The Experience

My first dog came to us when I was just one year old. My father had propositioned my mother; if he received the job he was vying for he would be able to get a dog, she obliged. My father wrote on his application this very thing to try and appease his future boss to hire him. Later in life I would hear from the man that he was in fact completely unimpressed but hired my father anyway for his gumption. So, my mother lived up to her end of the bargain as my father had lived up to his and Willow came to our family the runt of a mutt litter.

Willow’s story reminds me much of Hephaestus which you can find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephaestus, because Willow too was the last of her litter cast aside for her small size and timid approach. But like Hephaestus, Willow turned into something so much more. Willow was with my family until I was almost sixteen years old, and she was fifteen. Not having siblings, I can only relate to the feelings I had for my dog that I feel were probably very much close to those siblings must experience. We fought like siblings, (I was always trying to get her off my trampoline), we protected each other, (she attacked a dog twice her size that had roamed into the yard and got it by the neck), and we loved each other.
Not only was she my faithful companion for most of my natural life thus far, but she was also a survivor. When she was three Willow was bitten by a spider and her head swelled to twice her normal size. When she was four she was one of the first dogs in Montana to get heartworm. She ate plants that had just been sprayed with pesticide and though sick for two weeks, came out better than ever. These factors may have made her death so hard on not just me but all our family, and slightly unbelievable.
I remember my mother was the first to notice Willow’s behavior change. No longer did she happily run through the house, or come to pick up dropped food but moved in a sluggish, tired pace. My mother took her to the vet and was told she had an infection in her teeth, something in her kidney and multitudes of other problems. We tried medicine for awhile but our dog we had loved for so long was no longer the dog we knew; she was miserable.
I went to school the day my mother put her down, I don’t even think I was aware it was happening. I came home to my mother crying and explaining what happened. I froze, I had known Willow my whole life she couldn’t just be gone, she was my dog. My mother, never the one to be coy, told me the full details of what happened and I thought I was going to be sick. I didn’t want to think about it and couldn’t be around my mother so I fled to my room and bawled.
Willow was not my first experience with death nor will she be the last. In fact, I often find myself borderline panic attack if I venture to think of my own death and what will be after. But I take comfort in the cycle that life gives us. Something dies, something is born, life continues. And as Dr. Sexson told us, sarvam dankon sarvam anityan.