July 9 2024:
Pip is suffering, he has suffered in silence and withdrawal, sleeping outside at night for the past two weeks. Now his stomach is full of tumors, he can’t eat, throws up what he drinks. I will work on remembering all the years of his blessed companionship: How easy he was to train as a puppy (although stubborn later in insisting of the direction of his walks;) how he ran joyously ahead of me on the trail, or waited between the back door and the garage door at night, no matter the weather, even pouring rain, for me to come home; how he responded with moans of excitement when I told him we were driving to one of his two favorite places, the dog park or the kennel where he boarded when I was away—and how the young people loved him there; how quiet he was, except for necessary warning barks when someone was coming in the gate; how he loved men, and how yesterday in the dog park the native man rubbed and rubbed his ears. He has been the angel of my life alone.
How he began to drag on his leash this summer as his strength left him and the heat thickened.
And always close to me, always willing—or nearly always—to do what I wanted.
July 11, 2024
Pip is slowly starving himself to death. Five or six days now with no food except for the grasses he eats while wading in the shrunken Santa Fe River. I have a notion the water and the leaves will cure his tumors. He’s depleted but not yet ready to die. I’m abiding by my decision, based on instinct, to let him die on his schedule and in the way he wants.
July 12, 2025
Pip slowly making his way into death, withdrawing, noble, mysterious, very quiet. No more barking when someone comes to the gate, no more tail wagging except once, for Barry. He stares at me with opaque brown eyes, seems to want to be with me but spends his nights on the couch outside under the portico. I check each morning, fearing that he has gone. His open grave waits.
July 14, 2024
Pip’s death, approaching slowly, is as natural as his birth would have been. It is what comes to all of us. My attempt to comfort and console him, interpreting his long stares as desperation, is the way we, modern and faithless, show our incomprehension. I don’t know if he is comforted. I don’t even know if he seeks comfort. All of that is unknown.
July 18, 2024
Pip goes on.
July 20, 2024
Pip died this morning, my most beautiful dog, my companion for nine years, closer than any human. I spent some time with him under the portale where the couch had become his resting place; he dozed, opening his eyes to see if I was still there, then dozing again. I was not with him for his death. He lay on my white bathroom floor, his bowels evacuating, perhaps heading for his dog door, but in every way beautiful, black on white, peaceful, resting his chin on his paws.
We buried him in the garden.
I loved that dear doggie and still do!! What a gift he was and his spirit still wags its tail happily.