Jon Lester's Eulogy (the cat, not the ball player)

In my house, when a baseball player wins the World Series for both the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs, you get a pet named after you. I am talking about Jon Lester, the pitcher who won the Series with the 2007 and 2013 Red Sox and the 2016 Cubs. Our cat Jon Lester was named after him. This is the cat's eulogy not the pitcher. I understand that the pitcher is doing fine and living out his retirement in the state of Georgia hunting, drinking a lot of wine and writing, last I heard.

When you live in a rural setting, you really need a cat. Mice do find a way into your home. Our cat Mavis kept them away. She wasn't a very good cat. She is probably the only pet I've ever had that I did not bond with. She wasn't friendly, she seemed to hate humans but loved our dogs. She would duck when we went to pet her but she would run up to our dogs and rub them. She would disappear for days, even weeks. We only deduced that she was dead when she failed to return, when mice started showing up and she wasn't eating her food. I didn't write her a eulogy. 

We replaced her with Jasper who was a truly awesome cat but we only had him for a couple of months. He was hit by a car in front of our house. I had to pick up his near dead body off the road with blood shooting out of him. It was one of the worse things I ever had to do. 

We had Wrigley for only a couple of months as well. We didn't let her outside because I didn't want to go through that again. She was a timid sweet animal. She got outside once and while my dog Hazel was home alone. When I got home with my other dog Woodrow. I let him outside to be with Hazel. A few minutes later, I looked out the back window and I saw them playing tug of war with something. This is one of my more awful images I have in my brain. 

2016 was very bad year for us. Our dog Max died, we had a drought here causing us to go without water for a few weeks and Trump got elected. If it wasn't for the Cubs winning the World Series, it would have been our worst year together as a couple. The other great thing that happened that year we adopted (Jon) Lester from the Addison County animal shelter.

We needed a tough cat that would stand his ground against Hazel who was kinda a bitch. He was a barn cat. The people who brought him into the shelter had too many cats in their barn. He ended up being the perfect cat. Gorgeous as well! 

Hazel was afraid of him. He swiped at her whenever she walked by which was perfect. He was a great mouser. He cuddled with me almost every night, sometimes on my shoulder, my chest, sometimes at my feet. He even played fetch. If you crinkled a ball of paper and threw it, he'd run and catch it then put it back in your hand. I still haven't had a dog that would play fetch but I've had two cats that have. Go figure! I was convince he was smarter than my dogs. If his water bowl was empty, he'd stand on the side of it and meow. My dogs, and even some humans I know, don't communicate that well.

It was early in the summer this year that he got out. He occasionally did this, but always came back right away. This time he did not. I put his food out for him. Something was eating it, but I had no proof it was him. So I set my wilderness camera up to verify it was him. I moved it closer and closer to the house until it was on the front porch. This is a video of him on June 4th. 

I borrowed a trap from one of my neighbors and the first night I had it out there, I caught him but because I didn't set the trap correctly, he backed his way out. Here is the video of that feat:

The panel behind him wasn't set properly so I am guess that he just continued to backed out of the trap. He was too smart for his own good. He appeared on my video for about month after that. He never got caught again. Then he stopped showing up around mid-July.

We assume he passed away somehow. Either a car, a fisher or a coyote got him. Maybe someone took him in. I only hope. I still look for him when I go out in the yard. I miss him very much. 

2016 - The Year That Sucked

2016 was an awful year all around. We lost some of our musical greats and some of my favorites: David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen. Other famous people I've admired that we lost this year were musicians Leon Russell, Sharon Jones, Merle Haggard and Glenn Frey, actors Gene Wilder, George Kennedy and Alan Rickman, Gwen Ifill (journalist), Garry Shandling (comedian), Harper Lee (novelist), Pat Conroy (novelist), Edward Albee (playwright), Jose Fernandez (athlete), John Glenn (astronaut) and Mohammad Ali (athlete). I am from a generation of people who were the first to grow up with media saturation, the MTV generation, so it makes sense as we get older that we'd have a year like this year. The ubiquity of social media only makes it more in our face than ever before. I expect this may be the norm going forward. I was doing errands with my wife this weekend and I received a notification on my phone that Carrie Fisher died ... Bam! ... in your face. No getting away from it.

