The Long Goodbye

A love story

A few things I should tell you.

First, his name was Andy.

Well, not really Andy. That was just the name he was assigned when he came into the shelter. The dogs and cats are named alphabetically as they show up, and he was a relatively new arrival. It must have been time to start back at the beginning of the alphabet.

He’d spent two weeks at the Mashpee animal holding facility, but since no one claimed him, he was automatically transferred to the MSPCA in Centerville, Mass. Later, we would always say that he’d been found wandering the mean streets of Mashpee, though in truth, this Cape Cod town is hardly down and out. It’s not unheard of, though, for summer visitors to the Cape to leave their pets behind (as hard as that is for most of us to imagine), especially if a puppy has outgrown the cute stage.

Somehow, I don’t think it was a family who abandoned “Andy” at seven or eight months old. He had a scar across his muzzle from an injury and forever after was afraid of large bearded men who made loud noises. He had definitely been mistreated.

The second thing you should know is that he had me at hello (or more accurately, first paw-shake.)

I had wandered into the shelter with my then partner just to “look.” We were on our way back to the ferry after a day off-Island and errands in Hyannis.

Oh, I really don’t advise visiting a crowded shelter – and this one was very crowded – without being prepared to adopt an animal. I had no idea there would be so many dogs and cats in there. As I began to look around, I realized that most of the animals were never going to get a forever home.

I stopped to greet a nervous retriever, but he barked so much that I moved on, turned the corner, and saw a thin black Lab-ish-looking pup in the next cage. I bent down. He rolled over and stuck his paw out between the grates, which I of course received with a pat. I looked at his big brown eyes, and that was it.

I was allowed to take “Andy” for a walk. Then I was asked to call my landlord for permission to have a pet. Next, I had to sign a health waiver, because the dog supposedly had a degenerative dental issue. (Well, that turned out to be true!)

Finally, there were fees to pay — fees to cover the shots and the neutering that the shelter had administered when he came in. I insisted on paying the fees myself and being clear that the dog would be mine, as even then I had a sense that my relationship with this dog was going to last a lot longer than the one with the man I was with.

Indeed, the boyfriend would be gone in a few years, but by the grace of God, I had picked a dog (or he had picked me) who turned out to be the most loyal and steadfast companion a girl could ever hope for — right up until (and beyond) the time when I (finally) met the right man — the man I would marry, the man who would also fall in love with and bond with my dog, completing our little pack of three.

But on that day in October, 2011, with the dog sitting next to me on the bench seat of my boyfriend’s truck, I told him he was going home to a farm on Martha’s Vineyard – that he had hit the lottery. And in a way, he had.

It seemed only fitting to call him Farmer.

Now, how to convey to you what kind of dog he was?

The first night back on the farm, I remember waking up in a panic, thinking, “What have I done?” I didn’t know anything about this dog’s “breed,” and what if he turned out to be a chicken killer? At the time we had 400 laying hens.

I needn’t have worried. A gentler dog never lived. Not only did he not attack chickens, but when he found a nest of baby birds or a nest of baby rabbits (more than once) in the vegetable garden, he did not disturb them. Instead he came running to Mommy, saying “Quick, quick, over here, there’s something that needs your help!”

The biggest problem at first was a tendency to dart out onto busy State Road when he heard our neighbor’s dog barking. I once found myself out in the middle of the road, waving cars to slow down because I couldn’t catch Farmer. I decided it was time for some training. So, I hired an Island dog trainer to come spend a few hours working with me to teach him commands. She surprised me by saying, “This dog can learn anything. He’s very smart.”

Everyone’s dog is the smartest, isn’t it? I’ve never felt it’s fair to make those kind of claims, though I’ve also never stopped my husband from boasting about Farmer’s intelligence. (Mostly this just makes me smile about my husband’s tendency to be all-in once he’s in.)

I don’t know how exceptional Farmer’s intelligence was, but his intuition was strong, and he was an excellent communicator — and listener. Looking back, I realize that Farmer was a kind of therapy dog to me for many years, and because we were so close, he came to anticipate most of my actions and many of my words.

When he and I left the farm (a brutally difficult time), we moved to a small, first-floor apartment on Trip Barnes’s property. At night, if I went out to a recovery meeting, I could make Farmer understand that I would only be gone for a short time by saying, “I’m going to a meeting.” He’d promptly jump on the bed and lie facing the window where he’d be able to see my headlights coming down the driveway when I returned.

Later on, in recent years when I worked too late on my computer, he would come and stand in front of me, then walk towards the bedroom and stop and look at me again with his funny short ears sticking straight out and a stern look on his face. He would then repeat this if I didn’t get out of my chair. His rationale was that Daddy was already in bed – it was time for me to retire, too, so that the pack would be together and we could all go to sleep.

We used Farmer’s favorite words throughout the day to let him know what the next activity was.

Walk. Dinner. Garden. Outside. Treat. Car ride. Steak. Chicken. Hamburger. Sausage. Sweet Potato.

He liked nothing better than to go for a walk – or go for a car ride. Both were equally interesting to him because it meant being with us.

Didn’t matter if the walk was just down the street or all the way to the pond. Didn’t matter if the ride was to the post office or all the way to Delaware.

