I am sitting here with my girl, my beautiful dog.  She is dying. There is no way around it, she is going away from this life and what makes it worse is that she is fighting to stay.  She will not go gently, will not leave us willingly.  She stays by my side as if I can somehow forestall the inevitable. 

I wrote that this afternoon as I started putting down some thoughts.  It came to me suddenly yesterday that we had come to a hard place.   And now it has happened and she’s gone.  

She stayed so close to me these last couple of weeks, if she slept and I left the room, she'd wake and follow.  Needing to be hand fed, to be walked outside sometimes on a sling, but mostly she expressed to me in the strange and powerfully effective ways dogs do that she needed to be with me at all times.   Only when her legs couldn’t carry her up the stairs to follow me, did I command her to stay downstairs and wait for me when I had to dress or shower.  My husband carried her up with us at night.  I remained by her side reading, writing, cooking, not doing much of anything because I wouldn’t risk taking her up and down our steep steps during the day.  Her legs were giving out more and more although the rest of her had healed.  She was having spasms and collapsing. 

Tonight as she lay at my feet, as I stroked her fur with my toes, she let out a loud strange hollow scream unlike anything I have ever heard in my life.  She died instantly.

No vet's office smelling of fear and sickness and separation for my girl.  She died in her home, on her rug with her OCD dog and her people near, her person so close I can feel her fur, see her in my mind’s eye laying there white and in such perfect peace tonight.  Whatever it was that took her, wormed into her effectively and I am grateful at how fast she went.  Tomorrow morning early, we will wake, dig a hole in the front and bury her.  I will plant white tulips for her and when they wilt, there will be white petunias in her honor.  

She was the best dog.   Perhaps one day I’ll be able to explain why she was such a spectacular friend, how unique and charismatic she was. But for tonight let it suffice to say she was perfect.  One in a million. 

If there’s an afterlife she’ll be right there as soon as I arrive, pushing her clown face into me.  She was my first dog.  She will always be my first dog.  Forever and ever.  Amen.