The election this year was incredibly divisive and seemed to go forever with two candidates that no one seemed to really want, the worst in my lifetime. It ended with a fascist in power and lots of people freaking out. The only good thing that happened this year, on a global front, was the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. The rest of year just sucked.

On a personal level, the year has been even worse. It was full of death. I lost my father. I am not very close with my family but among them, he is the person with whom I was closest. He made my childhood bearable and I still don't know how he had time or energy to be a father. He had a lot of jobs and responsibilities which should have made him exhausted but he always had time for me whether it was for going bowling, fishing, playing cribbage or a game of croquet. He never failed to make me laugh.

A friend of mine's son, Tyler, died of an overdose at the age of 32. This might be the first people that I've known since he was a kid to die. He had some rough times as an adult, but as a kid he was a shining star. My favorite memory of him was driving him from Boston to Detroit to transport him from his dads to this mom's. We got to know him very well on that road trip. Losing him was a shock.

We also lost four pets this year. It sounds like we have a real zoo here but we didn't have more than three pets at any one time.  Last Summer, we adopted a puppy, Margo, who was going to be a great dog if she had lived. On a windy day last Winter, our front door blew open and both our dogs got out.  When they came back, she was limping. It got worst throughout the week. Eventually, she couldn't walk and was in real pain. An x-ray showed she had a displaced a bone in her back and no chance of meaningful recovery. We assumed that she jumped at a car on the road by our house. This is a picture of her when we first met her at the shelter.

Our 14 year old cat, Mavis disappeared this year. She was sickly and never a very good cat. We'd go weeks without seeing her so we didn't look for her when she disappeared. She disliked people but she was a great mouser. She must have gone some place to die. We knew she was gone for good when mice started showing up. We replaced her with Jasper who was one of the best cats ever. He was a few years old and an outdoor cat. Even if we tried, we couldn't keep this cat indoors especially during the summer. He was full of character, affectionate, a good mouser and would snuggle up with us and the dogs. I loved that cat. I was looking forward to having him for another decade or two. One day in September, one of neighbors came to our door to inform us that a car had hit him. We had to go out to the road to get him. We tried to bring him to the vet with blood all over my shirt, but he died on the way. That is two animals we lost on our dirt road this year that has very little traffic.

A few weeks later we got Wrigley, a female cat who was very sweet. We had her for a very short time. She got outside and was attacked by an animal.

We have a new dog, Woodrow and a new cat, Lester. They are both great and doing fine. Hopefully, I won't have to go through that for a long time.

 
The year was filled with a ton of other awful experiences. In August, I walked on a bee hive while mowing the lawn, getting at least eight stings. I ran yelling into the house. I spent a weekend in extreme pain. I had to get up early morning, while it was still cool, to kill the hive with bee bomb (see my outfit below).  In September, the well at our house went dry and this lasted into November. What made this worse is we had to turn the pump off, but we discovered the pump was hardwired to the house so we had to shut off one of the circuit breakers to stop the pump. A good part of the house was on this breaker, important things like my router, work phone, our freezer, refrigerator and both televisions. In order for me to live and work from home, we had to run extension cords throughout the house to have internet access and keep the frig and freezer on.  We lived like this, taking showers at friends' house, eating on paper plates and going to laundromats, for about six weeks. Ugh!

The only really great thing that happened this year, other than the Cubs winning, was that my niece Ashley came to live with us for about month this summer. I really love her and we got to spend some quality time with her playing games, kayaking and just hanging out. I also have been running consistently this year, about three miles every other day. I ran my first 5k race in 30 years. I hope to keep this up.

Let's hope for a better 2017. 

