Love and Leashes and Loss

When I was little, I ached for a dog.

I imagined having a best friend forever, a little sister puppy named after a flower who would never leave my side. We would run the Iditarod together; she and I would save old people from some kind of danger, perhaps a robber; and maybe she would even let me use her as a pillow sometimes.

When I was 5, my dream came true. Sort of.

My family was riding home from the Humane Society, all buzzy and smiley over our beautiful, sandy new puppy. Her tongue was sloppy and wet on my fingers when I poked them through the cage, and I loved her for it instantly. All the while, my young mind was ablaze with all the names I'd been saving for this occasion. I hopefully spoke up and went down the list: Daisy, Rose, Lilac, and (my personal favorite) Lily.

My mom turned around with a bemused look on her face and informed me that our puppy was, in fact, a boy. I considered this information, digesting its implications. I turned around to look at the puppy with new eyes. He looked back with interest. Okay, I decided. You'll do just fine.

We named him Reilly. I don't remember why.

I remember trying to sneak up on him as he was sprawled out on the floor, focusing on how cozy his belly looked. But as soon as I tried to rest my head on it, he lurched away. Evidently Reilly was not open to being a pillow. Another roadblock in our budding relationship, but I got past it. It was pretty easy, actually. All I had to do was look at him, because he was just that cute and sweet and soulful.

A few years later, my brother, sister and I were walking down the street a couple blocks from my house. We were about to get ice cream when we heard a faint kind of clinking, chinking sound -- and ignored it. It grew louder and louder until at last we turned around to see who else but Reilly bounding down the street after us, tongue flapping and paws slapping the pavement. The clinking sound was the chain he had been tethered to at home, fully uprooted.

When I think of Reilly, that's one of the things I like to focus on. It's a memory of ice cream and squeals of laughter and golden sunshine and a goldener dog, and I think it's as close to perfect as life can get.

He grew up and I grew up. We dressed him up in various ridiculous outfits, subjecting him to the humiliation of Hawaiian shirts and Girl Scout vests. We resented him a little for his farts and incessant panting. We laughed at his boundless joy in snowballs and peanut butter. We loved him.

By January of my sophomore year, the snow that fell mingled with the new flecks of white that dotted Reilly’s back and face. Aging had been a gradual process for him. He was a little slower, a little heavier, but he had always been more inclined to nap than to play. And he was always there, our big doofy doggy who followed us everywhere.

That was the winter of too much snow, when even the Weather Channel newscasters had to reach for some more dramatic names. Reilly usually loved this kind of weather, prancing around in the snow, trying to catch the snowballs we lobbed at him, and loving every minute of it. But this winter was different. He struggled daily when we took him outside, stumbling and fumbling through the mountains of snow. Then came the two weeks when everything crumbled apart.

Reilly started to get sick. The scary kind of sick that doesn't go away, the kind that requires constant positive thinking and reassurance to crowd out the worry.

He'll be just fine. He's gotten sick before. Everything will get better. Don't worry.

After he didn’t get back to normal in a couple days, my mom said she was taking Reilly to the vet, and that it might be good for us to start preparing for the worst. I didn’t. Because the worst would never happen. Reilly wouldn’t ever die. It was inconceivable. Preposterous at best.

We said that he had an iron stomach. He ate snow, chocolate, gingerbread houses, ant traps, Christmas ornaments, peanut butter, Easter baskets, and occasionally dog food. The worst that ever happened was that he threw up. We took him to the vet for his checkup every year, and the vet always said he was fine. A little overweight, perhaps; the joints a little creaky, maybe – but he was fine.

So when my brother came to the middle school where I was tutoring and told me that I had to go because Reilly had liver cancer, he couldn’t be cured and we were putting him down, of course it felt like the floor had dropped out from under my feet. Of course walking to the car reminded me of the time both my legs fell asleep at the same time. Of course I tried my hardest not to slide over the edge of goodbye and into grief on the way to the vet’s office. What else was I supposed to do when I found out that my friend and family member of ten years was going to be gone forever?

At the vet’s, we got to say our goodbyes. Reilly couldn’t even stand, so I just sat on the floor and petted him. My mind wandered back through his lifetime, through loosed chains and stolen food and warm wet tongues. I couldn't help my leaky eyes and shaky breaths, because God, his lifetime was my lifetime, too.

When the vet came in and told us it was time, I couldn’t handle it and left the room, feeling guiltier with every step. Reilly had followed us so far for so long, but I couldn’t follow him this first and last time, when it really mattered. Maybe that’s the difference between humans and dogs.

More courageous than mre, my mom and my brother stayed with him till the end. When they came out of the room, the door swung open. I was able to see a tail and two motionless paws, and that was it. That was my last glimpse of my dog.

Reilly never ran the Iditarod with me. He never saved old people, and he didn’t really like to be used as a pillow. He wasn’t a girl, and he wasn’t named after a flower.

He was Reilly, and that was always enough.