We took Lisa’s dog Otto to the vet for the last time this morning.
Almost exactly a year after I arrived to live with Lisa in Milwaukee. We’d only met online a couple of months earlier. Over and above the fact that I am old and we were both lonely, there were external arguments against taking things slow. I expected the worst of COVID and thought there was a good chance we’d be locked down over the winter; I didn’t think either of us should be home alone on election night if Trump won a second term; and I didn’t think she should be alone when Otto – at that point 15 years old, almost stone-deaf and already going blind – had to take his last ride.
His breed exists only to be lap dogs but soon after I got here Lisa told me, “He’s not much of a cuddler.” He never had been. I didn’t really want another dog at that point in my life but if I did and I was picking dogs, I would have picked Otto close to last. In spite of that, I bonded with him.
Marquette had in-person classes despite COVID, so there were a few days a week when Otto was my only company. We had a long, pleasant fall last year. In the middle of Lisa’s teaching days I took Otto for very, very slow walks around the block.
Sometime towards the onset of winter, Otto had a painful eye infection that put paid to whatever was left of his vision. He could see light and dark, but that was it. At night, he got anxious. After 15 years of sleeping on Lisa’s bed, he preferred the office, where I left a light on for him.
We didn’t think he’d last the winter; we made an appointment to euthanize the little guy. But after getting the eye pain under control he seemed to bounce back a bit. Strangely, he continued to understand eye contact. After going outside to poo, he always got a treat. Even blind, he would “look” up expectantly. I wouldn’t call it begging; it was more like insisting.
Next to her, he’s been my number one conversational partner in Milwaukee. Not that he responded or even heard me. Other dogs look up and think, “That’s directed at me, he didn’t say ‘walk’ or ‘treat’ but I’ll wag my tail just in case.” Not Otto. Interactions with him were very one-way even by pet owners’ lopsided standards. People always project emotions onto their dogs, but he was pretty much a black hole in terms of reflecting anything back.
And yet...
I dimly recall research that took place in Japan, which has the world’s oldest population. Someone built simple robots that periodically demanded attention. These were distributed to old people living alone. The experiment studied the bonds that robot-keepers developed with their robots, which proved remarkably similar to those that pet owners formed.
My relationship with Otto reminded me of that study. If he was downstairs and wanted to go up, he barked and I carried him up, until he barked again to go down. If he hadn’t eaten for a while, I picked him up and carried him to his food bowl. It took the instincts of a poker player to spot his tell for, “I need to poo,” so I frequently took him outside to no avail. He was just skin and bones so winter poops first called for me to dress him. At any point in my earlier life if you’d told me, “The day will come when you’ll not mind dressing your dog,” I’d’ve laughed at you.
I admit that I was surprised he survived the winter and again when we bought a house and he managed to navigate the new place by smell alone. But last week it was time. He wasn’t whimpering or panting; there were no signs that he was in serious pain, but his body language never got to neutral.
I’d be projecting if I said he was always sad, but he sure as hell was rarely happy. As summer approached he become anxious again come nightfall but for some reason was unwilling to lie down. Maybe lying down hurt him or maybe standing up was his way of urging on the next, last step. You wish they’d die on their own but it’s not that convenient. Waiting for an unmistakable signal is cruel, too. Instead we had to enter that grey area and acknowledge that not every life’s worth living.
He had a pretty good final afternoon. I took him out onto the front lawn and he rolled in the grass. He smelled Lisa when she returned from errands and wagged his tail. We took him for a bike ride; he always seemed to enjoy that. But it was another night of little sleep; I finally got him settled in my office at about 0300.
This time, we kept the appointment. I guess it is lucky that at the moment, I’ve got a few work assignments to distract me. He was such a small dog, but somehow the whole house feels empty. I’d say I am shattered, but I was already broken by the year I lived through before moving up here. Otto taught me that there was a therapeutic value, or at least an analgesic one, in caring for a being – perhaps any being – even more fragile.
I won’t pretend that this is as hard for me as it is for Lisa. Her sons were 11 and 13 when Otto arrived in 2005 and now they’re adults with jobs. I was right, I think, in wanting us to be together for that COVID winter; luckily I was wrong about us needing to support each other through a Trump re-election; and I hope I’m better than nothing when it comes to filling the Otto-sized hole in her heart.