Cokie #bestdogever

Euthanizing your pet is perhaps the most macabre experience you will ever have in your life. I've had to do it three times now and I can't imagine ever getting used to it. It is not just the loss of the creature that you love that is so awful, but the experience in general is really difficult. The vet comes into the room with a syringe of chemicals, they insert it into your pet's veins and they slowly pass-away in peace. They don't even seem like they have died. They seem like they are just staring.  You have to close their eyes. When you pick them up, only their limp body convinces you that they are gone. Perhaps it is more humane than the alternatives, but this doesn't stop it from being an awful experience. Not only do you have the loss of a loved one to deal with but now you have this awful memory for the rest of your life.

I am a privileged person to have had my dog, Cokie, in my life. She is the only dog that we've had that we have had since the very beginning of her life. When we picked her up she fit in the cup of my hands. All our other dogs came "pre-owned" with a ton of issues ranging from aggression to abandonment, while Cokie had none of these. We like to think it is because we had her since she was born that she was perfect. I can't say I've ever met a dog like her. She lit up the room. Everyone wanted to pet her. We had a line of people who wanted to dog sit. She was sweet and gentle and every child we knew wanted to take her home with them. How an extremely imperfect person as myself got thrown into the role of making the decision on whether this perfect creature would live or not ... I do not know.  How could I judge of her suffering? How do I judge on whether it is her suffering or my own that drives this decision? I am a wretch.

Cokie's perfection started in 2002. We had only one dog, Rex, at that time. He needed companionship for when we left him alone. My wife saw a free German shepherd puppies ad in the paper. She drove over Lake Champlain to Crowne Point, NY to a trailer park. The only pup left was the runt that no one wanted because she was so small. She was the smallest in a litter of ten so she didn't get a lot of time at her mom's teats early on. The people who owned her parents, kept them outside so when we took Cokie home her stomach was distended with worms. She had the worst puppy breathe I have ever smelled and she was obsessed with licking which is something that she never got over. I don't think I've ever fell in love so quickly.

I remember a few years ago, I was on the phone with an insurance agent who wanted to charge me higher rates because I had a German shepherd and I tried to explain "she only weighs 40 pounds" and of course, she wouldn't ever bite anyone, but might lick someone. This didn't convince him and I found another agent. She didn't look like a shepherd. We got a lot of comments about her when we brought her into public.  "Is that a fox?"  " ... a coyote?"  "... a dingo?"  Right! I have a dingo as a pet. Both of her parents were German Shepherds but she didn't look like one. She never got any black in her coating.  It just meant that she lacked the agouti gene so she was only tan. Her being only tan and very small, convinced some that she wasn't a Shepherd.

About three years ago, we were vacationing with two dogs in Saguenay, Quebec, a beautiful area just a few hours drive from the Canadian border. We rented a dog-friendly place that wasn't really very friendly for dogs. This is just a reminder that dog-friendly only means that you can have dogs; it doesn't mean that it is a good place to have them. This place had a loft for the bed and a steep staircase that was more like a ladder. There was no stopping her from going up to be with us at night while we slept. I could help her get up but getting her down was another story. She fell down the last few stairs and hurt her hip. This breed normally has hip difficulties so this didn't help and she was around ten years old so prognosis wasn't good. She hobbled around for awhile and she got worse as the years progressed. When she was young she used to run around the dog park keeping pace with the whippets, but no longer. The last year and a half of her life we had to carry her outside for her bathroom breaks. The winters were not pleasant. Her light weight made this a lot easier for us. She spent the last two years of her life on her bed not doing much, but not in pain. Her quality of life was still good. It must have been the pain killers that eventually destroyed her liver.

I had a dream today that I was holding her. I could feel her very familiar coat, I felt the breathe in her chest going up and down and her heart beating. I believe she even licked my face like she used to do. This was nice. It felt very real and sweet; it felt like a good-bye or perhaps that she was forgiving me. Regardless, I had a somber reminded of my loss. I know it is an irrational guilt I have for euthanizing her, but it will remain. It did with the other two. No matter how I tell myself it was the ethical thing to do, I feel just awful about it.

