Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (39 page)

true that helped these chickens grow to their
inevitable end here in my pot is also still, somehow,
magically present in this food that I serve my old
friend. Watching her eat, gratefully noting that she
does so with gusto, eager to nourish her old body,
I see chickens sprawled in summer sunshine,
white-feathered wings akimbo like sunbathing angels
pausing for a moment to rest on the greenest of green
grass. I see the brightness in their eyes as they
catch sight of John bringing fresh food or a
special treat of overripe tomatoes. I watch
Vali eat, and I hope that the sunshine still lurks
in that flesh. I wish those chickens were indeed
angels, and that with soft tender hands, they would carry
her to a place where the moment is always right to pause,
sprawled in the summer sun on cool green
grass.

It's been only four days since I picked up the
phone, the veterinarian's cool, professional
voice unexpectedly filling my ear. Even as I
return his greetings, I am looking at the clock
and thinking, But I haven't even begun to worry
yet. In my mind, Vali is perhaps
sedated and being prepped for her surgery. I have thus
far kept at bay the image of her ignobly
restrained on her back, legs tied with much-used
cord that is held by a simple half hitch to each
corner of the operating table. I have not allowed myself
to imagine the first cut or the red trail that springs
up in the scalpel's path, and yet here is the
veterinarian telling me that already the surgery is
nearly complete, that Vali's spleen is gone.
Dumb in my surprise, I ask, "It is?
Well, that's good."
There's a pause, and from years of conversations with
veterinarians, I know that the absence of assurances
to fill the moment means that he is trying to prepare
me for what he must say next. Though the actual
time is probably just a few heartbeats, I have more
than enough time to imagine Vali dead, bled out, dying
or beyond all repair before he continues. "It's not
good. The spleen was totally engulfed in tumors.
It's already spread to the liver, and there are many
nodules of cancer scattered throughout the abdomen.
We're going to close her up."
So there it is. That ticking I heard all weekend
as I looked into her eyes was indeed the final

countdown, begun as surely as if some
cosmic hand had slapped the button on the clock
in a game of speed chess. All weekend, I had
watched her, knowing something was wrong, unsure just what
it might be. I hoped I was just imagining the
discomfort I saw on her face as she shifted
positions on her bed, but I thought I also heard that
unmistakable sound that I knew all too well.
Watching her, I had felt quite urgently that the
clock of her life was speeding up, that the final
bang (or whimper) was approaching at a speed I
did not know or want to recognize.
For a brief moment, I think that it might be easier
if the vet had told me that Vali was dead. Such
news would transport me to a sad but familiar
place. But I've been handed a ticket to the land of
grief, and yet no one can tell me just when that
flight for the long trip home departs the gate.
Staring blankly out the window, I listen to the vet
tell me that it's hard to say what will happen with my
dog, my old friend. It seems that perhaps I should at
least cry, begin grieving now with this confirmation

of the final countdown. It suddenly occurs to me how
ludicrous it is to have someone tell you that something is
fatal. From the moment of our arrival we
are moving inexorably toward our departure. Life
is fatal for us all. The note regarding the
fatality of Vali's condition is really a hidden
message that just puts me on notice that Death is
not abroad in some distant land but present, here, in
my neighborhood.
But I don't cry. Instead, I feel only
calm relief. We have come to this point several times,
this dog and I. As a puppy, she lay nearly dead
in my lap, a victim of parvo, a vicious
virus that had killed thousands of dogs across the
country. I had whispered to her as I tended to her,
"Hang in there, little one. Today is not your day. Not
yet. Hang on." With luminous eyes that seemed
almost impossibly large for her face, she had stared
up at me, the utter seriousness of life in her
expression. And she did hang on, and that was not her
day to die, just as it was not her day to die a few years
later, when eight pounds of cat food stolen in a
moment of canine gluttony expanded to fill her
stomach nearly to bursting. "Hang on," I had
whispered again, and again she had turned that face toward
me, serious, hurting and yet clearly working on
holding on fiercely to her earthly connections. That was

