There are people who will scoff at my use of the word ‘tragedy’ in the context of the story I am about to relate. Certainly these events, involving as they do just a boy and his dog, are dwarfed by the many grand scale tragedies occurring every day, devastating the lives of large numbers of both people and animals. Even in our years caring for dogs and cats in our little kennel, we were peripherally involved in events that would be more deserving of the word ‘tragedy’ as it is more commonly understood.
This was just a small family tragedy. An intimate, human scale ‘series of unfortunate events’ that will never be the stuff of a Shakespearean drama. But somehow it left it deep impression on me.
Perhaps because it is a story where one small misjudgment had devastating consequences.
Isn’t that everyone’s worst nightmare?
You reach for your glass, overturn a candle and start a forest fire. You get distracted and somehow completely forget your dog is in the car on a hot day. You strap one child into her car seat in the your car – in your own freaking driveway – then step back into the house to get your other child, and someone steals the car with the first child in it.
Then too, the characters involved in this story were heartbreakingly young, which compounds the misery.
A mother and her two sons came to visit us with their yellow Lab puppy, Honey.
The family loved to travel, but they wondered if Honey, at six months, was too young to board. The younger son (we’ll call him Sam), would have been about twelve at that time He was particularly worried about his puppy.
We had a long talk and look around the kennel. The kids started to smile when they saw the dogs in the common room and playing outside, obviously happy as clams.
They made the booking for Honey. The General and I promised to do our very best to keep her happy and healthy.
The day arrived when Honey was to start her boarding. Honey frolicked in the door, followed by her anxious looking family.
While we did the check in and got ready to take Honey for her walk, it was clear that Sam was struggling manfully not to cry.
The General promised to take photos and even do a video so that, when the family returned, he could show them how happy Honey had been at the pet resort. Yes, we were that confident of showing Honey a good time. This was pre-digital cameras, so the video proof would have to wait until the family got back.
Once digital arrived, The General spent hours every evening after returning home from a twelve hour day in the kennel, prettying up photos and emailing them to clients as “Postcards from Camp”.
He would even create funny captions.
As we knew she would, the puppy had a fantastic time annoying all the adult dogs.
When the family arrived to take Honey home, there was a joyful reunion. We watched the video together in the common room. The kids were laughing and smiling.
Greatly relieved and reassured by the success of the experiment, the family continued to bring Honey to us several times a year.
I cannot stress enough what lovely people Honey’s owners were. They were considerate and kind. They always thanked us profusely for our efforts, not just on Honey’s behalf, but in reassuring their anxious children. They even gave us a turkey at Christmas, though they themselves were Jewish.
They all loved Honey to pieces, but none more so than Sam.
A neighbour of the family had acquired her Lab puppy about the same time as Honey arrived. The two families were friends. Their kids played together and Honey and Bella were huge play pals.
About two years after Honey’s first visit, the neighbour arrived with Bella for a boarding. We knew from her stricken face that something was wrong.
She told us that Honey was at the vet, very ill and not expected to live.
That was bad enough.
The reason why Honey was at death’s door was where the events turned tragic.
Sam who was by then about 14, had been put in charge of a bag of bones slated to be used for soup.
He had been told to take the bag down to the basement and put it in the freezer.
When he was given the bag and the instructions, he already had his coat on, ready to get out of the house and on about some impossibly important teenage business. So instead on making the trek to the basement, he took the bag of bones out the back door with him to the fenced back yard and patio area.
It was winter.
With typical teenage logic, he reasoned that he was obeying the spirit of the order by leaving the bones on a high shelf in the patio area. The whole outdoors is just one big freezer, right? The bones would freeze after all, which was the purpose of the exercise.
True, Honey’s dog door would give her access to that area in the backyard. But if he thought about it at all and hey, teenaged brain – he would have rationalized that the shelf was up too high for Honey to reach. Plus, since they were frozen, she couldn’t smell them.
Both assumptions proved terribly, tragically wrong.
Honey did smell the bones and she jumped at the shelf until the bag fell off. She managed to devour every bone in the bag.
When Mom followed the cries of distress and found her, Honey was both violently ill and in great pain. Mom rushed her to the vet, who diagnosed an acute attack of pancreatitis.
The vet’s best efforts were hampered because Honey’s kidneys shut down, poisoning her whole system. Her blood had stopped clotting, so they couldn’t operate. I gathered from what Mom told me later, that an operation wouldn’t have given Honey much of a chance anyway, even if they had been able to perform it.
So poor Honey died, the whole family was beside themselves, and I expect Sam is still in therapy.
From what I saw and from what I heard from the neighbour, Sam’s parents and brother in the midst of their own shock and grief, were kind towards him. There were no recriminations.
But of course, he blamed himself for having killed the family dog.
His own beloved Honey, who he loved so much that he had cried at having to leave her for just a few days. The horrors of remorse and regret for his small act of parental defiance, added to his devastating grief over his dog.
We were broken hearted too. We loved that beautiful dog to bits, and felt horrible for this lovely family. I cried on and off for days.
Honey was the second puppy of ‘ours’ to die suddenly that winter. This was when we really began to understand the true cost of the emotional attachment we had to the dogs and cats we cared for. Just as with our own dogs and cats, all the smiles and wagging tales and purrs and funny antics came with a darker side. We know when we let then into our hearts that one day we will suffer for it.
But we do it, don’t we, and we go on doing it over and over, because what can compare to the innocent pure love of a pet?
Who else in this world looks at you with such adoration? What human relationship is so pure and uncomplicated?
I want to share one of the most tender tributes to a dog I have ever come across. It was written by Patricia McConnell, in “For The Love Of A Dog”:
“There’s a stone I had made for Luke at the top of the hill road, where the pasture opens wide and the setting sun highlights the words carved into its face. “That’ll do, Luke, that’ll do.”
The words are said to working dogs all over the world when the chores are done and the flock is settled: “That’ll do dog, come home now, your work is done.”
Luke’s work is done too. He took my heart and ran with it, and I hope he’s running still, fast and strong, a piece of my heart bound up with his, forever.”
This is my hope for Honey, and for all the hundreds of dogs and cats I’ve loved in my life.
As another author said, “No stone stands over where they lie. It is on our hearts their lives are engraved.”
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