Now that my three dogs are dead and I have two new ones, I honestly pledge that I will never have three dogs around the same age again.  Too much heart-ache and expenses all at the same time.

The Strangers I Have Come To Hate

I walk along the road in front of my house and I see the same trash on every walk: Budweiser beer cans, cigarette butts and disbursed lottery tickets. I hate these people who can't keep their trash in their cars. Okay, maybe hate is too strong of a word.  Not sure why people don't think they have to keep their own trash in their own cars. I have a social worker / minister friend who is very analytical. She would say that they are not invested in their society. Of course, I take the other route. I just think they are dickheads. A few weeks ago, I went kayaking in St. Albans VT in a lovely alcove of Lake Champlain. This is one of the few places in New England that you will see a Northern map turtle. They are all over the place.  You wouldn't know that there was a patch of pristine wilderness hidden away from the huge pile of trash that lie at the entrance of the boat launch. I almost didn't put the boat in because of how disgusting the launch was. People were fishing there and other boaters were going about their business ... no one was picking up the trash. Maybe hate isn't too strong of a word. I picked up what I could. I don't think I will ever understand how someone can go fishing somewhere but not be interested in the long term health of where they fish. Are they not invested or do they just not connect the dots? Do they think that someone else will pick it up?  I am not sure, but I think it has more do with people not seeing how their actions affect the rest of the world. Dots not connecting or synapses not firing.

Several years ago, my wife and I had to make the decision on whether to have children or not. It was a complicated decision with many factors. I mentioned in an earlier post about the environment being a factor, but that was a minor factor. The biggest factor was my wallet. Both my wife and I spent a good part of our lives being poor. For me, it was my 20's, when I lived in Boston, that I was flat broke. I didn't want to revisit that era in my life. It wasn't until I was in my 30's that I became financially stable. Having kids would have brought me right back there. One of the other minor factors is that we really didn't like the world we would be bringing a child into. People's priorities seem so wrong. If I had a child, I think I would be unbearable, especially about the environment. I don't know why everyone that has a child isn't an environmentalist. What kind of world are we leaving them? How can I think that we are going to resolve this when I can't even expect a fisherman to clean up the shoreline where they fish? The fishermen that day are lucky I didn't have any progeny, I think I would have yelled at them. The world should be grateful ... I have dogs instead.

Three of the four dogs that I have had could be considered rescues. I don't know who owned my dog Rex before we did. I am glad I don't know them. It has been two years since he has passed and I still get very sad when I think of him. The act of missing him is a grab bag of emotions. I laugh a little, I cry a little and occasionally I get angry. When we got him from the Humane Society, he was damage goods. He was six months old and had a lot of fear aggression. When he got afraid, he got aggressive. He bit two people that I know of, one of my neighbors and an incompetent dog sitter. We noticed early with him that if you raised your hand too fast, he'd duck thinking we were going to hit him. We don't know the details to how he got that way. I know nothing about the strangers that had him before us. They are strangers to me, but I hate them. I have no problem using that word. They are the scum of the earth, the wrong kind of people, the bane of humanity, the dregs of mankind, the unclean masses, the riffraff, rubbish and vermin. At this point I have thank Thesaurus.com for actually have an entry for Scum of the Earth.

I still have my German Shepherd, Cokie. We got her at six weeks old back in 2002. She is getting quite old now and has difficulty walking. I have to carry her down the stairs a few times a day for her bathroom breaks. When we got her she was only a few pounds, half of her body weight was worms. The dog that we got free from an ad in the paper cost us a fortune at her first vet appointment. We found her at a trailer park in Crowne Point, NY. The people who had her said no one wanted her because she was a runt. She was living outside about to be put down. She might be the best dog I ever had. She is the only dog we've had since she was a puppy and our best behaved dog, so I think we've done well by her.

