One Year Later: Remembering Buddy

He died on a Wednesday at 8:47 a.m. 

I hustled Buddy’s 68 pounds from my truck’s passenger seat into the vet’s office and laid him on the stainless steel table, his aged and atrophied body on full display. 

I can still feel him cradled in my arms, how his dead weight felt heavier than I expected. 

He could no longer walk or control any of his bodily functions. His breathing was sporadic and labored. For each breath, his diaphragm would hit bottom with a muffled thud and contract ever so slightly. He moaned with each exhale, like he had repeatedly the night before. 

“He won’t feel a thing,” said the veterinarian. “He’ll drift off like he’s going to sleep. He won’t feel a thing.” 

As Buddy lay on the table, I looked into his eyes, his cold nose pressed against my own. Buddy had that unmistakable 10,000-mile stare, the kind soldiers get when they’ve seen too much combat. Buddy’s eyes were glossy and lifeless and resigned. The cancer, diagnosed only two short weeks before, was, little by little, stealing him from me.   

Hunting Doves with King Lear

I snuck out at sunup the other morning to hunt doves for an hour. My ageless wonder, Buddy the Black Lab, made the trip too.

Actually Buddy the Black Lab isn’t really black anymore—far from it. Entering the backstretch of his 11th year, Buddy has aged into the canine version of King Lear. So says a friend who has a particular high Shakespearian IQ. “He (Buddy) looks like King Lear,” she said in an email not long ago. “Unbelievable. I can’t believe how he’s changed. He’s an old man.”

I look at Buddy’s photos from years past and I don’t even recognize His Majesty. He went from charcoal black to geriatric white in seemingly record time. The good news: Buddy, despite his age, is the happiest dog you’ll ever meet; always has been, likely always will be. Instead of growing more jaded and curmudgeonly over time like I have, Buddy has mellowed and gotten only happier. Dogs, especially labs, are remarkable that way.

What’s more, Buddy’s desire to hunt is still insatiable. Unlike King Lear (so the play goes), Buddy has no designs on retiring and ceding his power; he’d rather hunt until his last breath (or until his arthritis cripples him permanently, whichever comes first).