I Had to Shoot My Dog Last Night

“Bailey died July 9^th, Wednesday, 1:45 a.m., 2014.  He was 12 years old.”  So my daughter, Malea, wrote on a notepad last night which I just discovered in the kitchen this morning.  Bailey Hercules Borland was a 12 year old boxer, one year older than my oldest daughter.  We had raised him from a puppy.  We saw him through surgery on a broken leg because of a bad Frisbee toss and his ability to leap very high.  He was loyal and smart.  He once busted through an electric fence to chase two horses across a field because he mistakenly (but reasonably) thought that one of the horses bit our youngest daughter.  When he was younger he would run with Amy and me.  He protected the family when I was gone, and the family felt more at ease at night knowing he was there and always alert.  And last night he died and was buried.

Bailey had been getting worse and worse this last month.  He stopped eating dog food about a month ago and started getting skinnier.  He lived off the scraps our one-year-old threw on the floor and from meat (lots of hot dogs) I fed him when I realized he would eat such things.  Then a couple days ago he stopped eating.  I forced pain pills down his throat for the past week.  And for the past week I’ve had to pick him up to walk because he couldn’t stand on his own. 

The last couple days he started moaning more, and yesterday his feet were very swollen. We had thought about taking him to the vet to put him down but couldn’t go through with it.  We did not want to bring our dog to the vet’s office to have him killed, pay the people at the desk for killing our dog, and then bring his body home in a bag.  He was a part of the household and a part of the family (2 Samuel 12:1-3).  I briefly entertained having the vet bury him but we wanted to bury him at our home, so we were hoping he would die peacefully in the night.  But that didn’t happen.

A friend from out of town stopped by yesterday and stayed the night at the house we are trying to sell across from the new house we just moved into.  I was over at the other house with him watching TV at about 1:30 a.m. (the latest I’ve stayed up in I can’t remember how long) when Amy called crying saying that Bailey was in awful pain.  So I rushed over to the other house in the rain. 

I have never heard a dog sound like Bailey did.  It was awful.  The only thing that seemed to sooth him was rubbing his head—touching any other part of his body seemed only to make the agony worse.  I had told Amy earlier in the day that I would rather be the one to kill my dog than contract his killing from the vet if it came to that, but Amy couldn’t bear to think of him being shot and wanted to have him put to death by injection.  But both of us knew from his cries that now was the time and that my putting him down was the only option.  I had to shoot my friend and the best dog I have ever had.

So I took out my Ruger 9mm that SSG E. Rosa sold to me at Fort Bragg years ago.  I picked Bailey up in my arms with his blanket underneath (one that Amy had in her family for years and which Bailey had been sleeping on) and I told him I loved him many times and that he had been a great dog as I walked him down around the house to lay him by the tree he had liked to lie beside for the last couple days.  Amy stood on the porch above in the pouring rain, weeping.

I pulled back the slide and chambered a round.  I turned the flashlight on Bailey as rain poured off my eyelids. And then I started sobbing uncontrollably because before I had to pull the trigger, Bailey died.  “Bailey is dead,” I yelled up to Amy over the sound of pouring rain.  “He died!  Bailey died!  He’s dead!  I didn’t have to kill him.  What a great, great dog.  He's dead.”  Bailey or God or both had seen fit not to have me shoot him and for that I am truly thankful.

Amy came down and we then said that we need to bury him.  We went to our other house to get the spade and one of the kids’ spades because Amy wanted to help dig the hole. 

It was ugly and dirty, and it was miserable – just as it ought to be.  Death is the enemy.  We did it because our friend deserved a place in the ground for his body. 

I now borrow some words that a friend once shared with me about his own dog, now making these words my own: 

In the ground the parts that were once caught up in his life will now become caught up in the life of other things.  He took those parts from the earth, and it is fitting for him to give them back to the earth.  

Digging his grave also gave us something that we desperately needed.  The good Lord has not seen fit to give us the power to will things not to die, or to will them back to life after they’ve done so.  He has, however, granted us the power to move the earth, even if only one shovelful at a time.  Moving that earth gave us a chance to exercise control over what we do have control over.  And we needed that.

It poured and poured the whole time as if the sky wept for Bailey.  It seemed fitting—the washing away of the pain and sorrow for the hope of a sunny day to come.

Then we placed his body in the ground.  As I picked him up his body moaned in reflex one last time as if the air knew that it was no longer the breath the life.  Amy asked if he was dead but I could feel rigor mortis already setting in. 

Before we threw the first shovelful of dirt I prayed this prayer amongst our crying:

“Heavenly Father, we thank you for letting us have Bailey for these years and letting us love him and be loved by him.  If you see fit on that great resurrection day that the whole earth is groaning towards to resurrect Bailey, we would be much obliged.  May he rest in peace.  Here lies the remains of a great, great dog.”

Reflecting today, I am not sure why it is permissible to kill a suffering dog, but I’m glad I did not have to do so.  Perhaps it is because we have been given dominion over other animals but not over each other.  Perhaps there are more than just theological reasons. Perhaps I’m confused about the entire issue.  But the time to think about such things is not in the midst of grieving.  Still, it is important to reflect on such moral issues in moments of clarity for the very reason that there is little clarity in the midst of turmoil.

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

-Bob Dylan, It’s Not Dark Yet