On Saturday September 14, my dog Rémy died. On our morning walk that day, she collapsed about two blocks from home. I was gazing off into the distance while she sniffed the ground and then I heard a massive thump; when I looked down, she was flat on her back as if being held in place by a gigantic, invisible hand. She flipped over after about fifteen seconds, and then remained in a low crouch, clearly confused. She finally stood and we walked slowly home, where she refused to eat or drink. Upstairs, my wife Liz was trying to back for a wedding we were supposed to attend in just a few hours. I knew something was wrong with Rémy, so I told Liz I had to call the vet. At first, the vet seemed unconcerned, but after taking Rémy out of the examination room and into the back, the vet returned with a completely different demeanor. You need to get to an ER right now, she said, and you need to start thinking about end of life decision. A few hours later on the floor of an ER examination room, Liz and I made the hard decision to end Remy’s suffering. We held Rémy and cried and cried and cried and I was petting Rémy, my hand on her head, her nose against my thigh, as she took her last breath and her heart stopped.
Liz and I have been together for eleven years; of those, we had Rémy for ten. I don’t think I’ve spent a day in our home where Rémy and I didn’t go for at least one walk, almost always two, one pre-dawn and one somewhere between, oh, 2 pm and 8 pm, depending on how the day went. She was a constant, steady presence in our lives.
I wish I could hug her one more time.
For the first two years, in our home in Columbia, Missouri, Rémy was allowed on the couch, which really, was two couches I bought for fifty dollars that sat in the television room, a sublevel living room with windows that looked out onto the front yard, a large room that really wasn’t much more than a TV and two couches, but where Rémy and I watched TV and she covered the couch in white fur. Now and again over the years, when Liz or I were sick or feeling blue, Rémy could creep onto the couch (or bed) and sit next to us.
We got Rémy when she was just eight weeks old. Somehow I have lost the email address or website or whatever I had to locate the family from southwest Missouri who owned Labradors. Rémy was their third generation of dogs, and it was at this same house that this couple raised their young children and took them and their dogs into town (wherever it was) so that the Labs were comfortable around people. We brought Rémy home in a laundry basket. We bought some toys and food at a PetSmart. Liz and I had been together a year or so. Rémy was ours.
Rémy was the kindest, happiest dog, easygoing and sweet. If you have met Rémy, you would know that isn’t hyperbole. She was also insanely strong: she was nearly eighty lbs., tall for a Labrador, with a barrel chested ribcage. She was, even in her last year, incredible fast and sprinted across open fields like an Olympian. At home, she raced to the front and back of the house to get to the door to go outside, sounding like a freight train. The thump of her paws mixed with the clatter of her claws is, and always be, such a happy sound to me, the rhythm of enthusiasm.
When Rémy was younger and not always covered in dirt from burrowing into Liz’s garden in our backyard, her coat was bright white but her ears were streaked with yellow. Even in her last year, I never saw her beat in a race for a tennis ball by another dog. When playing, she never gave up a stick, chomping down, tail wagging metronomically slow, gripping like a steel trap.
Rémy was joy. Rémy filled me with joy. Joy: an emotion of wellbeing, success, and happiness. Joy: the expression of such emotion. Joy: the state of happiness. The cock of her head, the wag of her tail, the thundering of her race to the door, her contented purr (I swear) when she was getting pets.
At night time, she slept on the floor next to my daughter’s bed.
Rémy was super sweet but definitely not well trained. People asked Liz and me about her training more than once, and we usually said something self-deprecating. Because it was true. Because Rémy loved to introduce herself to people by goosing them (dog owners generally roared with laughter; non-dog owners did not); we failed with multiple collars and leashes to “control” Rémy on walks before finally settling on a retractable leash that always had Rémy far, far ahead of us. None of this mattered. While she definitely had a “big girl bark” it was rarely used, reserved for the garbage man sometimes and the doorbell always. While she always had the big energy for adventure—daily walks, chasing the tennis ball, and of course, swimming in natural water like ponds and creeks—her demeanor, even as a puppy, was to be pretty content to be in the room with you. Eventually she’d snore, have dreams (I always assumed it was chasing deer, but who knows?), roll over with a contented sigh.
She peace, and calm. Steady. She was these things and she made me feel these things. The absence of her presence in our lives is unsettling. I didn’t realize how much I depended on it every day, and how destabilizing her absence would become.
I feel that a major moment in my life has ended. Not changed, but ended. An era, I guess. Ten years is a long time even if sitting her it felt way too short because Rémy is gone and Rémy was everything.
My daughter of course doesn’t understand. She’s not supposed to: she’s three and a half years old. I’m not sure now if it was that Saturday or the next day, but the three of us went to our playground and we were walking home, and my daughter asked, Where’s Rémy?
We have explained, repeatedly, honestly and gently, that Rémy has died, that Rémy won’t be coming home, that she was suffering (“an internal boo-boo”) and we had to make the decision to end Rémy’s life. We didn’t veer from that: we explained that Rémy was “given medicine” so she could die quietly, that there was going to be a “special fire” for her and we would bring her ashes home. Saoirse asked question after question, often repeated dozens of times, as she tries to make sense of this; she isn’t sad or upset, because of course, death doesn’t mean anything to her. Liz usually answered her questions while I tried not to breakdown and cry for 30th time that day; my answers are too adult, too rambling, for a child.
