Unexpected grief: Elegy for a border collie
On February 23, Libya was convulsed in civil revolt against Muammar Qaddafi, who threatened to shed his last drop of blood while tracking and killing the protesters. Turmoil throughout the Arab world triggered a spike in crude oil prices, a plummet in stock values and fear that much of the world would plunge into a recessionary tailspin. Meanwhile, in an animal hospital in Princeton, New Jersey, a dog was euthanized. God forgive me, but it is this last event that I will remember.
Pinky lived 16 years and six months—very old for a breed whose median age of death is about 12 years. Harriet and I purchased the pup when our daughter was five years old, so Caroline grew up with Pinky and he grew up with us. Though the expression may repel some, the fact remains that this dog was a member of our family and regarded as family by friends whom Pinky greeted at our door. Deprived of the sheep that he'd been bred to drive, he herded the Black family. He had the goods to do it. His papers testified to his purebred lineage among trial and show dogs in Sussex. Earlier this year a border collie reportedly recognized 1,022 words. Unlike me, Pinky never bit people or even growled at them. His policy toward rabbits, cats and other dogs was an unruffled live-and-let-live. Only one thing agitated him—a bicycle's spinning spokes. If he could, he would have run every Schwinn to earth, then licked each peddler into compliance.
Standing beside him as he was put to sleep, my wife and I found ourselves piercingly wounded. This took me by surprise. It was not our first brush with death. Harriet and I have buried three of our parents. When one reaches the far side of middle age, funeral homes are no novelty. Pinky was, as they say, only a dog. What, then, prevented me from washing Pinky's preferred cushion when I smelled his odor on it? Why was Harriet heartbroken at the sight of his leash on our porch and reminded of Tiny Tim's empty stool and abandoned crutch? Neither of us wears maudlin comfortably. What could account for such grief?
