dumbo

Just realized I had this picture of the old guy. Pretty sure it's the last one ever taken of him. I took him to my friend Ronda's farm to stay for a couple weeks while the rest of us traveled south. He liked car rides, but we didn't think he'd be welcome on Beale Street, Bourbon Street or most of the other streets we visited, so he had to stay behind. I knew he didn't mind because he loved Ronda and loved her farm. In payment for a couple weeks of dog-sitting i agreed to help cut thistles out of her pasture. There are a lot worse things I could do on a hot June day, fresh into vacation and ready to start the summer with a good sweat. We loaded up her truck with tools and headed into the field, five dogs rambling through the tall grass along side us. We worked hard and the few hours passed quickly. Work is easy when vacation has just started. The old fella wandered a bit, but mostly just laid in the grass and watched us pull the fat thorn bushes from the black dirt. On the way back to the house I sat on the bed of Ronda's old Ford, sipping water, invigorated by midwestern dirt on my skin. As the truck sputtered its way up the grassy hill, I saw his old black body emerge from the grass and follow along. As we picked up speed, so did he. To my amazement, his gait quickened from a fast stroll to a slow trot to a full on run. Here was a dog who'd been in our lives for over a year and I had never, ever seen him run. Seriously, never. The closest we'd seen was an ill fated trip to the park to introduce him to the concept of "fetch". We threw the ball a few times, only to have him saunter to it, pop it with his old teeth and lay down, comfortable and content. Here was our aged friend, sprinting along side a pickup through a Wisconsin field, not far from the place he wandered into our lives a year before. His tongue flopped out of time with his ears as he bounded puppy-like through that green field. I remember thinking how happy he looked, maybe as happy as I'd ever seen.
Ronda and I sat on her deck for a few hours, sipping fruity summertime drinks and chatting about upcoming travels and adventures and love of the summer months. Duke sat by our feet, sleeping mostly, with the occasional jerk from a dream, probably dreams about his days as a puppy.
I walked down Ronda's gravel road to my jeep with the old guy close behind. I opened the door but he didn't try to get in like usual, he just stood there looking at me, mouth open, tongue out, eyes wide. I cupped his hard head in my hands and rubbed my face in his. I told him I loved him and if he needed to go, he was in the right place to let go. Ronda asked why I would say that sort of thing, but I had no answer. It just came out because, I suppose, it felt right.
A few days later while driving through Mississippi we got the message he let go. On a Tuesday afternoon he walked back into this pasture with Ronda, laid down in the afternoon sun and gave up his old lumpy body to stay in the puppy dream. Logic says an old dog just dies, without much thought or circumstance. My romantic side says he knew it was his time and was hanging on, waiting for me to tell him it was ok, which I did that afternoon on the gravel driveway. Regardless, taking his last breath in the summer grass under a Wisconsin sun, feeling as loved as he'd probably ever felt, is a damn good way to go.
Today under the August sun, vacation adventures over, emotional roller coaster at its deepest trough and consumed with questions of love and life, I miss his hard head and bad breath and simplicity. I miss his uneven patches of black and gray, his selective deafness and even his clumsiness. But most of all, I miss his love. The give and the take of his pure, wide-eyed uncomplicated love.
I hope that puppy body is drinking cold spring water and chasing bugs, old buddy.