There has yet to be space to grieve, really, and this will hurt for a long time. Maybe always, if dully. I admit to feeling a little silly acknowledging this deep love for Rémy—the part of my brain that’s like, it’s a dog! Dogs die! Pets die!—but I am also certain that I am not alone in feeling this level of loss. Liz feels it. And several people have called, texted, or stopped by the house (or all three) and shared their own losses of dogs and cats. All of these people seemed a little in awe of how much it hurt.
She was my dog. My dog. Not in a possession way but in a “this dog and I are simpatico” sort of way. I felt very understood and loved and I realize how stupid that sounds. I always wanted a dog when I was a boy. Me and my sister both did; we loved Snoopy and our favorite stuffies were dogs, but my dad always said no. No, no, no. Until, one day, for no apparent reason, Dad decided to take me and my ister to a house a neighborhood or two away and we got to pick a puppy from a litter of poodle-terrier mutts. Muffin was our first dog, and she a tiny thing, fifteen lbs. and we were so excited to have a dog. I think I was eleven.
Which means I was becoming a teenager. Muffin was great. A small dog, black fur, very poodle looking other than her short legs. She was very chill. She was, very much, my mother’s dog. I didn’t love walking Muffin, found to be an aggravating chore to do after school. Muffin liked sitting in your lap, and I mostly remember her being in my mother’s lap while she read or watched TV. Muffin lived a long life though I don’t think her health was great those last few years.
I waited until I had a house to get a dog of my own. I was 35 years old and Liz and I had been together for about a year. I knew we were doing this together and I knew what this meant, what we were saying without saying it, to each other.
On my daily To Do list, the first item was always “Walk Rémy” because it would always get done and I always wrote the list after we walked. This weekend, it rained. I never liked walking Rémy in the rain. Despite a decade to get it right, I never had particularly good rain boots; hell, I never had proper hiking boots, often just wearing my rattiest shoes. I preferred an umbrella to a rain coat, which often made me feel overheated and sweaty. Cold I never minded, but rain I did.
Of course, Rémy loved walking in the rain just like she loved walking in everything else. Hundred degrees and sunny and no wind? No problem! Eight inches of snow and more still coming? No problem!
Liz pointed out the other day that there was no other creature in such close physical proximity to me. Sure, my wife and daughter, but they go out in the world. Rémy stayed nearby. Rémy was here. Rémy was up against the couch, where my arm could dangle down and pet her head; or she was across the room, doing a snore/grunt as turned over and put a paw over her muzzle to fall back asleep; or she was lapping water out of her dish, smacking and slurping, then walking across the room, the clack of her claws on the hardwood. We don’t value, Liz said, nonhuman animals, what they add to our lives.
I’m feeling better. I don’t much want to feel better. I want to hold onto my grief and think about Rémy and see her slow wagging her tail as she tries to understand if the tenor of my voice means she’s about to get pets or if she is about to go outside, both of which are excellent choices.
I wonder if healing is forgetting. Or, perhaps, I’m not forgetting at all: there are thousands (literally) of photos and hundred of photos of Rémy on my phone and I spent time every day scrolling through them and watching her play, sleep, climb, run, walk, and roll through a life full of adventure without any suffering or pain. It is a dog’s life; it is a wonderful life. She gave that to me.
I feel very conscious of the fact that I’m not saying anything. Or, that I should be saying something, that I should have a moment of writerly insight, a logical argument, philosophical quotes from Very Smart People woven together to create a tapestry of the human condition that can make all of this seem Important. But I do not know how to do that and perhaps more important, I do not want to. I do not want to make any effort to dress this up, to sound like bad academic writing or self-important thinkpiece.
I’m just a guy who lost his dog. That should be enough.
Now it has been a little more than two weeks since Rémy died. Earlier, I wrote that I was feeling better, and that is true, though I also thought—and I often make this mistake—this would be more linear (why do I keep making this particular mistake, in every facet of life?), that I would crest a wave and be on the other side of this loss. I did okay in the middle of the week, but it was a hard work week (another story) and my emotional capacity was wavering, and I often relied on Rémy when I was feeling blue but of course she isn’t here anymore and even the daily task of walking and feeding her would have helped and on Thursday, I once again just crumbled.
My daughter tried to make me feel better by hanging a picture she drew of Rémy on our dining room table. It is here now, off to my left, at elbow height. Where Rémy always sat, she said. When she wanted food, she added.
My daughter spilled something in the kitchen this past week—I forget what, no big deal, kids spill—and my first thought was Rémy isn’t here to clean this up. She would have been all over it, wolfing down (sausage? Chicken? What was it?) and I’m on my hands and knees and my daughter is angry her food fell and she’s hungry and we had just cleaned the kitchen floor and I’m on my hands and knees and I’m suddenly trying to hold in the tears and Liz notices and intuits my feelings and makes a soft soothing sound and then its waterworks all over again and I’m on the floor crying about Rémy and I physically can’t stand.
Thank you for reading all of this, and for all your kind words these last few weeks. It means more to me than you might think. This message, as you can probably tell, not super coherent, barely edited, and full of Big Feelings. I’m fine with that. Rémy was the very best doggo and expanded my heart and my life in innumberable ways.
As my friend Julie said, Rémy is the boss of our hearts. I’m grateful for every day we had together.
Until the next time,
Michael
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