Stray and neglected dogs are the unfortunate residue of irresponsible humans. After my lab Max passed away a few months ago, we realized our house was very quiet. Too quiet. We went from having three dogs to having one, in about a year. The two dogs that passed were the loud ones. The one remaining was the quiet well behaved dog that is now so lame and old that she doesn't leave her bed all day long.  We need more dogs, but we could not handle a puppy just yet because Cokie is just not up for that amount of energy just yet.  We joined a fostering group for dogs in transition. These dogs are rescued from bad situations and need a place to stay while a permanent owner can be found.  So far we have fostered one dog, named Tammy, a black lab from the Carolinas. Apparently, she was bred by a irresponsible breeder for hunting. After they determine which pups will be good hunting dogs, they dispose of the rest of the litter. She was left somewhere out in the woods to fend for herself. She was found and brought to the rescue facility. This was the most screwed up dog I've ever met. She was afraid of doorways, wouldn't walk on a leash and would pee when I picked her up. When I brought her outside in my fenced-in yard, she would hide under the porch all day. Luckily, a wonderful family in southern Vermont adopted her and I only had her in my home for a few weeks. The family that adopted her had three old labs and had just lost two of them due to cancer. Their one remaining dog would not eat because he was lonely. When Tammy came to live with them, he started eating and I hear they are best of friends now and she is walking on a leash.

Sometimes people adopt dogs and don't realize how much work they are going to be. But instead of finding a good home for them or bring them to a shelter, they just let them go. Most Vermont shelters are non-kill so you can drop a dog off without it being a death sentence.  Our latest dog, Hazel (she's a keeper) was caught after six weeks of wandering around a town here in Northern VT. Obviously, someone didn't want her and didn't do a good job of finding her a new home. The people in this town tried hard to catch her and a few people tried to kill her, I hear, with poison traps. She is an awesome dog with one obvious problem. She has major separation anxiety. She just loses it when we leave her alone. We are working on the problem with her. In the three weeks that we've had her she has destroyed two screens, a metal crate and has ruined part of our fence. I got home one day and she was waiting for me outside the fence. We've been able to leave the home once, so far, without incident. Perhaps she is figuring out that we are coming back.

In his novel, Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins writes that "There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.” I guess I am one of those people who aren't smart enough to know better because I think there are two types of people in the world: those that cause most of the problems and those who are, at least, working on the solutions. I like to think I am in the latter.  Do I seem self righteous, here? Sure, I am self-righteous and if you are one of those douche bags who is being so casual about the lives of these beautiful animals, you really need to know, I am better than you. You are the strangers that I hate and I don't think that is too strong of a word. I think it the perfect word to describe how I feel about you.

Max's Eulogy

A few years ago, my brother-in-law Kevin rushed into his burning home to save his dog Echo. Both of them survived the incident with the only damage being some burnt paws and/or sneakers and some smoke inhalation. In a similar story of canine related human heroics, my friend Patrick walked onto, then into, a half frozen pond to save his dog Moose who had fallen through the ice. My personal heroic story doesn't involve fire nor ice. Back in 2010, I rushed into the Burlington Emergency Veterinarian armed with only a credit card and saved my dog Max. It was one of those awful experiences that you dread as a pet owner. How much money do you spend to save your pet?  If I were a millionaire, I'd spend millionaires to save one of my dogs. Since I am not a millionaire, I have a limit. Like Kevin and Patrick, I'd like to think I'd risk my life, but risking my financial life is different, is it not? We spent an obscene amount of money to save him that day. My crazy yellow lab ate a piece of wire that was stuck in his intestines. They had to cut the wire out the piece of intestine out and reattach them. The first time they did the surgery, it failed. The cost of the surgeries, the cost of his rehab at the vet and then the meds and prescription food we had to feed him the rest of his life, it came out to an amount that I would not like to share. I know too many people that are struggling financially. I'd feel uncomfortable sharing the amount of money I spent on this dog. We had to cancel our trip to Korea and we rolled the balance into a home equity loan when we built an addition on our house.

