The thing about a dog’s life is that it fits, in its entirety, within a short span of your own. Our other loved ones extend beyond that scope. Our parents exist before us and so, when they get old, if they get old, we make ourselves feel better when they pass with the justification that they lived long, full lives. Our children, we can only hope, live on long after we are gone and so when it is our time to say goodbye to them, we do so believing they will have long, full lives too. There is no such comfort really when we say goodbye to our dogs. And there is no relationship really that compares to that one.
Boone was the first love I ever committed to—the first relationship I went into knowing that, no matter what, I would be with him until the end, care for him until the end, and love him unconditionally. Even my marriage is not, if I’m being honest, guaranteed on these fronts. And yet the man I am married to deserves so much of the credit for Boone’s existence in my life at all.
When I gave up my traveling job and moved home to Vermont, I rented an apartment in Montpelier and got a job teaching English nearby. Sam lived nearby too but we did not yet live together. In fact we had never lived in the same state prior to that time and adjusting to that new circumstance was challenging. Instead of seeing each other once every three months, and missing each other from a distance in between, we worked in the same place and saw each other every day. For two independent people, that was challenging. Especially since one of those independent people was struggling to figure out what the next phase of her life would be, and not being very independent in the process.
Coming down off the adventure of two and half years of teaching and traveling, I had to re-calibrate my whole sense of self. I got a new job teaching, but it wasn’t the same. And I still had adventures, but they weren’t the same. Instead of starting every day with an extended family of travelers in a game of ultimate frisbee before breakfast, and then climbing, or kayaking, or backpacking or surfing every afternoon, I had a lot of quiet time in my apartment by myself. Sam and I spent most nights together, but on the occasion when we took a night off, I gave in to doubts about my decision to settle and doubts about my reason for doing so—being with him. My doubts, surely, were contagious and Sam, rightly, felt caged by my insecurities, my jealousies and my sudden dependence on him.
At the end of that first year, I knew something had to change. I quit the teaching job that wasn’t as exciting as the one before it, and took a job that felt more aligned with the person I thought I had become—an adventurous traveler who needed to roam, if not as often, at least periodically. The unfortunate reality was that most of the time, it was a desk job, facilitating other people’s travel adventures. And as I drove to and from that desk job, and I sat all day at that desk, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to regain my sense of self and my capacity for joy. It was a puzzle, at first, when I took stock and realized I seemingly had all I wanted: I had a place of my own, with a kitchen I had been longing for, a partner I sometimes loved (and sometimes just couldn’t shake), I had access to adventures and travel. Still, I felt rootless and unhappy, until at some point I realized, prior to my traveling job, I had always had a dog.
To have a dog is to have a sense of purpose—someone else whose needs must be tended to before our own: meals, walks, play and love. The momentum in my desire to have a dog built quickly. A puppy, I knew, would make me laugh, keep me company, and get me out in the woods. I knew I was a better person when I had a dog in my life, and so I set to work finding one.
I knew that I wanted a yellow lab, like our old family dog Ben, who had become my dog for a time. The first lab puppies I went to see were all black and because I was over-eager, I brought one home. He was absurdly sweet and docile and he sat curled up next to me on the seat of my truck. I named him Merle and, as I drove toward Sam’s apartment, I glanced down at him over and over again. Each time I saw his sweet dark eyes looking up at me, I thought first how sweet he was and, second, that he didn’t have the yellow face I had been imagining. I convinced myself that was okay, for about two hours. But soon after I introduced him to Sam, who fell instantly in love with him, I was determined to take him back. When I announced that decision, the shock on Sam’s face was unnerving. He pleaded with me not to go through with it and I sensed, in that moment, that I might be risking more than the loss of a sweet dog by doing so. Nevertheless, Merle was not the dog I knew I was meant to have.
A short time later I found another litter—this time the labs were yellow. I drove to Georgia, Vermont to see the puppies. The parents of the litter were athletic looking field dogs. The father had been a bomb detection dog, working for the FBI if I recall correctly. They were "working dogs," I was told, but at the time I didn’t really know what that would mean.