He was a most excellent supervisor of garden work. This allowed him to combine one of his favorite activities – lying in the sun – with keeping an eye on his peeps. He was not averse to going inside the garden enclosure or into the hoop house. If he needed to get comfortable, he would just sprawl across a path in the shade of a pea trellis.

Above all he loved snacks. Of any kind. He was never fed directly from the table until my husband came into his life. But once the ritual had been established, Farmer took up his position on his yellow hooked-wool rooster rug during dinner and waited for the Dispensary to begin handing out bites like Pez candy.

He always got a treat when he went out to pee in the evening. But once he was on steroids and needed to pee a lot, he gamed this system to the count of a half dozen or more treats a night. Sometimes he just faked needing to go, walked to the edge of the deck, and turned around and came back inside.

In his spry days, Farmer was an enthusiastic greeter of all visitors, human and canine. It did not occur to him to snub either. As a youngster, he also had a kitten to care for – a job he took quite seriously. And a little girl he was quite fond of.

But it was Mommy who got the most snuggles. Mostly because Mommy insisted. Every night I bent down to stroke Farmer’s ears and neck and tell him how much I loved him. If I asked for a kiss, he would give me one. Some nights, especially lately, I lay there on the floor next to him, remembering a time when it was just me and him and he would hog a lot of the bed.

In fact, it was always so easy to communicate with Farmer – to know what he wanted, what made him happy – that when he got sick this year, I was horrified to realize that we really had no way of knowing exactly how he was feeling. For the first time, I wished desperately for a better way to communicate, for more words.

He soldiered through chemotherapy (for anal sac cancer) with nary a complaint – not even an upset stomach. At the end of the summer, after consulting our veterinary oncologist, we decided to give him a break. Shortly after we restarted in September, he began to drool excessively and regurgitate some of what he swallowed. So, we took him off the chemotherapy again, not knowing what the problem might be.

We were in Delaware and returned to our wonderful vet on the Island who put him on a round of antibiotics for an oral infection and then steroids – but told us she suspected it was something in his throat. She was reluctant to sedate him to find out, but I became so concerned about his awkward swallowing that we said to go ahead.

We scheduled that appointment — another day at the clinic — and when we came to pick Farmer up in the evening our vet showed us a photo of the back of Farmer’s throat – where a large ugly oral melanoma sat on his tongue.

I knew then we could not keep an old dog, already with one cancer and bad legs, alive with something like that. (Oral melanoma can be operated on but it is very invasive and the tumors tend to regrow). Our vet bought us a little time by injecting the tumor with steroids. (She had been very clear with us all along after we quit chemotherapy that she would do everything in her power to administer the best palliative care for Farmer to keep him comfortable. And she did. She was absolutely amazing, even taking him into the clinic for a day on short notice on a few occasions to work her magic.)

That night we went home and immediately began to agonize in earnest about the timing. We had been given a “quality of life” form sometime during the fall, but every time we had filled it out (separately and several times), we’d gotten a total “score” that was, um, still in the green zone. This was before the melanoma was confirmed; we knew the end was coming we just didn’t know when the right time was. A couple weeks ago, I tried to write (a post) about this whole process – the uncertainty, the great discomfort I have with not being in control – but it was so hard I just couldn’t.

And then I didn’t have to. Because with all his grace, Farmer let us know when the time came.

Throughout the Thanksgiving holiday, we fed Farmer by hand great gobs of a soft dogfood that he greedily consumed three times a day. He went for short walks in the woods. He even gained weight. The steroid had temporarily shrunk the tumor. But we knew it was only temporary and that we would not do any further treatment.

And then shortly after a nice dinner on Friday, Dec. 6, he began to wobble, and half laid-half crashed down on all fours like a newborn foal, and didn’t move again for several hours while we petted him and wiped his mouth. The short-lived respite from the steroid injection was over. We knew it and Farmer knew it. He gave us that look.

We carried him out to pee, and he walked back in. We carried him up to his bed, and he stayed in one place most of the night. First thing on Saturday morning we fortunately managed to get ahold of our vet and she agreed to meet us at noon. Farmer lay on his rooster rug all morning, while we took turns stroking his knobby head, wiping his eyes and mouth, and making sure he was in a spot of sun. He did everything he could to communicate to us (and to the vet when he saw her) that he was tired.

We went for a short car ride to the clinic. We were asked – by the kind tech who had come in from home on a Saturday – if we would like to do the whole thing outside. She assured us the doctor could bring everything she needed outside. That seemed like a good idea – to avoid going inside the scary clinic – especially since, as my husband pointed out, there was a nice sunny spot in the grass available.

The technician arranged a large comfy yellow blanket on the grass for Farmer to lie down on. And me, too. The sun was bright. Our doctor explained everything to us. I put my head down so I could look into Farmer’s eyes, and my husband held him close, and we said goodbye and goodbye and goodbye as he left. We sobbed and sobbed. Our vet said his spirit was near and that she was sure he knew how much he was loved. I hope so, I really do.

Because we knew how much he loved us.

And hamburger. 🐾

top photo by Jeanna Shepard