Nine years ago, after spending
nearly a year looking for a new dog, we went to a pet adoption at a local shop.
Inside a fenced-in area were a number of black lab puppies. We weren’t looking
for a puppy; we’d previously adopted an older dog. But in with the puppies was
an “older brother.” When we entered the shop, he put his front paws on the
fence as if to say, “Pick me! Please pick me!”
He looked
like just the dog we wanted. We walked him outside on a leash, and he was very
good. He didn’t pull. He waited patiently while we were interviewed and filled
out forms, and then he was ours. We bought him a new collar and took him home.
They told
us he was two years old, but when we looked at the paperwork, he was only 18
months, and still needed to learn house manners. But he was ours, and we
promised that ours was his forever home. We would never turn him in.
His
previous family surrendered him because they were getting a divorce. Horrified
by this information, I asked if they’d also given their children up for
adoption. A dog is that important to me.
The people
at the shelter called him Abe. I hate that name, so we quickly settled on
Merlin. At times as a puppy his ability to escape our fenced-in yard made us
wonder if we shouldn’t have named him Houdini.
Merlin had
many dog friends in the neighborhood, and they’d dog-sniff when they passed
each other on walks. He knew which houses had people who gave him treats, too.
Once, when
he was feeling under the weather, one of his dog friends wrote him a get well
note and attached it to a little bag of that dog’s favorite treats.
Merlin was
so well-known in the neighborhood that we were known as Merlin’s parents. We
even had name tags: Merlin’s Mom and Merlin’s Dad, with our names in smaller
print underneath. We used these for neighborhood gatherings.
Merlin had
many fears: thunder, squeaking dog toys, the toaster, the microwave and the air
fryer. He liked being outside. When the fire sirens sounded, he would howl,
singing the song of his people.
He loved
bones, and would bury them for a few days to season them. When he thought no
one was looking, he’d toss a bone in the air and pounce on it when it landed.
If he saw you watching, he’d walk away, as if nothing happened, and you could
almost imagine him whistling.
His
favorite game was “run, puppy, run,” in
which he’d bump into the person he was with, then run from one end of
the yard to the other until he ran out of breath. He’d run toward his person as
if he were going to crash into them, and swerve at the last moment to avoid
them.
As a puppy,
while perfecting this game, he once smashed into my knee, knocking me to the
ground. It took several minutes before I could get up. He stood beside me until
I did. He then walked beside me all the way to the house. He wouldn’t come in.
I suppose he thought he was in trouble. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get
him to come in, and lots of hugs to convince him we weren’t angry with him.
He loved
walks, and occasionally, I’d take him to the gazebo park in town, with its
trails and bridges. Even though he wasn’t really a water dog, and would never
use the pool we got him, he loved nothing better than to walk into the stream
that ran through the park, splashing around and drinking the water.
We were
planning to go once the weather cooled down enough to take a walk that long.
But it was not to be.
A few
months ago he started having a little trouble getting off the chair he “wasn’t
allowed on.” In the past week or two, he began to avoid sitting, slithering
from a stand to lying down. A smaller dog than our previous pure-bred labs, we
hadn’t expected him to have hip problems. But we decided he needed something to
ease his pain and took him to the vet.
Just the day before he went off his
food. I thought it might be from the hip pain. I made him a ground beef and
rice mixture, and he did eat some of that, loving people food as he did.
The vet ran some blood tests to
make sure his problems didn’t stem from a tick bite. What she found was far
worse. His blood work was way off, and an ultrasound showed bleeding into his
abdomen. She said it was caused by an aggressive form of cancer that, until the
day I took him to the vet, I didn’t know he had. (Previous blood work a couple
of months ago showed nothing.) She wanted to take him then and there and put
him down. I said no, because Jeff and I both needed to say our goodbyes. This
was so sudden.
That was yesterday. This morning we
went together to the vet’s and stayed with him until he crossed the Rainbow
Bridge. We petted him and cried until his body cooled. And then we left to try
to resume our lives.
There’s a
huge emptiness in our home now.
Merlin is not in any pain now, and
he can run with my childhood dog, Jet, and our previous dogs, Nugget and Tug.
He doesn’t have to be afraid of thunder now – or microwaves, toasters or air
fryers.
Dogs don’t live as long as people
because it doesn’t take them as long to reach perfection.
Merlin Price, April, 2011 – August
17, 2022
Yn fy nghalon am byth
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