My dog had cancer. After $1400, surgery, and an oncology consult, the best hope was radiation, with a mixed success rate and only, at best, a six month reprieve. We had to say farewell yesterday morning. She had developed that far away stare. Vets, the military types not the animal doctors, call it the thousand yard stare. Looking towards a future that may not even be – something over the horizon of both space and time, working with, or most likely, against luck.

On a blanket, on the floor, me, the vet, and the vet tech sitting, crouching, or on our knees. Me, stroking her head. The vet shaved the front leg. A small syringe and August slept, almost immediately. Switching to an exposed back leg without moving her, the vet inserted a needle and drip, attached a much larger syringe filled with a pink fluid, like a gin with a couple of drops of bitters. She opened the valve. August’s tongue slipped out of the front of her mouth. It seemed only seconds, the vet took her stethoscope, “She is gone.” She was still warm. I noticed I had been trying to feel for a pulse. Trying to catch her last moment, wishing against all odds that the pink fluid would annihilate the cancer, eliminate the discomfort, and bring her back to being forever young. Her coat was still lustrous, her disfigured mouth from the tumors, relaxed and covered. She just went to sleep.

Inappropriate of not, I could not help but think about the death row in Illinois or wherever there had been struggles completing the capital sentences. This was so easy, almost gentle, but still an irreversible decision.