snarling at his brother Bailey.  Napping and then waking up only to eat some steak (medium rare, of course). 

Take care, Duds.  And thank you for loving us as you did.  I’ll throw the ball for you when I get there.

 

 Dudley McCallie

1997-2013