Saying Goodbye to a Good Dog

McDuff, my Cairn terrier, looks more like a pot-bellied pig every day. His swollen abdomen is low-slung and his short legs bow out at the elbows—symptoms of Cushing's Disease. Recently we had to put up a baby gate to keep him from going upstairs; the last time McDuff tried to follow us up to bed, he slipped and went bumping down to the bottom of the staircase, his front legs useless as toothpicks against the pull of his massive weight.

He's an old man, our McDuff. Fifteen. Whenever he goes outside to relieve himself, he stands in one spot for a good five minutes, squinting a little, then turns right around and heads back inside. At this point, his medication costs half as much as our groceries. I don't know what we'll do when it snows. Shovel a path for him, I guess.

Or not. We have been debating, lately, about how and when to play God with our beloved pet. McDuff isn't in extreme pain, and he still wags his tail when I call his name. That's something, right?

But is it enough for a good dog's life? Or is it time to say goodbye?

I grew up on a farm where we had nearly as many dogs as we had horses. They were rescue dogs, mostly. These included one shepherd mix that loved to chase cars and always smelled of skunk; a feisty Yorkie mix; and an Afghan hound that bit anything gray, including our coats. I moved away from home before any of these dogs died or had to be put down; coming home and finding one less dog under the table was a source of brief sadness but not much more.

This is different. I can't stand the thought of losing McDuff.

As an adult, I've had to put just one dog to sleep. Ben was an American Eskimo mix that we adopted from a shelter. A frothy, white, joyful dog, Ben used to race around us in circles whenever we uttered his mantra: “Go Ben go!”

When my husband and I were married in our back yard (a second marriage that combined our four young children), Ben wore a burgundy bow to match my dress. As we repeated our vows in front of a small gathering of friends and family, Ben wandered up and sat down between our children, so that he would be included in the minister's blessing.

At age thirteen, Ben's heart and liver gave out. Making the decision to put him down was easier because he was in such pain that he cried out in his sleep. Still, the kids and I all wept: it was the first time that I fully realized a dog isn't just a dog, but a carrier of family history.

Saying goodbye to a dog you've had for years means shutting the door on an era. In our case, Ben's death earmarked the years between our wedding and the year our oldest son set off for college. Shortly after Ben's death, we moved out of our big family home and into a smaller one; my memories of Ben therefore carry complex emotions: joy and love and grief and loss, rolled into one white ball of fur.

McDuff started his life with us just as Ben was ending his. I got him in the worst way possible—on impulse, in a mall pet store—but for a good reason: I was with my stepdaughter, the youngest in our blended family and the one who always felt left out by our other three children. She was newly aggrieved by the arrival of our fifth and youngest child, who immediately displaced her as the baby in the family. Choosing this dog made her feel, for once, that she was in charge.

As a puppy, McDuff was scarcely bigger than the palm of my hand. Like most terriers, he was stubborn, territorial, and ferociously protective. We put a dog door in our basement so that he could come and go at will. His greatest joy was patrolling our yard and barking at any deer, squirrels, or wild turkeys that dared to infiltrate his space.

McDuff became a member of our family a few weeks after our youngest child was born. He has been through a lot since then: older kids graduating from high school and college, family trips to Canada and Wisconsin, youngest child moving through elementary school and into high school, job layoffs and career successes, the celebration of our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Saying goodbye to him means saying goodbye to boisterous family dinners, birthday parties with balloons and water slides, Christmases with so many presents under the tree that you couldn't walk around it, the death of my grandmother and my father, buying a second house in Canada, and the realization that nothing lasts forever.
Not even a very good dog, who still lifts his head whenever I call his name.

The New Shape of Family

The night before my niece Lizzie's wedding, we attended a rehearsal dinner unlike any other I've ever experienced. For one thing, it was in a bowling alley. A bowling alley! There was a Mexican buffet and an open bar. We gathered in a tap room next to the lanes and loaded up our tacos, then sat and listened to speeches the way people do at weddings all over the world.
Except, at this dinner, I clearly saw the new shape of family in the United States. Lizzie, the cute blond bride, isn't really related to me. She is my husband's niece. He is my second husband, and between us we have five children: two of his, two of mine, and one of our own. The bride's mother and father are divorced, but both were in the taco line. So were the bride's stepmother, the bride's three siblings and two of her step-siblings. The groom, whose own parents are out of the picture, was accompanied by the woman who raised him. She arrived on a motorcycle with her boyfriend, who she described as her “balance partner” after a hand-binding commitment ceremony. Most of the grandparents were there, too, smiling and dipping into the guacamole and chips.
During dinner, everyone sat at tables according to family ties. But after the buffet and speeches, we all drifted out to the lanes. The bowling balls glowed yellow and pink, orange and blue in the black light, and the rock music was punctuated by the pinging of arcade machines. We donned our bowling shoes and started downing pins: children with adults, step-cousins and step-siblings with cousins and siblings, ex-laws with in-laws. As the pins came down, the family divisions blurred and we were all bowling together.
Among the shrieking and victory dances on the bowling lanes, under the black light that turned our white buttons and laces blue, I remembered my first wedding. That marriage ended in a painful divorce after two children in seven years. Just like Jon and Kate Plus Eight, my ex and I shared a house for a while after we were separated, trying to disrupt the children's lives as little as possible. It wasn't a mansion, and we didn't have nannies and security guards, but it worked well enough. “If you can do that,” my mother proclaimed, “then you can stay married.”
Sadly, no. But what we could do was remember the qualities we loved in each other and be civil for the sake of the kids. As Arianna Huffington pointed out in describing her own vacation with her ex (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/vacationing-with-my-ex_b_226310.htmlin), divorce can be dignified. Our children deserve the best of us even when the marriage bonds we once thought permanent fray and break. This is an important lesson, since blended families are now the norm and the majority of American families are in some form of step arrangement, according to The Stepfamily Foundation (http://www.stepfamily.org/). In fact, The Council on Contemporary Families reports that at least 65 percent of remarriages involve children younger than 19 (http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/).
Lizzie's wedding took place in a garden the next day. Her dress sparkled in the sunlight and we were surrounded by lilies and roses. But what made the day so different, so perfect, was the fact that each of us felt surrounded by an abundance of love and acceptance.