It's a blessing to be there at the end of a life - even when it's the family pet's, writes Clem Bastow. Photo: Clem Bastow Instagram
"That's the thing about dogs," said the jolly older lady as she hoisted her scruffy Shih Tzu onto her lap in the waiting room, "they only break your heart once, when they die."
They were prescient words, as we would learn minutes later that Coco, our beloved dog, was not long for this world. The cancer had come back, her lovely vet explained with compassion, filling her jaw with tumours; now it was a question of pain management and a matter of weeks, not months. We set a date, a week away, for her farewell. Coco was 17, pushing 18, but it was still a shock to hear.
That's the other thing about dogs: once they make it past 10 or so years, you start to think they might actually live forever.
Coco came into our lives quite by accident at the turn of the century. The family went, en masse, to Burwood RSPCA on an afternoon in late 2000, thinking it might be nice to adopt something small and fluffy, like a terrier or something similarly compact.
If there was a small and fluffy option there that day, we didn't see it, because we stalled in front of the cage that held a young, brown Kelpie, who stepped up to the cyclone fencing and licked us. We looked at the 'about me' card, where most other dogs had a few sentences about their persona and exercise needs, and found only one word: "DIVINE!"
Things were considerably less divine when we got her home and on her first night as a member of the family, she engaged Puss (1991-2006) in a tense standoff that would last the next six years, and ended the evening standing on the kitchen table helping herself to mince while Mum tried to make hamburgers and Dad paced, ashen faced, up and down the hallway. My brother and I were just stoked to have a new pal.
It seems so long ago, because it was! When Coco arrived, I had only recently turned 18. Just this morning I was looking through photos, actual, printed-on-Kodak-paper photos, to try and find our earliest memories of Coco. We survived the Y2K bug and the reward for our bravery came in the form of a small brown friend.
I marvelled recently at having known some of my "internet friends" for a decade, but Coco was sitting beside my desk before ADSL even existed, back when the whole family shared the one email address. She was there when I downloaded my first ever MP3 (Supreme Beings Of Leisure's 'Never The Same'), and when I filed my first ever piece of paid writing work. Coco met all of my post-high school boyfriends, and her frequent growls and barking fits when introduced to each of them suggests she was a far better judge of character than me.
Like any Good Dog, Coco was a valued member of the family and a great guardian of our house, but she was more than that; for one thing, she was so eccentric. There were two straight years where she amused herself constantly by tossing around a steadily shrinking piece of chewed-up plastic fly-swat. When you gave Coco a biscuit, she would wait at the door until you let her out, upon which she would go to the back garden and bury the biscuit for later; ever paranoid, if she spotted you watching her from the window, she'd hurriedly bury it somewhere else.
Later, Coco shared the couch with Pickles the whippet, an extra-terrestrial puppy farm rescue, never far from a "cone" who was here for a good time not a long time (2005-2010). When they went to live for a time with Dad, they'd tear up and down the hallway, occasionally catching air and running on the spot like a pair of Looney Tunes characters. After Pickles "went on", we all had to make sure to refer to Coco's favourite snack - Always Fresh "Classic Dills", straight out of the jar - as "gherkins", because at the mere mention of "Pickles", she'd crane her neck to see if he was about to come in the door.
And that was what was special about Coco: she was so aware of what was happening around her. More than once, she'd pull our hands away from keyboards they'd been glued to for too long. When I had my wisdom teeth surgery, she parked herself over me so I had no choice but to rest. After my parents separated and my brother and I moved out, Coco would only really relax at birthdays and Christmases, when everyone was "rounded up"; a true working dog, who'd never done a day of work in her life.
When Red Dog became a blockbuster hit, Coco would endure, with saintlike patience, the endless cries of "Look, Red Dog!" whenever she went to town. We briefly considered monetising her and charging $5 for photos with "Red Dog", but then realised that Coco's white chest flash (unlike Koko, her big screen peer, who was reddish-brown all over) marked her as an impostor.
