Goodbye Susie

One of my favorite writers of all time is the Georgia Bard, Lewis Grizzard. The humorist and storyteller was a unique writer, precise in his use of language and mythical in his ability to touch all kinds of people on many different levels.
One of Grizzard’s most touching passages was his grief-laden pining after his beloved black lab, Catfish, died. He was never more painfully beautiful and soul-searing in his ability to make you remember pain that approached the level he was going through.
I will never be the writer he was. But I can share one of his emotions. My faithful Shih-Tzu dog, Susie, had to be put down recently.
Cancer had been ravaging her 13-year old body to a point that neither of us could bear.
Lately, the cancer was overcoming her good nature. She would lie around, and not jump up and go to the door when someone came. I would come in the room, and she would lie on her bed, thumping her tired tail as the rest of her lay so still.
I heard her crying in her sleep a few weeks ago, and I knew. I called the vet that Monday morning. We were trying to treat her with medicine, and by Wednesday afternoon she was starting to respond, getting a little of her spunk back.
But I came home Thursday evening to find her laying on the kitchen floor, limp and unresponsive to my touch or my calls to her. Yet she would try and get up, and bark and yelp. I drove her to the emergency vet in Wilson, who told me she had likely had a brain aneurism, and the other things she was doing were just neuro-reactions, like impulses that were not getting through.
I gave my friend up to God Thursday night.
I had made that fateful trip to the vet’s office before — every pet owner has made the trip, or will have made it before too long. Pets just do not outlive their owners. But the trips never get easier.
Susie has been in the family for most of the family’s existence. We had always had pets, and we had a dog when we got Susie. But I had fallen in love with the breed years ago, and when I saw an ad for free Shih-Tzu pups in the paper, we had to go check it out.
Susie came home with us that day. She was rambunctious, cuddly and cute, and was an instant hit with both the kids. We spent many a night in our living room, with Susie on the couch next to us or curled up on the floor. We spent many a night with Susie curled up at my wife’s feet, under the covers of our bed.
Susie was patient with small children. My granddaughter loved to cuddle her, long after the dog was too mature for that kind of thing, Susie never got upset, but would look back at me as if to silently plea for help. It was more her way to find a quiet hiding place, away from her adoring fans, and quietly observe the scene.
She gave love, and we took her love and gave it back. It was a simple relationship.
Over the years, the kids grew up and moved on, and in the last few months it has just been the two of us. We’d run on the road, or wrestle in the house, with me pulling at her paws until she would grudgingly give in and nip at my hands as I’d try and sneak up on her.
Now I am rattling around in what has become a truly empty house.
A lot of you will say, hey, it’s just a dog. You can get another one.
Well, yes, I can. But there is no such thing as just a dog — ask anyone who owns one.
I am not the kind of guy to keep her ashen remains in a jar, or hold onto clippings of her hair in an envelope. I do much better to remember her running by my side on a breezy spring day.
I can’t put her memories away. Like the faithful friend that all dogs are, she never left my side, even to the end.
Memories like that stay in a much more meaningful place than an old yellowing envelope, of a jar of dust.
Lewis Grizzard understood the loss of a friend, no matter how many legs they walk on. I understand it as well, now on three occasions. The pain is enormous, as if you had lost a loved one — because you did.
Now I am walking through the house and wishing I could be awakened at 5:30 in the morning by her sharp bark to be let out. I want to hear her toenails click on the linoleum as she walked into the kitchen to see if dinner was in the bowl yet. I want to drive into the yard and look at the window of the living room to see her nose poke through the blinds in welcome.
Susie was never the kind of dog to steal the show, and was never one that enjoyed being the center of attention, at least for very long. She just wanted acknowledgement — her place in the family. We were glad to give it.
I can only hope that I served you well, girl. You certainly served me well, with love enough for ten dogs and twenty masters. I love you.