Blog Post 27

I really didn't want to blog this shit, but it's life, and karma, and there's no denying it. Reality exists, and I should share it.

Shredder the Incredible Megadog has met his match, and is no more. Every superhero has a tragic end, and for Shredder, a 14-year-old, 110-pound doberman, it was one winter night too many. Shredder had to be euthanized. Three days ago, my mother and I agreed that it was in the best interests of Shred himself. He's been suffering through inoperable hip problems and the general issues a dog gets when he's lived through three generations of owners. The poor guy could hardly walk anymore, but he was game to try, and after carrying him into the house the morning we made the decision, and after carrying him to the car, I decided to help him walk from the Explorer into the veterinary clinic, through the waiting room, to the examination room. He'd been a watch-dog in Frayser his whole life, and he deserved to walk to his death, humane as it may be, under his own power. Shredder was nervous but calm, as he dropped to the floor under the steel exam table, exhausted, his head on my lap. I sat with him, on the hard floor, waiting for my mom to fill out the paperwork in the lobby. He was only half-interested in the people walking to and fro around him, mostly focused on me. I think he knew that this was it. He was old, older than a dog his size should ever be, and his breathing was steady. He looked at me like he always did, eager to please, but muted. You did your job, and I know it, boy. After a while, though, after my mom joined us, he did get a little restless. We had a while to wait still, and Shredder just wanted to make himself useful. So he tried to stand up a few times, and at first we let him have a go at it, but he just couldn't do it. Eventually the vet came in with his assistant, and Shred allowed himself to be lifted by three of us onto the exam table, looked passively, almost apologetically, at my mom and me, and passed quietly away as the vet injected him with whatever it is vets use to humanely silence wonderful pets forever.

It had been arranged that the clinic would do with Shredder whatever it is that state regulations say should be done with expired dogs. Still, it felt somehow wrong to have left Shredder there, still and silent on a steel table, while we climbed into a much emptier Explorer, backed out of the lot, pulled into traffic, and drove home. But that's how it works. Shred was an incredible dog, a terrifying but lovable dog, and nobody but my mom and myself will remember him as being anything but that.