In the end, I made the call. My husband cancelled the dog food delivery and dug the hole. I could hear him hitting buried bricks and swearing. The chickens watched, clucking comments.
I wouldn’t say I knew it was the right time to put Oscar down, more that it didn’t feel wrong. Getting into bed made him yelp and, once in, he struggled to settle. He started whimpering at night with pain, bad dreams, or both. He ate voraciously but flinched when touched; a tennis ball could make him momentarily skittish but he was withdrawn and rarely seemed fully relaxed, this dog who had spent a lifetime lolling in the softest possible places.
Oscar loathed the vet and the car trip there with equal fervour, so I Googled “home euthanasia” for pets, unleashing a world of misty pastels and euphemisms. “This place charges by weight?” I exclaimed to my husband, wondering if our recent spoiling had taken him over some arbitrary threshold. Breakfast at 5am, sir, and again at 7am? Pâté to hide your pills and multiple dinners on demand? Absolutely. Eventually, I chose Elizabeth, the kindest Dognitas you could hope for – what a vital, terrible job.
Comedy ran through the awfulness like ground-up painkillers through pâté. The day before, a thin, dented parcel of wilting flowers dropped through the letterbox. A moment of sentimentality from my husband? No, the dog food delivery company. “We’re so sorry to hear your sad news about Bob. Our thoughts are with you at this difficult time and we’re always here if you need us,” the card read (my husband gave Oscar a fake name for obscure reasons – canine GDPR?).
It wasn’t cold the next morning, but we lit a fire after his second roast chicken breakfast in case he fancied baking his stiff body in front of it. He humoured us, briefly, without enthusiasm. My husband persuaded him outside with a ball, but he padded straight back inside, discreetly, as if anxious not to offend. He was always very polite, sweetly tolerating the kids, manhandling and silliness – everything but hedgehogs, really. I could say so much after 15 years, but he was gentle above all.
Elizabeth came, gentle too, saying the right things, making cold comfort as warm as she could. We choreographed the first sedative injection: him standing, confused, as I fed him chicken; her with a syringe behind him, my husband hovering miserably. Oscar’s arthritic rear end buckled when the needle went in, but he didn’t whimper. “He’s going to feel so good,” she said, detailing the effects. No anxiety, no pain. At last.
She went outside for 10 minutes, leaving us alone. My husband laid Oscar on his bed and we watched and stroked as he sighed, face slackening, paws twitching as if dream-running as he used to. Then I saw his sphincter twitch and slacken too, ominously. “Get kitchen roll,” I hissed through tears, but it was too late to staunch the explosive diarrhoea of a creature overindulged on rich meat for weeks. The stench was horrendous; we became hysterical. “Jesus, Oscar,” I said, a final time of too many. “Will he be cold if I open a window?” my husband asked. “I don’t think he can feel anything much now,” I said and the hilarity evaporated.
Elizabeth came back and put a cannula in his leg for the second, final injection. I kissed the bald patch on his temple as she worked, stroked a silken ear and his pink belly; far more fuss than he would have enjoyed. “Good doggie,” my husband said, scratching the whorl of hair on his shoulder and the Quaver-shaped white patch on his neck. Elizabeth checked his heart, then left quietly, and we watched Oscar leave quietly too. I took a picture; because he was beautiful, I suppose – he always was.
Afterwards, we carried the warm familiar weight of him outside. I cupped his perfectly palm-sized head – a gesture as instinctive as breathing for all these years – before my husband tucked him neatly in the hole under the pear tree with part of my heart. It hurt, covering his lovely face with earth, but actually, that didn’t quite feel wrong either. Goodbye and thank you, sweet gent.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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