A place for Hopeful to sit and stay

I buried my dog this morning in a nice sunny spot up on the hill near the woods where she loved to chase squirrels, with a good view of the road we so often walked together. Ten years ago she followed me home on that road, a tick-ridden, milk-engorged stray looking for a place to put down roots, and it took her just three days to earn a home and a name: Hopeful. And so she has remained, until today.

For ten years, every time I stepped out the front door she was hopeful that we'd go for a walk, and she didn't really care where: up the hill to the butterfly meadow, along the creek, down the road to visit the neighbors' cows and donkeys. She loved to bark at deer in the meadow and she used to catch groundhogs by the garden and then hide their carcasses as if they were precious treasure, and every squirrel that ever ran up a tree filled her with the hope that surely she would someday figure out how to climb up after it. In winter she would roll and slide in the snow and jump into the half-frozen creek, and in sweet-corn season she would chew gleefully on every corn cob we threw her way.

She was free to roam fields and woods but I could go outside any time of the day and whistle and call out Hopeful and here she'd come, bounding up ready for a walk. She was good at come and walk but not so great at sit and stay, which cramped her style.

How many times did we walk that road in ten years? I couldn't begin to count, but she never tired of walking the three-mile loop and ending up back on our bridge, where she knew I would toss her a treat--and she would jump to catch it. We've both slowed down over the years, but when we walked the loop two days ago, she bounded ahead as she always had, with occasional pauses to make sure I was following. She wasn't limping but she seemed a bit wobbly, and every once in a while she'd stagger drunkenly to the right and then look back as if embarrassed. She also wouldn't jump up when I tossed her treats, instead insisting on taking them straight from my hand. 

I was concerned enough to leave a message with the vet yesterday in hopes of getting an appointment, but then a power outage hit the whole county and the vet never called back. I noticed that Hopeful didn't come running to greet me when I got home last night, but by the time I'd changed clothes and found her, it was too late for the vet.

I found my dog still breathing but looking sadly diminished, curled up under the shed out back in the same spot where her best dog-friend, Duke, died a few years ago. Gentlemanly old Duke used to come limping a mile up the road for a visit nearly every day; when he was ready to die, he made that trip one last time and then crawled into the cozy nest of pine needles under the shed and breathed his last.

I wasn't surprised to find Hopeful there in a nice dry place away from the cold drizzle, but I was surprised that she didn't want to come out. I held a dog biscuit close to her mouth and she took it, thumping her tail on the ground feebly a few times, but before long she was retching and vomiting it back up. I checked her food dish: her morning portion hadn't been touched. How could she have failed so drastically in just 24 hours? 

What could I do? I found the shovel and a pair of gloves and started digging. 

It was good weather for grave-digging, cold and dark and drizzly, and as the shovel bit into the heavy clay soil I would glance at the road and think about all the miles we'd walked, all the ways she'd brought a steady stream of hope into my days. She came to me when I didn't know I needed a dog and she cheered me through cancer treatment and flash floods and campus shenanigans and grief. Remember how much the 17-year cicadas delighted her? How she would jump and snap and try to catch them? Or the time she found a chunk of sofa cushion in the woods and ran up to show me her newfound treasure? She was always finding something to be happy about, and she was always eager to share that happiness.

I took a few breaks in my grave-digging to walk down the hill and check Hopeful's status, and one time I was pleased to see that she had crawled out from under the shed and was lying in the pine needles nearby. That was her final gift to me, because I don't know how I would have gotten her out from under the shed if she'd died in there.

And it wasn't until I wrapped her up and started hauling her inert carcass up the hill that I realized the flaw in my plan: she may have looked scrawny lately, but in death she was heavy and the hill is steep. Somehow, though, it seemed right and proper to carry her up that final hill after she'd encouraged me to keep climbing so many others.

The rain had stopped sometime in the night and the sun was shining as I scooped the heavy clay back in the hole and set a big rock on top to mark the spot. I wanted to whistle and call her name and see Hopeful come bounding up eager for a walk but instead I told her Sit and Stay, and this time I think she just might do it.