R.I.P. Mia

A dog is the only thing on earth that will love you more than you love yourself. ~ Josh Billings

Her once jet black muzzle had become peppered with grey at once giving her the appearance of being wise and betraying her advanced age. We got her as a pup from a Wisconsin farm 13 years ago. As a puppy she had frolicked about yipping and yapping and nibbling at our fingers, licking us and leaving the scent of puppy on our face and hands. She loved to jump into the water to fetch a stick. But that was a life time ago in dog years.

I think in her dreams she remembered her youth, remembered the time when she could walk without pain, play without tiring. In her sleep, her legs moved as though she was running, chasing after the kids, charging after rabbits, fetching the tennis ball and bringing it back dripping with saliva.

The past year, the decay of age began to show increasingly, her walking became labored, her reactions slow to the point that her bark no longer coincided with any incident, her ability to hear seemed nonexistent, she struggled to stand because her hind hips were unstable, she needed help climbing up and down the steps. In the last week, her sneezing emitted flecks of blood. It was the blood that finally drove me to take the final step. As a young dog she enjoyed car rides, stuck her nose out the window and sniffed the air rushing across her face. Today, she took her final car ride, she lay in the back seat barely moving, oblivious to the breeze coming through the open window.

We walked into the vet and they lead us to a back room. They called her princess. In the room there was a soft blanket, a fitting throne for the aging lady to lay upon. It was in that room that I handed over the leash to the vet, in that room where I said my final goodbye, in that room where I rubbed her head for the last time before walking out the door for I could not bear to be there in that room when they vet helped her fall asleep for the final time.