I sat down on the wood floor and enjoyed having the puppies play around and with me. One puppy was more purposeful than playful. He climbed up on my lap and put his front paws on my chest. He leaned in close and looked me in the eye. Seemingly unimpressed, he hopped back down, turned his back to me and took a leak on the floor. Before he was done, he glanced at me over his shoulder, as if to say, “What are you going to do about it?” I knew then that was the dog for me. He was bold, confident and independent—irreverent even—and those were the qualities in myself I was trying to regain.
I left my deposit and started making plans to bring him home. I said I would be back and I left there excited that I’d found my guy. I could barely wait to pick him, until it was time to pick him up. Inexplicably, when it was time to go get him, I panicked. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was happening, but I called the owner and said something had come up and I’d have to postpone for another couple of days. And in those days, I got excited again, until it was time, again, to pick him up. By the third time when I tried to postpone, the owner was onto me. “This pup needs to go,” he told me, and that time I said I would be there, for sure, the next day.
This is where Sam comes back in to the story. He was increasingly confused, agitated even, by my indecision. I told him I needed his help—I needed him to come with me and convince me, if I tried to change my mind again, that it was the right thing to do. About two miles from the house, I did change my mind again and, in a panic, I told Sam to pull over. “What if it’s too much work?” I asked. It wasn’t so much a question as a plea, and Sam’s answer came without hesitation. “The work is the joy,” he told me, an imperative more than an answer, and it was enough.
At the end of the long driveway from the house overlooking the lake was a wide open field. We stopped the car and got out with Boone to let him run around a little and get used to us. He ran in wide circles like a dog possessed, tail tucked and eyes wild. He ran at us, nipped at us, and when he was caught, he wriggled away and ran some more. Eventually, we got back in the car and he settled in my lap, and Sam drove us back to Montpelier where Boone and I would live together and Sam would visit increasingly often, both of us happier, and better off together, by virtue of Boone’s presence in our lives.
In those early days, Boone and I went to the city’s woods trails together twice a day for hour-long walks, early in the morning and later in the evening after work. And when I went to my desk job during the day, Boone came with me and slept and chewed on toys under my desk. Eventually, I went back to that teaching job nearby, and Boone came with me there too. And on a campus full of kids, Boone was happy, and I was happy again too. He licked everyone in sight, fetched lacrosse balls, and ran to the far end of campus to submerge himself fully in the muddy drainage of the upper field.
One winter afternoon, when the field was covered in snow, I watched some kids throwing a white lacrosse ball into the snow. One of the kids was laughing at him. “That dog is so dumb,” he said, “he thinks he’s going to find that ball!” He kept laughing until Boone did find the ball and then returned and dropped it at his feet. That kid hadn’t been the one throwing the ball, but he was the one to receive it, and at that point the whole crowd was laughing, but not at Boone.
One spring afternoon, on that same field, I looked out from inside one of the buildings in time to see Boone collapse, mid-stride, as he ran back to another student with another lacrosse ball in his mouth. He had been out there for a while and after each thrower got bored and moved on, Boone would find another thrower. It wasn’t the only time he ran until he collapsed; we learned early on that we would have to end the game for Boone, because he would never end it on his own; he would keep going long past when it was safe for him to do so.
Some of his working tendency was put to good use. When I lead a seventeen day backpacking trip for a handful of girls, Boone came with us for the first 65 miles, from the Canadian border to the base of Mount Mansfield, on the bottom of the Smuggler’s Notch road. At that point, with vertical ladders ahead of us on the trail, I had to send him home with Sam. It was a hard goodbye as up to that point, Boone had been the leader who held our group together—even though that job was my responsibility. He was young—only two years old—but he showed me on that trip what being a working dog meant. He carried his own pack and all his own food, and spent each of the seven days hiking circles around us. As the only adult on the trip, and the slowest hiker by far, I always hiked last. The girls knew to stop at every intersection and wait for me to catch up, so we could be sure everyone was on the right path. When we were in motion, Boone would run ahead to the girls in front, and then run back to check on me, and he would keep moving in that circular way the whole day. At the end of each day, once we were close to our next shelter, I would usually leave ahead of the girls from the last break point, and arrive with Boone first. While I took off my boots and settled in to the camp, Boone paced back and forth at the top of the trail until the last of the girls arrived safely. Only then would he find my sleeping bag, lie down and fall quickly to sleep. He counted every head and wouldn’t rest until all were safe. It was early June when we did that trip, and it was still cold and damp in the mountains. Boone slept inside my sleeping bag with me each night. And each morning he was the first one up in the cold, licking the tops of the girls' heads to wake them. He was eager to put his pack on each day and get back to work.
