The following was written in 2009 when I had my own farm website.
Gage and Hubs on one of our many mountain hikes in Tennessee and Kentucky. Black dogs are always so hard to photograph! About 2004.
THE LAST RIDE
We’ve had a lot of farm dogs over the years, some memorable, some not. When I was growing up on the farm in those ancient years (I know that’s what my grandson is thinking when I tell him stories!) of the 1960s and 1970s, dogs were just another farm animal with a job to perform.
The dogs we had then protected us kids, let us know when company arrived, so that sort of made them a member of the family. They also watched over the livestock, brought the cows up to the house to be milked, flushed quail out of the fencerow for dinner and let us know if someone was trying to sneak into the barnyard to steal gas.
The farm dogs ate in the barn and slept with the herds or flocks, in the milking parlor, by the (outside) door of the house or in the barnyard by the fuel tank.
They did not sleep in the house, let alone share our bed.
Ah, but times change…
We brought home a stray dog a few years ago. The vet-check proclaimed him healthy, about a year old, and mostly Lab. He followed the kids around, tolerated baby chicks with a look in his eyes that said, ya know I’m supposed to be a bird dog, right? and mostly ignored the steers.
He barked like crazy when my dad took a tumble, stared unbelievingly when the cat dropped a baby rabbit in the hallway, and had a really irritating habit of finding dead things to roll on. And even though he barked loudly when somebody approached the house, it appeared, by the wag of the tail and the panting, that he was not guarding us or anything else – he was anticipating a new friend!
He was scared to death of garden hoses and anything I used to clean cobwebs up high, which makes his puppyhood very suspect in my eyes.
Oh how he loved to ride – and unlike redneck cartoons that show the dog up front in the pickup truck and the wife in the back, our dog was quite content to ride in the back, head hanging over the pick-up bed and ears flapping in the wind.
And yes, he shared our bed.
His name was Gage and we lost him shortly before Christmas.
He had a tumor on his bladder and as time wore on, we knew we were going to have to do something. I waited for his tail to stop wagging, but even after this Lab started having the sad eyes of a Basset and approached steps with the wariness of the elderly, he continued to wag his tail.
We rescued a fuzzy puppy to keep him company in the last days but again those expressive eyes told us what he thought… “at 12 years old, I do NOT want to take the energy to assert myself as the Alpha Male and I most assuredly do not was this fuzzy ping-pong ball bouncing all around me…”
Someday I will try to face the fact that rescuing the fuzzball was to ease my transition, not to make Gage’s last days entertaining. But for now…
As this winter approached, friends dug a grave for their old dog, knowing he would not survive the winter and not wanting to have to use a pick-axe on frozen ground.
My husband could not bring himself to do likewise.
He had told me often he was more attached to Gage than any other dog he had ever had, and though he could put down a wounded sheep, he would never be able to …
I called around and asked friends how they had handled similar situations because I have never had to make this choice. I looked on-line for pet crematoriums a "thing" that is relatively new, especially in rural areas.
Finally I called my vet but I had an extremely difficult time getting through the sentences. They did indeed work with a pet crematorium and it was more reasonably priced than having a farm visit from their office (veterinarians cannot dispense the medication and let the owner administer it at home, they must administer it themselves).
My husband would not have to dig a hole.
We would not have to bring home a lifeless body, a final ride with the dog that the thought of even now, threatens to make my mind go numb and send my body into spasms.
For Gage and for us. I made the arrangements, and my husband took him to the vet’s office. The vet said he was ready to go, she had barely inserted the needle when he let out a small sigh and was gone. My husband sat on the floor of the vet’s office cradling Gage.
I just couldn't make that final ride.
I hope he understands.
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