not her day, and it wasn't her day years
later when she ate an entire possum, filling her
stomach so full that her heart began to labor.
Despite the cautious warnings from the university
vets who were unable to guarantee her survival,
once again, it wasn't her day.
I know that there is a day not too distant when Vali
will die, just as there is a day when I will die. In
passing, I feel a pang of curiosity about my
own death that becomes a singsong litany from high
school journalism class-who? what? where? why?
when? how? I realize the question of who has been
answered, and doubt that the others can be, or at least
not in advance. But to the best of my knowledge, for both Vali
and me, today is not that day.
As she finishes the chicken (sun-drenched angel
food?), thunder rumbles and the lights over the kitchen
sink flicker. Though once she might have turned an
anxious ear to the storm that is breaking violently,
old age has its benefits, and my beautiful old
friend's deafness is at least for the moment a blessing. She
eats in peace while I anxiously consider the
sheets of rain that have hidden the barn, the trees-in
fact, the whole world outside. This old farmhouse
has seen a lot of storms in its hundred
plus years, and evidently borne them all
fairly well, so I relax into the security (though
undoubtedly false) that we're safe within while the
storm rages without.
Vali's shaved belly is nearly hidden at this
angle, andwitha habitual eye, I consider her
weight and coat and body. She needs to gain
weight- the cancer has consumed calories like some
evil boarder who has raided the refrigerator
unseen-but her coat is soft, shiny, good to the touch.
I admire the cleanness of her limbs and cannot help
noting that though some arthritis is evident in the
stiffness of her back, she is still a sound dog with four
good legs, well built with a body that could easily
carry her many more years. But I know that within that
beautiful body there rages another storm that will
destroy her from the inside out. Just as this old house
keeps me safe within from the storm without, no beauty
of Vali's earthly house can protect her from the
cancer within.
Lightning flashes nearby, and the thunder that follows a
startled heartbeat later is a rifle crack that
makes me catch my breath. Too close for comfort,
I think, and step to look out the window. The barn is

fine, and cattle graze without any
apparent alarm. Noticing my concern, Vali
turns to me with a slight question in her eyes. I
smile at her and run my hand across her head and down
her back. She never breaks eye contact with me,
and for a long moment, we look at each other without
blinking. Her eyes seem terribly full,
reminding me of the look I've seen in people unable
to speak but still needing to communicate. "I'm glad
you're still here," I tell her. She gazes back
at me as if to say, "Yes, I am here." But I
get the distinct sensation that there is much more she still needs
to tell me, much more that I need to hear.
Today, this old house will not fall down. Someday it will.
Today, my old dog still trots beside me as we head
to the barn to bring John his raincoat and check on the
pig who has hurt her leg. Someday soon, I
think, Vali will walk beside me only in spirit. Today
is not the day, and I am grateful that today is all
I ever have. Funny, I think, walking along next
to my old dog. It was a puppy who taught me that.

appointment in samara
Six weeks old, the puppies were sassy, chubby
miniatures of the adult German
Shepherds they would become. In honor of their
Alaskan father, they carried Alaskan
names-Sitka, Juneau, Willow, Aleyeska,
Dalton, Kiska, McKinley. To them, the
veterinarian's office was an exciting frontier
ripe for exploration. I prided myself on breeding
good dogs, healthy dogs, beautiful companions that
lived long, happy lives. One after another I
set them on the examining table, confident in their glowing
health and fine character. One by one, they squirmed,
kissed the vet and showed no signs of any problems.
Then my veterinarian looked up from listening
to McKinley's heart, his eyes troubled. "He's
got a murmur."
This was not an innocent murmur that would be outgrown.
Ultrasound examination revealed a fatal flaw in
the formation of the heart, a flaw that could not be corrected
and that in all likelihood would result in sudden,
unpredictable death sometime before the puppy's second
birthday; chances were good he would not live to see his
first. Euthanasia was an option. Faced with a grim
prognosis, I considered how much future grief
I would be spared by putting the puppy down now, before
he blossomed into who he would be. But I knew that

