Dog days done
I’ve just gotten back from two foreign trips, and will post some quick travelogs shortly. Yesterday, at the end of a trip to Beijing to meet with colleagues and visit my daughter, who is teaching there, came news of the death of our 16-year-old dog, Princess. We’d gotten her from the Humane Society pound in Champaign-Urbana when our daughter turned 8, and she was her companion and good friend through two-thirds of my daughter’s life. She was not the smartest dog in the world, but she was extremely good-natured and good-hearted and happy.
Princess adapted well to our move to Ann Arbor, and really enjoyed having a large, wooded yard to explore. She was also a good companion for my wife during my various trips, and had become Alice’s dog in many ways.
Over the last six months, Princess began to seriously deteriorate. She would fall down often, and usually could not get back up on her own. She couldn’t manage the stairs to the back yard, and had lost control over her bodily functions. She would spend the day in front of the picture window that looks out to the front yard, barking at whatever went by but unable to get up from there.
I couldn’t tell how much pain she was in. She had a couple of large tumors growing on a leg that were sometimes painful, and she had occasional seizures.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I spent about a week in Portugal. We hired someone to come in to take care of Princess once a day, and my wife also arranged for some neighbors to stop in to check on her. While we were gone, the person we hired quit and the neighbors were also unhappy at what caring for her entailed.
It was clear that Princess was going to die soon, but we ended up having her put to sleep. My wife took her to the vet and it went smoothly. My daughter is quite distraught, both at the loss and the fact that it didn’t happen on its own. For me, it’s very odd coming back to a house full of the accommodations we made for this dog and the now-unoccupied spaces where she spent her time. I doubt we’ll get another dog, but I also know we will never forget this one, who played such a central and positive role in all of our lives.