ManicDDaily

Some of the things that happen when you put a dog down.

You become conscious, in the middle of the injections, that there is no going back.

How soft their bodies are, as the vet turns them over, in the case of a small body, looking for a vein.  And warm.  Even that fur that got so matted as they aged, that you could not torment with brushing any more or too many baths.

You realize, looking, that one reason you have always loved the dog is simply because it is beautiful—-even a dog not at its best–and how amazing it is, if you have not always felt beautiful in yourself, to have this beautiful creature love you back.

It fell asleep in your arms, what with the sedative, and is not in pain now and maybe you should run away with it before they give the death solution.

But how long it seems to breathe, its veins collapsed so the solution does not carry.  The doctor says you might want to look away as he points the needle at the heart itself.  He is kind but in a hurry.

You do turn away, thinking of the two women in the parking lot earlier–an old lady who looked half like a fairy tale godmother, half like a gnome, short squat her face all pink and dimples wearing a large turquoise cape, which may have been meant for hip length but descended to the ground.  A bit odd-looking but not unattractive but then her daughter (I’m guessing) who got out of the car too seemed to have inherited all the gnome aspects with none of the boppity boo- her hunched shoulders leading straight into shrunken hips, actually her head leading straight into shrunken hips–her body seeming almost a cork with facial features painted on and stuck black hair–but she smiled, she hugged the old lady, she laughed, and in the midst of their good-bye, she pulled from one of the cars a perfect Papillon–well, that kind of dog always looks pretty perfect, what with the symmetrically stroked fur, and heart-pointed face/muzzle, and the cork woman held the dog above her own tubed face, beaming love, and the dog looked down from her grasp, beaming uncritical, if slightly distracted, cuteness, and then the dog was brought to the face of the old boppity-boo woman who smiled, playing with its paws, and to the driver’s window where some similar loving interaction happened even just through a crack in the glass–oh such enthusiastic happiness–until the cork woman finally took the dog back to her own car where she and the perfectly beautiful being that attends her in a way that, you know, a human Papillon might not, drove off into the muted distance.

And my poor little still-soft dog, who has done that for me, lies now on the metal table which has these clouds on it, smears from being wiped down through long-pawed days– and they ask do I have something to hold her in, and I say yes, pointing to a cloth bag, but they suggest plastic–bringing a dark garbage sack, which my face must say is too much, but the nurse mumbles something about leakage and how I can always take her out again and I thank her and even help hold wide its dark lip as we slip the dog inside, so that it–and now I’ll say she–for she was a girl dog–stays even, and so when I do take the dark plastic in my own lone arms, I can be sure that what feels like the head is held higher than the rest, the way that one might hold a child, or anyone truly.

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So sorry to burden readers with this–many know I lost my 18 year old dog just after Thanksgiving–and am still thinking of it–a short prosey drafty piece.