Buddy

WE lost our old dog last night.

B and I were just climbing into bed when we heard the girl screaming from the dining room. Nothing chills a parent's heart like hearing that "Mommy!!" in the tone that you know something dire has just happened. I went out to look, and there he was, on the back patio just below the step. There was rain in his fur. I didn't have to touch him to know that he was gone.

Buddy was at least 18 years old, as far as we could track. He was my birthday present in 2005. We got him at the animal shelter here in town. We went in looking for something else, and were getting ready to walk out, not having found what we were looking for, when a shelter worker stopped us. She had him on a leash, wet from a bath. "You should take this dog", she said. "He's on his last day." He looked like a wet rat and smelled like death, literally. I was dubious at best, but the ex bent down to pet him and he bounced. I knew I was sunk. We were taking this ragmop dog home with us.

His coat was so unkempt and tangled that he could barely move his little legs. When I went to investigate why, I found out. There were mats beneath all four legs tying his limbs to his body. I spent hours cutting mats from him on that first day. Three or four baths later, he looked like he'd been eaten by moths and still didn't smell any better. After a quick trip to the groomer, he finally looked like a real dog. The next stop was the vets, where we discovered that he had a couple of good ear infections going on , plus many hot spots where the mats had begun eating into his skin. The shelter had told us he was ten; the vet estimated at least two years more than that. On top of it all, his facial hair had been long for so long that it had scratched his corneas, and he had cataracts. I wondered what I'd gotten myself into.

But once we got him up to snuff, he was a funny, charming little dog. He was my ex's special favorite. For an old guy, he could sure get up to the dickens. Every morning he would get up and be the first to the food bowl, bouncing and growling his funny little cough-bark. "A - wuff!" We later found out that in a funny twist of fate, he'd actually belonged to my daughter's boyfriend's family before they took him to the pound. He had been a show dog at one time, and was a purebred Shih Tzu. Moreover, he was fourteen when they'd dropped him off.

We had him for three years, and sometimes his idiosyncracies got on my nerves. He had a terrible snore, so for the last year we banned him from the bedroom, because he kept everyone awake (including the other dogs). He had a tendency to pee in the house if he felt like it was inconvenient to go outside, like when it was raining. He had gotten quite deaf, and would use it to his advantage. I was always a little skeptical of what he could and couldn't hear - if he was trotting down the street after having slipped his collar on a walk, or you were telling him to get down off the couch, or sending him out of the dining room while people ate (that's a house rule for pets - behind the carpet line dividing the dining room from the hallway, or else), he would look at you with that "Say WHAT? I can't hear you. A little bit deaf over here, sorry" look. But you could open the refrigerator in the next county and he'd be right there. I think Buddy was smarter than we gave him credit for!

In the last year or so he did a lot of sleeping during the day. We used to joke about it. He'd lay so still on his side that you'd have to go check to see if he was breathing. But he was absolutely hilarious in the mornings. He got up before everyone else, and you'd hear him out in the living room, doing his funny little morning thing where he'd talk to himself, grumbling and mumbling and whuffing while he rubbed his head all over the floor. He had a whole routine. First the head, then he'd roll over on his back and scratch his back... big wide gyrations, groaning in pleasure the whole time. It was great to watch. He loved an audience, too. One of his greatest pleasures was to do the whole back scratching thing on a favorite toy, rolling over and over it grunting and groaning while he made the toy squeak frantically.

He got up yesterday morning and stomped for his breakfast like any other morning. The girl commented on how loud he was in the living room doing his daily exercise routine. He chased a couple of thrown toys in the evening, then sat stubbornly at the base of the kitchen table begging while we ate dinner, resisting our efforts to chase him back behind the line, as he did day after day after day. At eight o'clock the kids went to DQ for ice cream, and everything was quiet. At 9:30 she found him. Sometime between there, he must have gone outside for something and had a massive event of some kind, something cerebral or cardiac was everyone's best guess. He only had time to fall over on his side, and then he was gone.

We knew it was coming. We had hoped it would happen someday in his sleep; that we would just find him in the morning still on his little pillow-bed there on the floor, having not gotten up for breakfast. It hurt to see him out in the cold, with ice and slush in his fur where the eaves were dripping. But I think it must have been fast.

We'll miss him. He was a frustrating, aggravating, good-hearted, funny little dog, and the house will be quieter for the lack of him.

RIP, Buddy.