I have so many treasured memories of Coco - as does Mum, who she lived with, inseparable, for the past six years, and Dad, and Atticus, and even her friends both "IRL" and those who loved her enigmatic presence on my Instagram - that I could fill a book. But the most precious moments were the simplest: those spent snoozing together on the couch, my nostrils filling with her scent. As Milan Kundera sagely wrote, "No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic."
More than once over the past week, since we got the news, I found myself wondering why our ancestors couldn't have domesticated tortoises or albatrosses, or some creature with a longer lifespan, to save us some of the pain of loss. But then I remembered the time an acquaintance met Coco, and said they felt "spiritually poorer" for never having had a companion animal of their own.
In her twilight years, Coco liked to sit on the couch and listen to Mozart's 'Clarinet Concerto in A'; the Adagio always seemed almost unbearably sad to me (can confirm its power as I write this while listening to it and weeping), but Coco found it so calming. I now wonder if she knew her time was drawing to a close and she was preparing to leave us. This Monday, we took her to her favourite dog park for one last frolic. When it was time to go home, she yanked on the lead, and turned around and surveyed the scene for a good minute before she turned back to hop in the car.
In his Encyclical last year, Pope Francis said, "Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all." He also spoke of Mary grieving for the suffering of all animals.
We lit the Virgen de Guadalupe candle this morning before we took Coco to Lort Smith, one of the last of the rose-scented offering candles from my local corner store that I jammed my suitcase with upon my return from Los Angeles.
It was in Los Angeles that one of the most profound experiences of my life occurred, on the Saturday before Easter Sunday in 2012, not long after I had moved there. After a trip to Union Station to meet friends, I found myself at Calle Olvera, where the annual Blessing of The Animals was about to get underway.
It was my first Easter away from home, and thus my first without an Easter morning snuggle from Coco. The Blessing of the Animals, I figured, might be a nice way to ease the separation anxiety.
That event, which has been held every year since 1930 (though the tradition stretches back to the 4th century), sees beloved pets, faithful service animals, and slightly bewildered farm animals, brought to town to be blessed by the Archbishop of Los Angeles, José H. Gómez.
On that day, I met dogs and cats of all breeds and sizes, a donkey, a cow, a snake, and even two iguanas wearing aloha shirts; one lady brought her dog's ashes. A Mariachi band played as the Gómez, his face fixed with a beatific grin, sprinkled holy water on a seemingly never-ending parade of slightly perplexed animals carried and led by their delighted owners and co-workers. I wept until I laughed!
All around me, I was reminded of the ways in which animals so selflessly enrich our lives, and the joy they bring us - and when I returned home for the day, Coco conquered her trademark distrust of Skype and appeared on screen, for the first time, to wish me a happy Easter. It was a true miracle.
I thought of the Blessing of the Animals this Tuesday morning as we guided Coco through the gates of the Lort Smith Animal Hospital - heaven's earthly outpost - on the way to her final rest. On her way in she met with another grand old dame, a lovely yellow dog with 'eyebrows' bleached white by age, and raised her hackles one last time; top dog until the end. It wasn't until I saw that yellow dog again inside, her owners weeping, that I knew we were all in the same boat that sad, sunny morning.
Travis, the nomadic dog whisperer who became her friend in her later years, used to say that Coco liked to know where everyone in her "pack" was, and her pack surrounded her at Lort Smith when it was time. Her magnificent vet said that making this decision to end Coco's pain, and prevent her degeneration, was a gift we were giving her in exchange for all the love she had shown us (she also let us feed Coco the entire jar of liver treats that sat on her desk).
It's a blessing to be there at the end of a life, and there was such love in Exam Room 5 as we all said goodbye to Coco and the vet prepared to "give her her wings". We were told there might be vocalisation or other side effects, and readied ourselves for the possibility of something upsetting happening even as we knew we were doing the right thing by her.
But, in the end - the same way she did every time we said "Goodbye, Coco, mind the house!" - she just rested her little head on her crossed paws, her ears up and listening as ever, and went to sleep.
Good girl, Coco.
