I took Penny to the vet today to get her tumors checked out.  I’d been putting it off. Mom and Aunt Suzy, both nurses, visited last weekend and I showed them.  Two large hard knots of tissue under the skin on Penny’s belly. Several small knots covering the insides of her rear legs like ridges on an alligator.  They looked smooth and inflamed, but I hadn’t noticed her licking and nibbling them until recently. Mom said I needed to take her to the vet; she could be in pain.  Touching the tumors didn’t seem to bother her, but she was a stoic little dog. I called to make an appointment a few days later.

Frank, my basset hound, was asleep on the couch as I came downstairs in the morning.  I knelt beside the basket I keep the dogs’ things in and stuffed Penny’s frayed pink harness and her flat pink leash into my pocket.  If Frank saw the leash he would jump around and bark in his excitement to go for a walk, and, as he wasn’t coming with us, I didn’t want to disappoint him.  Upstairs I lifted the flower printed duvet off of Penny and tried to reassure her about going to the vet while slipping her harness over her head. She lifted her paw to put through the harness, I fastened the plastic snap and carried her downstairs.  

In the car, she climbs over the console and rests on my lap.  I usually don’t allow this, as it makes steering a little awkward, but she’s dying and I feel guilty so I just keep talking to her as we drive along through Cambridge City on our way to Greens Fork.  I don’t spend enough time with her. I don’t pet her enough. She doesn’t like going to the vet.

We come out on the other end of town and turn left on highway 1 at the light.  I’m caught up in talking to penny as we drive past the closed down Alco and what looks to be the beginnings of a new dollar store.  On autopilot, I signal right as we come up to the interstate and take the on ramp toward Richmond. I wasn’t supposed to take the interstate.  I was supposed to stay on 1 until it intersected with 38, but I figure I can just take the next exit heading north.

We can’t get off until Centerville, which means we’ve travelled a bit further East than Greens Fork, where the vet is.  My car’s digital clock reads 10:15; the appointment is at 10:30. I begin to worry we won’t make the appointment time. Yesterday I missed an appointment with the psych people by 5 minutes and they forced me to reschedule despite an empty waiting room.  What if the vet turns us away? What if Penny is suffering and I can’t get her relief? What if I get there and they tell me I need to euthanize her right now? I drive North on a road I’ve never been on, sure that it connects with 38, assuming that it connects where I think it will, and hoping it will do so in less than ten minutes.

When we park at the Animal Hospital it doesn’t even occur to me to check the clock.  I pick Penny up and set her on the ground. She stops to urinate on the grass, and to sniff at some turds, but I pull her away and we walk toward the entrance with slack in the leash.  She walks through the door, perhaps for the first time ever, without being dragged or carried. There’s nobody at the desk. I stand waiting as a family prepares to leave with their young dog and children.  After a few more minutes, the woman who runs the front desk comes out and processes us. Penny doesn’t want to stand on the scale, but we are able to measure her at a little over 13 pounds. We are led into an examination room and told that someone will see us soon.

Penny usually hides under the chair and trembles in the examination room, but this time I’m cradling her.  I put my Columbia coat on the chair beside me and put Penny inside of it—she likes to be covered up, and I figure that being inside my coat will be comforting.  We wait forever for the vet and my eyes pour over each of the pamphlets and brochures about various ailments and medications on the wall. I look at the model jaws beside the sink, unsure if they’re both dogs, or maybe one is a cat.  Both sets of teeth look the same, though one is smaller than the other. Above the examining table in the middle of the room a surgical steel rod hangs from the ceiling with 5 blunt metal hooks, I assume to attach leashes for restraint.  Posters adorn the walls detailing dental and ear canal problems.

The technician comes in first with a computer cart, to see what kinds of shots and things like that we need.  Penny is due for some shots, but I don’t remember which. The vet, Dr. Sally Osborn, comes in. She’s an older woman, thin, with short gray hair.  I appreciate her bedside manner, if that’s what vets call it. Mom actually switched from her vet in Rushville to Dr. Osborn, even though it’s over an hour drive.  For some reason it’s never occurred to me to mention this when I’m at the vet. She examines Penny without disentangling her from my coat. The words “heart murmur” I know.  The larger words describing the locations of Penny’s breast tumors are foreign to me. After palpating and probing Dr. Osborn crosses the room and hangs her stethoscope up on the wall.  She talks to me about what’s typical for older dogs, including hearing and vision loss, and eventually asks me what I want to do.

I don’t have money for treatment, I say, and I stop to breathe for a moment–tears filling my eyes.  I have to collect myself with every sentence. I’m not ready to let her go. I want to know if she is in pain.  I want to know how long she has. The vet says that while the tumors are starting to tighten the skin, and there may be some irritation, Penny doesn’t seem like she is in pain.  That could change however, and as dachshunds are so low to the ground there is the potential for more irritation from things like grass. She says we can take it one day at a time, and tells me she will prescribe an anti-inflammatory.

She uses the word “euthanasia” which I have been struggling to find.  I’ve only been able to think of “put to sleep” or “put down,” neither of which I like.  My only experience with euthanasia has been shooting the dog in the back of the head with a shotgun, and I simply cannot envision such a thing for Penny.  Dr. Osborn asks if I would want to bury Penny, but I live in town and don’t see the point anyway. Maybe I will put a marker out at Mom and Dad’s near the other dogs’ graves, but it seems unnecessary to require a body as well.  She says they’ll send the body to be cremated and I can either have the ashes returned to me or allow them to be spread in a special garden near Fort Wayne. I ask if she can be euthanized at home, because she is scared of the vet’s office.  The answer is yes.

