Farewells

July 30th we had to bury an old family friend. Sometimes you have a pet, and sometimes you have a friend who happens to be a dog, and that’s how it grew to be with Keena.

The shelter found her on the streets alone at around two months, and we adopted her and brought her into the family. She remained just a little nervous for years and years, but eventually grew to be confident and, later in life, even assertive.

Most dogs are alike on many basic levels, so it always surprises me how very different they can be on that template. I mean, most love their walks and are happy to see you when you’ve been gone, and they live to go out and smell things. But they still have individual personalities and develop their own habits and some are simply just more fun to be around, like Keena, who so easily brought us smiles. When Keena was really happy she’d go and grab her red rubber bone and frolic around with it. Later in life she’d get your attention and lead you to the red carpet in the kitchen, where we finally figured out that she wanted to wrestle. Only on that rug, though. Nowhere else in the house would do.

She made my study her home, so much so that in the last year or two, as she slept more and more, it felt more like her space than mine, for she was frequently stretched out under the writing desk.
I work from home, so I interacted with her every day, being the person who let her out in the morning and put her up at night. She was a constant companion for more than a decade, a joyful, silly, clever creature who knew what she wanted and knew how to communicate to get it, getting your attention and leading you to whatever it was — water bowl, door, treat closet, wrestle rug, food bowl, or just her, to give her some pats.

We tried to do our best for her this last week. I still think that the medicine she was on was what finished her…. I guess I don’t want to talk about that part; there’s nothing to be done now. We gave her every chance to pull through and multiple times it seemed like she was rallying. Just the day of her death she seemed better again. But late in the afternoon she took a huge turn for the worse. While I went outside to collect tomatoes from the garden, she died.

The kids and my daughter’s boyfriend helped me dig her grave, and we placed her in it last night with her favorite red bone, and some flowers, and some oregano — another distinctive thing about Keena was that sometimes she’d wander over to the herb garden and eat a little oregano — and we said our final good-byes. She had almost 13 good years, which is a long time for a husky/shepherd mix (at least that’s what we assume she was). Those years were full of good food, and long walks, and treats, and laying in the sunshine next to us while we worked in the garden, and hanging out near us while we did human things inside. I think she was very happy, and certainly she brightened our days.

Farewell, old friend. It is already a lonelier house without you.