All of Boone’s adventures with me were purposeful. When we took him to Green River Reservoir for his first canoe trip, he refused to get in the canoe and insisted he’d swim. The reservoir is big, 653 acres with 19 miles of shoreline, and Boone swam much of it alongside our canoe. We stayed close to shore so he could, if he wanted to, get out for a rest, but even on those “rests” he was running. Another trip back, sometime later with Mary and her dog, I left the canoe in their care and swam the big crossing from the island to the take out with Boone. He was a powerful swimmer and I struggled to keep up. Swimming from shore I could race him…I’d throw out a frisbee or a stick and we’d sprint side by side to get it. And on the return I could lightly take hold of his tail and he would tow me back in with ease.
Boone’s retrieval instinct was mostly wasted on me. He would have been an incredible duck dog, but he was relegated to frisbees and lacrosse balls. Nevertheless, he gave all of his fetching a serious and relentless attention. He would launch himself off any cliff or dock in pursuit of something to bring back. And he would do the same to satisfy a command. Once I was hiking with him and he took off after a scent and found himself on a parallel trail that climbed up a steep hill. I saw him at the top of a cliff and called for him to come. I assumed he would backtrack and catch up, but instead, without hesitation, his eyes locked on me, he leapt from the cliff and landed at my feet. Fortunately it was a snowy soft landing.
For a while, I brought him to agility courses, to give him the sense of purpose he seemed to crave, and in doing so give myself the sense of purpose I also seemed to need. I brought him everywhere with me. He loved being in the car and he rode stretched from the folded-down back seats across the console between the two front seats, either looking out the windshield with me, or resting his chin on my shoulder. In those first years, he gave me all that I needed.
When Sam bought our land and we started clearing it, Boone fell in love with the place as we did. He loved being part of the work, always throwing small logs at our feet as Sam felled trees and I cut branches. He was a menace really, always a bit too close to the action. If you got fed up and threw his stick in the burn pile, he would retrieve it, even if it was on fire. We did that only once. For Boone, Sam’s maxim was true: the work was the joy.
Once the house was built, we started leaving him home more often. Moses was with us by then as well, and they seemed to like being settled here during the day. The landing by the window I wanted to build, as place I would read and have tea, quickly became Boone’s perch. He claimed the brown sheepskin as his own, and from there he watched the driveway for our return. The woods walks Boone and I took in his first year in Montpelier were nothing compared to our explorations on this hill. The logging roads and snowmobile trails go on and on and my hikes with Boone and Moses here have been our best. We’ve stumbled upon moose and bear many times, and there are more berries in the late summer than any of us can ever eat.
When Sam and I were contemplating having a kid, one of the conditions for me was that after having one, I did not want to face pressure from Sam to have another. I remember having a conversation with him about it. We were on the last leg of walking the upper loop, with Boone and Moses ahead of us on the road. Sam and I both had dogs growing up and could recall preferring their company to that of all others. We could have only one child, we agreed, if we made sure she always had a dog in her life.
When Quinn came along, our dogs were no longer the center of attention, but we justified this shift by reasoning that they had each other, they had a good home, and that a dog’s life up on this hill, wandering freely in the midst of so much wild nature, is a good life. Boone ate peas and tomatoes and carrots in my garden, and he got lost for hours of happy grazing in the blackberry brambles that emerged after we cut down our trees. He took naps on the porch and in the grass, and in winter he rolled around in the snow. He’d run happily along as we skied, sledded, hiked, biked or ran. But over time, of course, he ran a bit slower, and his hips would take longer to recover from the running. Eventually, on our longer adventures, we had to leave him home and as we moved away from the house, we could see him in the window from the landing on his sheepskin, howling audibly for a long time, begging us to bring him too.
The heartbreak of that eased when he stopped howling behind the door, but other heartbreaks were coming. He grew more and more stiff and eventually we started noticing that when he went to lie down on his side, he’d get to a certain point and flop over (rather than roll gently down)--his head landing on the wood floor with a thud. His bark evolved to a yowl. He grew increasingly disoriented, whining to go out and then whining to come in. In the night he’d wander into a corner or under the dining room table and would yowl for a rescue. He started going to the bathroom in the house, and seemed unaware he was doing so.
