Rest in Peace, Mr. Dog
The best dog in the world, Barney, died tonight around 10:30 on the
kitchen floor.
He’d had a cough for a couple of weeks, nothing so severe or frequent
as to worry us much, and was supposed to see the doctor on Tuesday to
get it checked out. This evening, though, he seemed a lot less lively
than usual, and his cough was much worse, so we called to try and move
the appointment up to tomorrow morning.
Tonight, I was in the family room, and he’d settled down on the kitchen
floor where he sometimes would lie. I’d just finished playing a computer game, and he was making sounds that sounded at first like the cough
had died down and he was resting a little more comfortably, but after a
few seconds it was clear that something was wrong. When I got to him,
he was limp and drooling fluid profusely. I even tried holding him
upside down, just in case draining the fluid that way would help, but it
was no use. It was frightening how quickly he had gone downhill.
I wish I had noticed something was amiss earlier, and I wish to hell we
had taken that cough more seriously than we did. He was a good dog, and
I’m going to miss him.