A Good Friend, and a Good Dog

Bru was lying on a towel on the floor of an examining room at the veterinary clinic, clearly exhausted by physical infirmities that increasingly had plagued him for months, a sad look in those big brown eyes.

That we knew this day would come made it no easier, perhaps even more difficult.

The vet explained that an aging dog wants to please its humans and will hang on as best it can. At 15-plus years old, Bru surely had tried.

More than once, when we thought he was fading, his appetite would return and he was able to walk around the neighborhood. But the days when he would wrestle me for a stick or run through the creek at a local dog park, or joust with Coco, his canine housemate, were well in the past.

On this morning, Audrey had taken Bru to the vet for scheduled shots. Instead, she called and told me to bring Coco to say goodbye. She called our three children to tell them that Bru’s time had come.

The oldest, known here as Darling Daughter, adopted Bru during her sophomore year in college. He was just a few months old, an energetic, tan, mixed-breed rescue, with the appearance of a Black Mouth Cur, a Southern breed.

She named him Bru, as in the Boston Bruins. She was into ice hockey at the time.

About 12 years ago, when our daughter graduated and began her professional career as a newspaper reporter in South Carolina, Bru moved in with us.

Not long after, I began writing from home. Bru was my confidant for conversation (albeit one-sided), snarky comments, and rants.

A couple of years later, our older son found Coco, a black-white mix, wandering on a road, wearing a tag that identified an owner who, when called, was disinterested in the dog’s return.

He brought Coco to our home, where she formed a partnership with Bru. They became fast friends, sleeping on or next to each other, rising up on their hind legs to wrestle, and vying for our attention.

I was their servant. My role, as they saw it, was two-fold: to open the sliding glass door leading to the back yard and, at the prescribed times, feeding them lunch and dinner.

Bru could tell time, at least at noon and 6 p.m. If I were in my office, he would push the door open, wander in and make his presence known until I got out of my chair.

For a brief time, we allowed the dogs onto our bed, until they wanted us to make other sleeping arrangements, and we put a stop to that. Eventually, they found places to sleep elsewhere around the house.

Now Coco was walking around Bru, who was lying almost motionless on the clinic floor.

The vet gave Bru injections that would relieve his suffering, while taking him from us.

I knelt beside Bru, stroked his fur, and told him: “You’ve been a good dog. You’ve been a good friend. I love you.”

The American Kennel Club website suggests that the commonly used ratio of one dog year equaling seven human years was a marketing ploy, pegged to an average human life span of about 70 years.

The American Veterinary Medical Association equates the first year of a medium-sized dog’s life with 15 human years, the second year equaling about nine, after which each human year is approximately five for a dog.

By that measurement, Bru lived the equivalent of some 90 years in human terms.

As for human longevity, the Hebrew Bible, in Psalm 90:10, says: “Three score and ten our years may number/four score years if granted the vigor.”

A few days ago, at the cabin in the woods by the lake in Maine, I marked three score and ten. I wish to be granted the vigor to reach four score, perhaps more.

Having survived my own cardiac and cancer episodes and having seen friends and family succumb to a myriad of ailments, I know that there are no guarantees, but as my rabbi brother said, “companionship, friendship, and caring make the inevitable challenges and sadness bearable, whether offered by friends or dogs.”

In the days after Bru’s passing, Coco showed understandable signs of depression. She missed her buddy.

Coco ate, but without her usual enthusiasm and spent much of several days lying on her mat. A week passed before she resumed barking at dogs and humans walking by the house.

I miss Bru’s presence, no matter his limited activity in recent weeks. I miss talking to him.

He was a good dog and a good friend, and I loved him.