This past summer I started reckoning with the irreversible signs of his aging and decline. We started talking about whether we’d need to put him down, and we started talking to Quinn about what that would mean. By September, when we had a break from the daily grind of the beginning of the school year, we planned for the vet to come to the house and do that work. And I picked out a little flat spot on the far side of the garden where I imagined laying him to rest—the first spot to see the sun rise up over the eastern ridge. But as we got closer to the date, I grew increasingly confused. Maybe he wasn’t suffering, maybe he was just old? Maybe I was rushing him? The day before our appointment, I walked into the vet’s office and found Donna, the kind, trusted woman who has taken care of Boone along with our vet Roy, since Boone was a pup. “He’s confusing me,” I told her and she smiled as if it wasn’t first time she’d heard that plea. She brought me into the office and we talked it through. I told her all the reasons I was thinking it might be time, and all the reasons I was thinking it might not be time. She helped me process through it and I decided to wait a little longer.
The next morning, sitting on the porch with my morning coffee, Boone walked over to me—an increasingly rare gesture—and put his chin on my lap and gave me a lick. I swear I saw his tail wag once. I was sure that morning that he and I had just had a very close call and I was relieved for this second chance. We had the most beautiful weather this fall; it was sunny and warm nearly every day for two months. And Boone got to wallow in all of it. In that time, Quinn made a point to spend long periods of time loving him, and her example reminded us to do the same each day. He got lots of love these past two months.
But the signs, of course, were still there and they were more and more clear. He slept nearly all the time and when he wasn’t sleeping, he was pacing. Occasionally he wandered off. One day he wandered 3/4 of a mile down our hill to a far neighbor’s house. Thankfully she brought him in, gave him water and called us. We all assume he got going down hill and just kept going. It was hard for him to turn around—his left hind leg often held off the ground—and he got lost easily. I paid closer attention after that, never letting him go out of my sight. This week, when I saw him heading out the driveway, I watched to see him head up the hill toward the apple orchard—an old favorite place. I followed him but decided to keep a little distance, studying him as I had begun to do, looking for a sign. He ambled slowly along, stumbling now and then, seemingly unaware I was with him. Eventually he paused and looked around, a bit confused, or tired, or both, and I was glad to step up then and put my hand on his neck. He turned and followed me home.
In my clear thinking moments, I’ve known for some time now that it has been “the time.” And yet just as easily as I could call up the reasons for knowing that, I could also easily dismiss them with reasons to let him keep going. But the beautiful fall is over, and the cold weather has started to settle in, and as much as I have dreaded losing him, I’ve also dreaded watching him slip and fall on the ice, or see the cold settle in to his unpadded bones.
Still wrestling with the decision, I went to websites looking for answers. Many of them recommend making a list of your dog’s favorite things to do, and noting the point in time when he can no longer do two or three of them. I made a list in my head, and then made that list with Sam and Quinn: frisbee, hiking, swimming, playing with us, chewing toys. Boone hasn’t been able to do any of those things for a while, some of them a painfully long while. I called the vet on Monday and stopped at the farm store on the way home to pick something up for Sam. I walked by the rawhide bones and picked one up for Boone. When I gave it to him, he perked up quite a bit—more life in him than I’d seen in a while. I sent Moses outside so Boone could enjoy a chew in peace. He was happy, but he couldn’t hold it the way he once could. I held it for him, but his soft gums easily bled. He gave up on it pretty quickly and went back to sleep.
On the way to school on Tuesday, Quinn said, “You know, Mom, I don’t like the spot you picked for Boone.” That was upsetting as I didn’t think I could make any more decisions—that one, I thought, was already done. “But why?” I asked her, “I thought you’d like it; you can see it from the window seat in your room, and he’ll be able to see the house.” “It’s not tucked in,” she told me, “It’s too out in the open. I think he needs to be tucked in and protected.”
I thought about this after I dropped her off. I’m building a cabin next summer, a space I hoped Boone would someday be with me, though I knew it was too far off. I’m still trying to find the right landing place for that cabin and though we now have ample open space, many sweet spots with beautiful views, I have known from the very beginning of our time on this hill that I would someday have a cabin in the woods. It will be much more complicated to build it, but all along I have explained, to myself and others, I want it to be “tucked in.”