Max lived another three years so I have no regrets. Everyday he lived he became more cost effective. He made me laugh everyday and I don't think I am exaggerating. The stress relief alone made him a worthwhile companion and investment. Joy is priceless. Every time I lose a pet, I am amazed at how it affects me. The loss is substantial. I look for him by habit. I reach for him in bed, he was like a living pillow. When I get up from my desk, I instinctively step over him. He used to follow me from room to room so he was always under my feet.

When my wife was a preschool teacher, she had to do home visits for kids that were aged birth to three. She would go into people's home and spend quality time with the kids while they were too young for school. Max was a pet in one of these homes. She bonded with him. So when the family needed to give him up, they asked her if she could take him. We had two dogs already so it wasn't that easy to take him in but he bonded with Rex and Cokie just fine. Two people having three dogs is not a very good plan. Dogs should never outnumber the humans in a household. Adding Max to any mix of dogs seemed to have a multiplicative affect because he was always so excitable. He was six at the time.

Like most labs, he was very needy. If there is someone home all day or if you have children, the lab is the perfect dog. Max was all this and then some. He had a thing for carrying things. If you left your shoes around, one of them would disappear on you.  He didn't destroy them, he'd just carried them around. When the snow melted, you would always find one of your slippers under the snow. He also had a thing for puddles. No matter how small the puddle or muddy, a centimeter deep, he'd lay in it. If you let him off leash, expect to hose him down when you got home. He greeted me every time I came home, usually carrying something, sometimes something he just pulled from my recycle bin.

He was my pillow, my doorbell, my greeter, my protector, my anti-depressant, my entertainer, my shadow, my travel companion and friend. It will be a while before anything is the same. There is a huge hole to fill.

Rex's Eulogy

Beth and I used to attend an annual event in Middlebury, Vermont called Woofstock.   Woofstock sponsored by the Addison County Humane Society for dog owners with booths, demonstrations and games for kids with pets.  It was a fun event.  When my hound mix, Rex, was young, maybe about two years old, I entered him in their "best dog" contest.  You'd march your dog, mostly with other mutts from the shelter, around in a circle while employees of the shelter would ask you why your dog is the "best dog."   I could not even comprehend why I would have to prove he was the best dog ... of course, he was the best dog.  He was my dog, just look at him.

Of course Rex did not win the best dog contest.  It went to some lame dog who did tricks unlike Rex who just sat there and looked beautiful.  It is still very obvious to me that he was indeed the "best" dog. We don't go to Woofstock anymore.

Beth and I grew up in similar circumstances.  We had large families with no dogs.  We lived in city/suburban type neighborhoods where it wasn't easy to have a dog.   We had at least one parent that was dead set against it.  Every Christmas I asked for a dog, every year I was disappointed with my gifts.  When we grew up and moved out, we lived in dorms or rented apartments where dogs were not allowed.  We got our fixes of dog love by dog sitting, walking friend's dogs and bothering strangers.

It wasn't until 2001, when Beth and I bought our first house that we finally got our dog. We had our eye on Rex early in 2001 at the Franklin County Humane Society in St. Albans, Vermont. He was a hound mix puppy, about five months old, mostly Rhodesian Ridgeback, we think. We knew we were closing on our house in a month so we ask if we could put a hold on him.  They told us "NO" understandably, but we were disappointed.   In a few days he was adopted by another family. We closed on our house a few weeks later in April and the very next day we drove back to the Humane Society to finally, after a few decades of wanting a dog, to get our first dog. We were very excited.  When we got there we discovered Rex in one of their kennel cages. He had been returned by the family that had adopted him.  So our conclusion was ... this is our dog.  We had a fleeting belief in destiny.  I still remember driving home in our '92 Corolla with Rex in the backseat, seeing him in the rear view mirror, thinking "that's my dog."

