Goodbye, beloved friend
We had to put down Lily, the family dog; she trusted us to the end
Iwas thinking about Michael Vick last Saturday, when I had to kill my dog.
My dog's name was Lily, and to be honest, she was my family's dog and not just mine, though I often did the important stuff: fed her, walked her, cleaned up her poop, tossed around a stuffed doggie toy in the house that looked stunningly like a miniature Lily, while hollering, ''Get your baby! Rip its throat out!''
Oh, I'm a clown, folks.
She'd skitter over the hardwood floor, fetch the toy delicately, bring it back, and we'd have a tiny tug-of-war, me shaking the thing and growling like a madman. In a few seconds, Lily would let go because I was the boss and she always wanted to please me.
She was no hunting dog, no work dog, no hound. She most certainly was not a guard dog.
People would come into my house, sit down and have a drink before Lily would notice anything had happened.
What she was, according to the book we consulted, was a companion dog.
A pal.
She was a 19-pound, bow-legged, white fluff ball called a Couton, which I guess means ''cotton'' in French. Perfect.
Her fur would grow to, well, one time it was 6 inches long before we got it clipped.
''Pet quality'' is what the man who sold her to us said a decade ago when she was a wee pup. No show dog, for sure.
I told my kids that the best use of Lily would be to tape her to a pole and use her as a dust mop.
I kidded about her a lot.
She was so docile that she walked away from squirrels.
She would lie in my lap and snore as I told her about her distant kinfolk, the wolves.
''Your great, great, great, great grandparents killed moose,'' I would tell her. ''Deep inside, you are a savage.''
Oh, the fun we had.
But then she stopped eating. Kidney problems.
If you've owned a dog, you know the rest. A dog that won't eat is a dog that is done.
And yet Lily wasn't old enough to go, just 65 according to the dog/human conversion chart on the vet's office door.
What a chart, I thought, trying to keep my mind focused on happy things.
To have a dog is to watch a friend age at hyperspeed, to know that if you replenish your friends, they will die again and again before you do.
I have been involved with five dogs since I was a toddler: Chris, my parents' Dalmatian; Smedley Sue, our 160-pound Great Dane; Caesar, a small mutt; Leo, a porky beagle-basset, who was the first dog I actually owned, getting him when I was working pulling weeds by the Illinois River during a college summer, and a man with a dog in the back seat asked me where the Peoria animal shelter was.
And then Lily, named by the girls in my family.
I thought of Michael Vick as my wife and I sat in that office a few days ago.
One of the most exciting quarterbacks in NFL history was right then in prison, doing time in the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., for forcing dogs to fight to the death, for killing dogs.
My God, critics crowed, almost two years for being cruel to animals?
Yes.
The way we treat animals is the way we would treat fellow humans if no one were watching.
Cruelty to dogs is a betrayal of the essence of humanity, the responsibility that comes with being at the top of the food chain.
No, the vet said, there was nothing we could do now. It wasn't about medicine or hope anymore, she said.
She carried in Lily.
Lily sat on a soft towel atop a metal table. There was a short catheter in her left foreleg. She had been getting medicine through it, and now it had another purpose.
Lily's eyes were black and shiny as licorice dots. Like Frosty the Snowman, I always joked to the kids.
The dog looked at me, at my wife. I remember that Judy's sleeves were polka-dotted with water. Me, hell, I was wearing sunglasses.
''Are you ready?'' the vet said.
I nodded.
The needle went in, the warm little dog we were holding and petting slumped after a time, then lay down.
She trusted us without question, the same way those dogs trusted Vick.
I ended Lily's life because of that trust.
It's a hell of a thing, I'm telling you.
