Chance's Last Day

        I like to go back at times and see what was happening and what I wrote about it. Today was one of those days. Chance was an old border collie. The story is about my last dog's last day. It is a letter I wrote to the veterinarian after he ended my dog's suffering. I remember picking her up when she was no longer able to get up herself. She seemed to know the end was near. I took her to the vet, tears in my eyes as they are now as I write this. She was the best dog I ever had.

                                                                        Thursday November 29, 2007

Dear Doctor John,

I wanted to thank you for the card and the kindness you and Debi showed when I brought in my dog Chance on Tuesday the 27^th of November. She was an old dog when she showed up on our back porch about ten years ago. She already showed her age then. I talked to everyone I knew and even put an advertisement in the paper to see if anyone had lost her and wanted to claim her. No one responded.

She came along after our dog Alley had died and I felt then that I didn’t want to get attached to another dog. I tried to never get attached to Chance, but even though I tried my best, it was impossible. She was the smartest and best dog I ever had. She could interpret hand signals and respond well to vocal commands. She would come up and politely place her paw on my knee when she wanted affection. The one thing I could never figure out was that she would never enter a building, even the open garage. There was much better shelter for her in the barn or garage, but she would never enter either. She slept in an open wooden box I brought home from work and put on the front porch. In her later years I would try to bring her into the house on exceptionally cold nights, but she would never enter. The only time she ever went inside a building was when you operated and removed the tumor from her mouth a few years back and of course the last day when you put her down. Another thing she did was amazing to me; she never rushed to her dinner when I fed her. She would walk over and stand patiently until I went back in the house. If I stood and watched her, she would stand at the bowl as long as I watched her, and then wolf her dinner down as soon as I went in the house. I never saw a dog do that.

We could see the end coming the last few days and my heart ached for her. She was nearly blind, very nearly deaf; her hips had given out, making walking painful and on that last day she could no longer make it to the porch when that hind leg seemed so dramatically out of place. I knew the end was here and her time had come.

I want to thank you and Debi for taking care of Chance so gently and quickly on her last day. Those requests for end of life services must be the most difficult tasks you have to perform, knowing how attached people become to pets. I could see when you picked her up she showed no fear as she always did around other people she wasn’t familiar with. She seemed sense your kindness.

Thanks,

Bill Weber