The idea of dog ownership is an odd one.  For one, a dog is 99.8 % genetically identical to a wolf and we bring them into our houses and trust them, some of them more than other members of our families.  After centuries of breeding we have bred out the .2% of wildness to have an amazing relationship, one unlike any other.  But it is a relationship, not ownership.  I didn't own Rex, I loved him.  Perhaps for legal circumstances, we have to use the term "own" but it is not right. Any dog "owner" will tell you, ownership is something we use for objects, like cars and blankets, not for members of your family.

Rex had his problems: he had fear aggression, he barked a lot, he bit at least three people, he was relentless at begging for food and counter-surfing.  For the past decade, the word "Rex" was probably the one word I have said loudly or in anger more often than any other word.  Now that he has gone, I have done so twice already totally out of habit.  But none of these things matter to what he brought us in the category of joy, companionship and laughter.  He was cuddly and sweet. He was great on hike.  We'd let him off-leash and run ahead and always stop and look back then wait for us. His tail was amazing; there exists no better barometer for joy than a hound's tail.  He'd wag whenever you said his name. It was a great day when we discovered if you said the word "REd soX,"  slowly, he'd wag away. He protected the house.  He loved the car. We'd always joke that everytime he got in the car, he thought he was going on a trip to Patten, Maine or Jekyl Island, Georgia.  These are two places he particularly loved.  He'd lick your feet while you were relaxing at the end of the day. He'd dance with me when I played G. Love's "Rodeo Clown." The thing I may miss the most is how he greeted me when I hadn't seen him in a long time. He jump up in excitement, wagging and barking. You've never see a happier creature than when I pick him up at a dog sitter's house.  Surely, I was not worthy of this much love.

Tuesday evening we went to bed as usual.  Rex sleeping between us, Max (our lab) sleeping at our feet and Cokie (our sheppard) sleeping on the floor beside the bed.  When we awoke Rex was panting heavily and he wouldn't eat.  By the end of the day he was gone.  He had two tumors in the area around his heart.  One of them had burst and filled him chest cavity with fluid.  Because of where the tumors were, removing them could have killed him and there was no guarantee that they wouldn't grow back.  I wanted to take him home, I wanted to snatch him away, I tried to rationalize taking him and letting him die in his sleep, but I was simply being selfish.  My buddy was in pain.  As stewards of his care, we had to make the awful decision to put him down.  It is a macabre experience to put it lightly, but a necessary evil.  He had 11+ years of great days and one very bad day.  I have a lot of irrational guilt for what I had to do my friend.  I know it was the correct and moral thing to do but this is no solace for the emotional me.  We have a huge hole in our lives.  Rex, my dog, my first dog, is gone forever.  It will be awhile before I get over this.

Bait Dogs

I often refer to my dogs as rescues. This is not entirely correct. My hound was in a no-kill shelter when we got him. My lab as with a family that knew they were neglecting him and had the wherewithal to ask for help. Of my three dogs, only my shepard could actually be considered a rescue. We found her from a classified ad. There was a large litter of German Shepards and she was the runt. Apparently, no one wanted the runt. She was only a few weeks old, her belly was bloated with worms and she was living outside. I don't know what would have happened to her.

This weekend, I met a dog that was a real rescue. Duke is a bull terrier, also known as a pit bull. What a sweet dog! He was once a bait dog. Bait dogs are dogs that used by dog fighters to train their fighting dogs. Their mouths are often taped closed so that they cannot defend themselves from the fighter. They don't need to be skilled, they can use any dog. Often, dog fighters get their dogs from ads in the paper for "free dogs" and some of them are stolen from their owners. (Are you feeling warm and fuzzy about humanity yet?)