I think of what Penny will be like when she’s died—after the thing, whatever it is, that makes her Penny has been snuffed out.  Does the inanimate shell mean anything? Would it be better to have a body to bury? Do I want the ashes? Do I want to take pictures or memorialize her in some way?  Maybe it’s better to just remember. Or maybe this is my memorial. I tell myself that Penny isn’t a body; that she’s a unique collection of experiences and memories and emotions, but that doesn’t seem to do her justice.  She’s my best friend, and I will miss her.

Penny’s story is a bit obscure to me, and I have always had a bad habit of filling in missing details with whatever makes sense instead of correcting my misunderstanding.  She came to my then-wife and me through my parents, who have occasionally taken in dogs and cats that nobody else wants. They had been emailing with someone about taking in three wiener dogs, but communication had stopped.  Eventually they got an email curtly asking if they were going to come get the dogs or not. Mom and Dad went to the house and Penny and two of her grown puppies were in a box in the yard.

Penny had to have several teeth pulled.  Booger, her son, had an empty eye socket that was infected.  Rosy, her daughter, seemed fine. Both puppies were incredibly overweight–easily twice the size of Penny.  They all needed to be fixed.  My parents couldn’t stop Penny and Rosy from fighting, so they brought the older dog to live with Anastasia and me.  Her toes were crooked, we figured from living in a cage at the puppy mill all her life.

At the time, Anastasia and I lived in a small, slummy apartment with a broken front door, a bathroom, a hallway, a kitchen, and a bedroom/living room area.  It had a bolted-in window air conditioner for the summer and a cast iron oil radiator for the winter. There was a built in bookshelf creating a sort of false wall between the area we slept in and the area we watched TV in.  On one side of the shelf we kept the bed, on the other side, an ugly green couch. Needless to say, we didn’t have a lot of money, which was one of the factors we considered when deciding whether or not to take Penny from Mom and Dad.  When we picked Penny up, Dad also gave us some pork steaks from Mr. Noodles, the pig he had butchered the previous year. We hadn’t had any kind of steak in a long time.

Penny came to us ornery and defiant, and I immediately loved her for it.  I have always had a soft spot in my heart for animals that don’t take any shit from anybody.  On her first night with us I fried the pork steaks in a skillet, and also made some green beans and mashed potatoes.  We sat on the couch with our plates on the coffee table to watch TV while we ate. When Anastasia was distracted, Penny snatched the pork steak off her plate and ran.  She gave chase, but Penny fled to the safety of her kennel and bit at Anastasia when she dared to reach in.

I made the call from my office on the Thursday before Spring Break.  I had noticed Penny limping the night before–her left rear leg was swollen up and I didn’t think she would be able to get around on her own much longer.  The woman on the phone told me she was sorry. I don’t remember if I acknowledged it or not. The appointment was set.  March 11, 11:30am.  I shut my office door to be left alone.

That Sunday I went to see Captain Marvel with my parents in Connersville.  I enjoyed the movie, though I never really felt like the main character was in any danger of failing to achieve her goals.  Afterwards I went to the store and bought some “chewnola” dog treats and vanilla ice cream. When I got home I put the chewnola treats into separate dog bowls, covering them with ice cream–but hopefully not too much.  I placed each bowl on opposite sides of the kitchen to avoid any fights. Afterward, I laid down on the floor with Penny next to her dog bed. I didn’t carry her to bed with me that night–she had been avoiding jumping in and out of bed, even with her stepping stool, and I wanted her to be as comfortable as possible.  

In the morning she was still sleeping under the purple comforter I kept with her dog bed.  Though I wanted to spend time with her, I left her alone. She was comfortable and I didn’t want to bother her.  Mom and Dad were supposed to come before it happened, but they were fighting about something so only Dad came. We watched cartoons and talked about other things until the nurse came.

I knew it was her when I saw the black SUV park across the street.  A heavyset, middle-aged woman with dark hair and dark blue scrubs got out of the driver’s seat with a bag and came across to the house.  We said “hi” and I let her in. I got Penny out of bed, and, while I held her, the nurse gave her a shot to help her relax and be calm. After a few minutes she became woozy, and I laid her back in bed.

I stroke her head as the nurse readies her supplies–vials, syringes, rubber band.  The nurse kneels beside Penny and me and slips the rubber band around her front paw to help find a vein.  Penny bites and the nurse recoils. I tell her I have a muzzle and retrieve it for her. She asks for towels. When I come back from the bathroom with a couple of towels, the nurse is tightening Penny’s muzzle.  I cup Penny’s head in my hand and look into her eyes. Using her syringe, the nurse draws a pink tinged liquid from her vial, and injects it into Penny’s leg. She removes the rubber band and the muzzle. Penny puts her head down and closes her eyes–I brush the tears from mine.  

The nurse looks and tells me something like, “I commend you for what you’re doing. It’s really easy to hold on to them for our own sake, instead of doing what’s best for them.” I don’t look up from Penny, but I acknowledge her statement with a “Yeah.” She listens with her stethoscope.  After a few seconds she says, softly, “She’s gone.” I nod then go to sit on the couch while the nurse finishes her work. She asks if I want time alone with the body and I decline. She gingerly places the body in a green plastic bag and holds it with the tenderness that one might hold a newborn.  My eyes cast downward, I walk her to the door. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she tells me. “Thanks for coming out,” I respond.

I watch her walk across the street, put her things away, and climb into her vehicle.  I close the door and walk over to Penny’s bed, checking to see if her bowels or bladder had released.  I gather the blankets and put them in the dirty clothes. The bed, itself, I put in the garage–I’m not quite ready to trash it.  Dad and I spend the next hour talking about other things, and then he goes home.