My phone rings while I’m putting on my socks. It’s a neighbour, calling on my wife’s mobile. The old dog, she says, has had some kind of fit at the far end of the park. When I get there, the dog is lying on the grass, foaming at the mouth, with my wife kneeling alongside.
“What are we going to do?” my wife says. She is, I realise, speaking logistically.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I can manage.”
I scoop up the dog and we set off for home, taking a shortcut through the brambles. Once we regain the path, we are waylaid by other dog-owners coming the other way, tilting their heads to one side and making sympathetic faces.
“Such a lovely dog,” one woman says, stopping to scratch the dog’s ears, her eyes brimming.
Yes, I think, but also heavy.
At the park entrance, I have to pause to rest my back for a minute. The dog, when I set it down, stays upright on its legs. Back home, it walks in circles around the kitchen anticlockwise, disoriented and exhausted.
“Should we go to the vet?” I say.
“If we take that dog to the vet now, they’ll put it down,” my wife says. “Are you ready for that?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Let’s wait two hours, and see what happens,” she says.
After making several dozen circuits of the kitchen, the old dog hauls itself up on to the sofa and falls asleep. Four hours later, it comes to find me because it’s hungry.
The next day, the youngest one catches me in front of the TV with tears streaming down my face.
Gently downhill
“Are you watching Marley And Me?” he asks.
“It was on,” I say. “It’s the worst film I’ve ever seen.”
“Why are you doing that to yourself?” he says.
“A newspaper columnist who writes about his dog,” I say. “Who makes a movie out of that?”
A week passes, then another. The dog shows some initial improvement, but the overall arc is gently downhill.
When I take the dogs to the park after Christmas, I get into a lot of end-of-life conversations with the former owners of old dogs. Some are of the opinion that any dog with an appetite has something to live for; others say that, looking back, they left it too long before intervening. Meanwhile, the old dog circles, nose to the ground.
“How old?” says one man, out with his new puppy.
“Sixteen,” I say.
“That is old,” he says.
On the Monday after New Year, my wife comes up to my office.
“I’ve made an appointment,” she says. “5.15pm.”
“Fine,” I say.
That evening my wife, two of my sons and I crowd into the vet’s consulting room. We have a halting conversation about options, about quality of life, about what the future means to a dog. Everyone’s eyes are red. The old dog circles.
“How soon are we talking?” I say with a weird quaver in my voice.
“We can do it this evening, if you like,” the vet says.
OK, we say.
We’re left to say goodbye while a man with two yapping dachshunds is seen. As soon as he leaves, we’re called back in. I’m of two minds as I hold the old dog still: if the act itself is humane, my complicity seems monstrous. It’s quiet and quick, but it’s not like in Marley And Me.
But afterwards, scratching those old ears one last time, I don’t feel too bad. It’s oddly reassuring to see the dog at peace. Everything seems as it should be, until I realise that in a minute I’m going to have to stand up and walk out, leaving her there on the floor.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