Yesterday I asked Sam to dig a hole under the red maple tree off the corner of our back porch, tucked in by the sweep of the house, tucked in under the tree with the beautiful red leaves, a spot I will pass each time I walk to my future cabin, or walk to the door of my now fenced in garden. It’s right next to our new blueberry bushes (Boone loved berries), and it still has a beautiful view. From my bedroom and Quinn’s bedroom, and every other window on the south side of our house, we can all look out and see that resting place.
Dr. Hadden and Donna came to the house last night. All day I vacillated, as I have for months now, between knowing and doubting that it was the time. It was a warm day yesterday and I spent some of it stacking wood and some of it sitting with Boone as he slept. One moment I felt at peace, another moment I felt the panic rise up. At 2:30 in the afternoon when he seemed to want his dinner, I caught myself thinking, “it’s too early!”…and then, of course, I fed him. I cried all day. And while I dreaded the vet’s arrival, I also felt that I needed him to come because I needed his help. I have been circling around it for so long. Before they arrived, Boone had woken up and started walking his circles around the house. I sat on the low step stool and each time he passed my spot, he came to me and let me rub his head and his ears. I cried, and apologized, until he’d start walking again.
I greeted them at the door and was crying still. Before they even had their jackets off, I told them how confused I was. They understood, and mercifully started talking. “Does he pace like this all the time?” Donna asked. I told her yes and she nodded in a knowing way, though I didn’t really know what it meant. Dr. Hadden said a bunch of kind, helpful things which are now all kind of a blur, but this one moment I recall is when things started to come clear. I had admitted that Boone pooped on the rug almost every day, that he stumbled a lot, and he could no longer see, hear or smell anything. "Yeah," Dr. Hadden said, "but he senses that you're here so he's just going to keep going." I didn't yet see where he was going. "Maybe these things are okay," I said, "maybe that's just him being old?” I had worried all day that it wasn’t his time and that maybe I was putting him down just because the work was harder. “Am I just giving up on him?” I had to ask. It was more of a plea than a question. “No!" he said, "You can cross that one right off your list. Guys like this just don’t know how to stop,” he told me “and we’ve gotta help them let go.”
There was more talking after that, more light-hearted joking to ease the sadness of it all, but that was the point that helped me know. Boone had never been able to stop, but I had forgotten that about him. In witnessing the whole of Boone’s life, my sense of him evolved over the years and I greeted him each day as the dog he appeared to be. I forgot about the dog he once was, and who he still was, inevitably, on the inside. A dog who thrived having a job to do, who lived every day with a sense of purpose, who was relentless in his determination to do whatever work he was doing--and willing to do it long past the time it was safe for him to do so. I failed to see that staying alive had become his work, and it was work he was probably not doing for himself. Just as I used to have to take the frisbee or the ball away from him, I had to make this decision for him too. It was easily the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.
I knew I would be with Boone when he died, but I also knew I would not be able to bury him. I warned Sam in advance and he agreed to do it for me. Sam always agrees to help me when I need him to. In spite of having spent nearly as much time with Boone as I have, Sam has always let me think of Boone as my dog. But there’s no doubt he was Sam’s dog and Quinn’s dog too. I said goodbye to him when he was laying on the blanket in our warm house, while Sam took the brown sheepskin out and laid it under the maple tree. When he came back in, and gathered Boone up in his blanket, Quinn insisted she wanted to help too, so she ran for her boots and jacket, and she carried the lacrosse ball out to bury it with him. Her courage and stubborn determination impress me—and I realize now, remembering Boone more fully, that she has these qualities in common with the dog she helped bury last night.
I made it as far as the porch, which is farther than I thought I would go in that moment. When I looked out into the darkness and saw Quinn laying across the grass, reaching down to pat him, and realized she was crying for the first time all night, I called her to me, picked her up and carried her inside to wait for Sam. I will always be grateful that he helped me bring Boone into my life, and that he helped me let go of him too.
This morning we woke to the first real snow of the winter. Evergreen branches are dusted white. After Sam and Quinn left the house, I went out and put the sod back in place over Boone’s spot. When the snow melts, on the other side of winter, I hope I will feel joy in my memories of him. Right now I just feel an aching sadness for the friend who helped me find myself when I was lost, and who has kept me company on every step of the journey since.
