Out like a lamb

It's a sad thing, when a dog dies. Because a dog, while "less than a human", is somehow more than a person, greater than its master and the sum of its antics. A dog means more to its master than it can know. A dog only knows it's a dog. Its master knows a dog is also an idea. The dog rolls in dirt and licks itself, wrecks the furniture and tracks in mud. But the idea reminds us that not everything is fallen, not all of God's creation has failed him. The dog, in fact, may have surprised its creator, may have made God question what "in one's own image" means. God may have a moral center, may be able to judge between right and wrong, but if He is truly (and I believe he is) solely about love, than it is the dog, and not the man, that best reflects the divine.

My dad brought home this dog when I was 10. I named her after a cartoon character. She peed on the rug, scratched on the doors, and pretty much made everything right in the home. Odie was a solace to my father when his children went through puberty and a comfort to my mother when we moved out of the house. And when she stopped eating and starting going in the house again, we all feared the worst. Right before she turned 13, it was time to put her down.

"We have to do the right thing," my mother said. "We have to put her down."

"Put her down" is a softer way of saying euthanize, which is a softer way of saying "it's time for you to die." My parents were there in the room; my dad holding her as the injection went in, my crying mother kissing her face. The doctor said it only took half the dose, half a shot and she was gone .

"This dog was ready to go," I imagine him saying. I see my mother clinging to my father, who is turning his face away in grief.

The vet put her down and sent her on. She was tired and ready and looking ahead and went out like a lamb in a wintry April, not a whimper or sigh, just a close of her eyes. Out like a lamb to the realm of ideas, to where God keeps his unfallen creation- a Garden of Eden with sofas and rawhide. I suspect a God of eternity will take time to scratch her under the chin.

Back at home where my dad first brought the dog, he's buried her body out back by the trees. So she'll sleep close by under his watchful gaze, under a bouquet of flowers he laid while weeping. It's a sad thing, to lose a dog. A dog is what we could be if we were carefree with ourselves and more careful with others. If we were unafraid of both living and dying of loving and losing and mostly of not knowing.

Unfallen and loyal, putrid but beautiful- I will miss the dog almost, but not quite, as much as I love her.