in sparing myself the grief of losing a young
dog, I would also be trading away something unknown but
also immeasurable. I was not willing to make that
trade.
In any relationship, there is one inescapable
reality: To love anything is to risk loss. And a
relationship with an animal carries a double-edged
sword. While we enjoy the unconditional love
of our animals, we know that odds are better than
good that even if they enjoy a long and healthy life,
we will outlive them. We accept this reality and the
eventual tide of grief that accompanies it because in
the moments between our first reaching out to an animal and when
we finally let go, what we receive are riches beyond
measure. Yet, as we do for our own lives, we
hinge our daily sanity on the fragile belief that
our animals will be granted full, long lives, that
the inevitable is years away. Marcel Proust
wrote, "We say that the hour of death cannot be
forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as
placed in an obscure and distant future. It
never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day
already begun or that
death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so
certain and which has every hour filled in
advance." Years are measured out to us in seconds,
and thus it seems when looking forward that the end is a
long way away. Looking back, we know it was a very
brief time indeed.
Though we may not be comfortable with thinking about it, we are
all aware at some level that for every living being, a
life clock is ticking. Watching a talk show,
I saw an actual clock that could be set to a
specific time; second by second it would count down
to that final appointment. The creators of this clock
showed how a person's birth date, current age and
some information from actuarial tables could be used
to estimate how much time was left in that life. A
fifty-fiveyear-old man might, according
to statistics, have only seventeen years remaining
to him, barring unforeseen illness or accidents. This
clock would begin the count, relentless second after
second. Most members of the audience found this an
extremely disturbing idea. The creators were quick
to point out that the intention behind this clock was not to underline
death's ever quickening approach, but rather to provide an
opportunity for living with a fullness of choice and
awareness. With such a vivid reminder, people could discard
the meaningless in their lives and trade the valuable

seconds for what mattered intensely to them.
Depending on our age, experience, religious or
spiritual beliefs, each of us keeps the concept of
death a certain distance from our daily awareness. For
each of us, experiences ranging from the "near misses"
of serious illness or minor traffic accidents
to actual losses bring the concept a little closer,
at least for a while. Each of these experiences offer us
an opportunity to examine our feelings and to learn
something valuable. We may turn away from the
lesson at hand or we may choose to learn; neither
approach forestalls the inevitable.
There is an old Sufi tale of a merchant in
Baghdad whose servant returns from the marketplace
trembling and pale. The servant had been jostled in
the marketplace, and when he turned to see who had
bumped him, he saw Death, who looked at him and
made a threatening gesture. The servant begs the
merchant to loan him a horse so that he might go to the
distant city of Samara, where Death will not be able
to find him. The merchant agrees, and the servant
gallops away.

Later that day, the merchant also sees Death in the
market, and asks him, "Why did you make
a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this
morning?"
"I did not threaten him," Death said. "That gesture
was only my start of surprise. I was astonished
to see him here in Baghdad, because I have an
appointment with him tonight in Samara."
It seems a sad but straightforward tale: Caring
breeder discovers fatal flaw, keeps puppy,
life goes on. In reality, it was more complicated
than that. I had planned to keep McKinley's
sister Sitka. Could I raise two puppies and
do them both justice? Would Sitka or McKinley
suffer from more attention paid to the other? What-ifs raced
through my head, and I sought advice from a close friend.
Of all that she said to me, nothing struck me as
forcibly as this: "McKinley's lessons to you will be
matters of the heart, on many levels." It began with
my listening to what my heart told me was right. A
few days later, Sitka was on her way to her new
home, and I began my journey with McKinley,
aware that we were moving toward an appointment in
Samara.
with death on my shoulder
As I thought, and told those who cared to listen, keeping