Percy the Beagle: March 24th, 2001 to July 16th, 2015

Percy the Beagle

March 24th, 2001 (his adoption date minus one year) – July 16th, 2015

PERCY THE BEAGLE STATUS UPDATE: Sadly I must report that Percy died, apparently in his sleep, sometime between 11 AM and 1PM today. 

Yesterday morning he was in obvious distress, having problems moving, disinterested in food – generally down. Later, when I got home from work, he went out and tried to crap twice. I took him to the vet thinking he had a blockage and mentally prepared to euthanize him. The vet checked him out (non-invasive, except for a finger up his butt) and reported no obvious signs of either a colon blockage or large urinary bladder tumor. Temperature was good, color was good, heart rate good, no sound of fluid in his chest cavity. There had been no blockage as far as she could tell in the anus but there was some blood and she determined that he had gastroenteritis. He has had that before and I concurred we should try treating that before euthanizing him. Got two pills of Flagyl into him last night and one this morning before work. Got the call from Chester around one and, coming home, confirmed that he was not breathing and rigor mortis had begun to set in. With Chester's help, we got him to the vet and stopped at Roosevelt's on Chelsea Ave. on the way home and had something akin to a modest wake. I restricted myself to Stewart's Root Beer. J Percy will be cremated and I will scatter the ashes in a secure, undisclosed city cemetery of some renown that quite certainly would disapprove. But it's where my late  dachshund went so it seems appropriate. It's where I'd like my ashes to go if there's anyone who takes a somewhat casual view of rules.

I cannot sum up what life with Percy was like. He was as good a dog as a bad dog could be and was a complete pacifist. The only thing he did to make my life easier – taking leave without my needing to intervene – more than makes up for the rest. His entire life he did things that could have gotten him killed and Wright's Animal Hospital was amazed that he had lived as long as he did considering the two untreated cancers.

I don't know how it was from Percy's perspective as he slowly declined and his final decline was precipitous – two days ago he was howling for some desired food or another. Which he, of course, got.

Kafka wrote that the meaning of life is that it ends. He meant that our lives are shaped and shaded by the existential terror of knowing that all is finite. This anxiety informs poetry, literature, the monuments we build, the wars we wage, the ways we love and hate and procreate -- all of it. Kafka was talking, of course, about people. Among animals, only humans are said to be self-aware enough to comprehend the passage of time and the grim truth of mortality. How then, to explain old Harry at the edge of that park, gray and lame, just days from the end, experiencing what can only be called wistfulness and nostalgia? I have lived with eight dogs, watched six of them grow old and infirm with grace and dignity, and die with what seemed to be acceptance. I have seen old dogs grieve at the loss of their friends. I have come to believe that as they age, dogs comprehend the passage of time, and, if not the inevitability of death, certainly the relentlessness of the onset of their frailties. They understand that what's gone is gone. 

Thanks to everyone who followed Percy's story and sent their prayers and good wishes.

He spent the last year and a half in hospice and it was the best period of his life, for him and for me.

There is certainly a degree of selfishness in our love for our pets – and that's okay.

In our dogs, we see ourselves. Dogs exhibit almost all of our emotions; if you think a dog cannot register envy or pity or pride or melancholia, you have never lived with one for any length of time. What dogs lack is our ability to dissimulate. They wear their emotions nakedly, and so, in watching them, we see ourselves as we would be if we were stripped of posture and pretense. Their innocence is enormously appealing. When we watch a dog progress from puppyhood to old age, we are watching our own lives in microcosm. Our dogs become old, frail, crotchety and vulnerable, just as Grandma did, just as we surely will, come the day. When we grieve for them, we grieve for ourselves.

If you're a dog or cat owner, please, please, don't deny yourself the pleasure of living with your friend in their elder years.

  

See Something About Harry: Old Dogs are the Best Dogs

Bill B