This is a post I don't want to write, never thought I'd ever have to write. After all, if you are lucky enough to have the best dog ever, you kind of think that immortality is one of the conditions. But what's always made Austin so special isn't some collection of superpowers but just his basic, well, humanity. He turns twelve in December and we thought he'd last a few more years beyond that. He spent about seven or eight years as a puppy, after all, and didn't start showing his age until this year. He's such a big beauty of a dog that his declining health is deceptive - his thick, lush coat that I cursed at often enough during the twelve shedding seasons a year hides weight loss stylishly. And he's always been mellow, so when he got really, really mellow it didn't seem so dramatic. Mostly, though, our inability to really see his deterioration has more to do with denial than anything else. Life without Austin has never been conceivable since life with Austin began.
When Tom and I had just been dating for a few months, we still lived in separate places. He was visiting me in LA and we made a rare trip to a mall, this one in Santa Monica, to buy him some new clothes. An unusual experience as anyone who knows Tom will understand. Up on the second floor of the mall we were drawn to a woman petting a puppy in a milk crate on a bench. We approached and she told us that a homeless woman owned him and told her she was going to take him up into the hills to let him live with all the other animals as he was getting too big to hide in her backpack when she went into the shelter at night. This woman, Jenny, was trying to convince the homeless woman (whom I recognized from the street outside the bar where I worked in Santa Monica) to give her the puppy. She didn't want another dog, but she didn't want this one to be "set free" in the mountains, either. One look at the damp puppy in the crate told why: clearly underfed with mange evident on his ears and a candy necklace for a collar, he'd be a quick snack for a coyote or a mountain lion. He cocked his head to one side with one ear up and one folded down, and looked at us with his huge eyes, and that was it. He owned us.
A mall security guard emerged and began harassing the homeless woman, and in her paranoia she grabbed the milk crate and fled. We'd been at the scene for an hour or so and all three of us followed the woman out into the dampness of an early February day on the open Santa Monica walking mall. Jenny told us she was going to follow the woman and try to get the puppy from her. If she was successful, she said, we could pick him up the next day at the animal shelter.
Having been somewhat non-committal about everything in our lives 'til then - we were after all an actress dating a seasonal river guide - this was a big deal. We showed up early at the shelter and were disappointed to not have the puppy listed anywhere on the intake sheet. Turning to walk out we saw a sign: "Heather and Tom: Call Jenny: 999-9999". We looked at each other, took the sign and repaired to the tailgate of Tom's truck to talk about it. After a half an hour spent listing all the reasons we shouldn't do it, Tom said "Oh, who are we kidding. If we weren't going to do this we wouldn't have spent all this time talking about it." We drove to Jenny's and when we walked through the door, Austin looked up at us and promptly peed all over the floor. We were in love.
We shared custody of Austin that spring until we moved in together in Groveland. We had a crate for him in Los Angeles and a runner on the deck of the Groveland Guide House. He had a penchant for chasing deer and eating cow poop. He would have graduated first in his dog training class but missed the last session after being hit by a car on the highway, crossing to get at a deer carcass on the other side of the road. Tom and I were both runners, and he was the perfect running dog, tireless and joyful and always game despite the weather. He trained with me for four marathons and when I got pregnant with Jordan when he was five he suddenly became protective of me, standing in front of me rather than behind me when a strange dog or person approached. He paced outside or lay as close to me as he could during the birth of both children, and so it's been unusual for him not to be following me around this time.
Austin was the first real grownup thing I did. And twelve years later I sit in the house I own with two children and one on the way, a business we own, and a whole trail of adult decisions I've made and commitments I've kept lining the path to this point in my life. Austin taught me to be an adult because he was the first thing I committed to in my adult life (Tom was a given - we were in it together from the beginning whether we admitted it or not - Austin was the fist clear evidence of this). He was the first thing I really had to take care of and take responsibility for. I remember in that conversation on the tailgate of the truck Tom saying "Dogs live for a long time. This is a long term commitment." And now it seems not nearly long enough.
Maybe it's because of his presence all through my "real" adult life that I feel sort of scared looking at the rest of it without him. He was there for the birth of Jordan and Sawyer and now will likely not be here for the third child. He taught them both to walk and endured plenty of abuse at both their tiny hands without ever treating them with anything but gentleness. He spent five years living at a campground near a river and now that our home is a couple hundred yards down the road, he thinks it's still his home despite the "No Dogs, No Exceptions" signs.
He's accompanied us on river trips, camping trips, hiking trips, road trips. I was looking for pictures on him in my computer album and was somewhat amazed: there were lots of pictures taken of him until we had kids, then fewer and fewer. But in every picture we do have, Austin is always in the background. Even if you can't see him in the picture, you know he's there: just off to the side in photos of the kids playing outside or at the park, lying somewhere close while we open Christmas presents. He's there in every one. And I hope that's how it feels when he's gone. Because his absence would be unendurable. I want him always just off to the side. His gentle, loving presence always a part of our family. I know he'll be with me on every run or walk I go on.
Update:
I was of course sobbing my heart out when I wrote this post, the vet having told us not to wait too long to bring him in to be put to sleep. But then he began to eat lunchmeat, his dog food prepared the way we made it when he was a puppy recovering from the health horrors of his early months: with egg, milk and olive oil added. He began first to wag his tail just a bit more, to gain a little weight, some of the redness in his eyes to reduce, and to want to go outside in the full moon to bark at the phantoms. He's following me around and keeping Nala in line, and we are so grateful to have him with us for however long we're granted this reprieve. It's taught us a good lesson of not taking anything or anyone for granted, for taking the time to give the ones you love a little scratch behind the ears. It's made me more gentle in training Nala, and more grateful for all the blessings I have in my life. Maybe Austin does have superpowers after all.
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