Hamlet's Eulogy

I put my best friend down this week. He was quite active most of his life, even his last, his 18th. According to the chart in the waiting room at the vet, an 18 year old cat is in the geriatric stage of his life. He was 88 in human years, yet he’d still play with string or chase a light beam across the floor. When he was a kitten, I discovered that he’d play fetch. You could take a small piece of paper, crinkle it, his face would light up and then he’d chase it after thrown … he’d jump, pick up the ball with his mouth and bring it right back. I didn’t teach him this, he just did it one day to my surprise. We had been doing this together for almost two decades, since I was in my twenties. He was the best companion you could have expect from a dumb little cat. This week, I paid a man to inject chemicals into him that would cause him to exit this mortal coil in a humane fashion. I cannot help but hate myself a little even though I know it was the right thing to end his suffering. I have survivors guilt, it seems.

In 1992, I had been living in the Boston area for about a year. I had moved to Boston not only to start a new life but to get away from the old one. Like many Americans, like Gatsby, I had a plan to reinvent myself and a big vibrant city is a fine place to accomplish this task. I did not plan on the loneliness. I became a Big Brother and one day, I decided to get a cat at the Dedham Animal Rescue League. I let my little brother, Angel, pick the cat. He chose the one that was meowing the loudest, a white domestic short hair with some patches of gray and brown. I had always wanted a cat named Hamlet due to the neurotic nature of the Dane. He had been found in a Burger King dumpster by a BK employee and brought to the shelter so he always had a link to royalty. He not only gave me companionship but he gave me someone to come home to and someone to be responsible for. It gave me a strength from a source that I didn’t expect. It allowed me to stop concentrating on myself for a little each day. The moment I brought him home was probably the moment I started to grow up.

In the 18 years I had him, he had moved with me many times from Dedham to Brighton to Watertown to Concord to Roslindale to Burlington Vermont then to my first house in Monkton and now to Westford where he lies in a grave in my yard. He was always an outdoor cat. I have never believed in keeping cats captive inside. I find it amazing that he died of his kidneys failing and not getting hit by a car or eaten by a predator. He never really went far from the house. The furthest he ever went here in Westford is when he went out to the mail box with me. He’d follow me to the road and then follow me back. This is just one of the events I do each day in which I miss him now. When I am not thinking about him, I see a white spot off the corner of my eye and I think it is him. I feel him at my feet when I am sleeping and expect to awaken with him on my chest. When I work with my laptop, on my deck, I swear I can always hear him. Disappointment, a sense of loss, grief … it is daily now. My fondest memory of Hamlet’s adventures outside is one day, when I lived in Brighton, I stepped off the bus on my commute home and walked through the parking lot behind the Dunkin’ Donuts. As I approached I saw a big group of pigeons walking around in a big circles. “What is happening here?” I asked myself. I walked a bit further to see some donut pieces lying on the pavement “Why are the pigeons not eating the donuts?” I walked further to see the entire circle of pigeons with Hamlet in the middle of the circle watching. It was quite funny. He was like a lion, the king of the beast, on the serengeti. He was that beautiful.

In the spirit of this Blog, what I learned today (not just today but this week) is what a true sense of loss is. You could consider me lucky in that in my middle age, this is the first time I feel a sense of loss due to the death of a loved one. I know it sounds impossible. My grandparents died when I was very young. My mother’s death lasted a decade in which she suffered from a stroke. We lost her in steps which made the grieving experience less sudden. The long time allowed for gradual healing. You could also say one of the reasons why I haven’t lost anyone close to me because I don’t have many people in my life I am very close to. I am closer to my pets than I am to most people. When I was a kid, I asked for a puppy every Christmas. If they had only known that they could returned all my toys for just one pet that I could call my own. It wasn’t until I was older and had my own place that I could actually have a pet of my own. It has been almost a week and I have already gotten into the habit of going for a walk to his grave with one of my dogs each morning. It is a nice little spot at the top of a hill with a pile of rocks scattered with wildflower seeds. I have never understood until now why anyone would visit a grave. It is just a way to keep someone you miss in your life, however faint. Life is cruel and we cling to those that make it less so however unfulfilling that pile of rocks is.