MANY YEARS AGO, when I was working and living at home with my parents after graduating from college, our family dog, Jenny, began to decline dramatically.

Before I explain her final illness, some background about Jenny is in order:

She had lived with us for more than ten years and had come to our home in a miraculous way. One night we were all sitting around watching television when we heard a girl scream outside. Our neighborhood was generally safe, but the girl, who was walking back from an event at the high school, was being attacked by a man, who was trying to drag her into his car.

My father instantly ran out the door. He bounded down the driveway and across the street. The man saw him and he took off, leaving the terrified girl there on the sidewalk. My father was a hero. Indeed, all was well with the world.

That was the very night Jenny came to live with us.

She was about three or four years old, a beagle mutt who had been loitering in our yard for several days and would not leave. My parents said we could take her in, but only while we looked for her owners. Hurray! We had never had a dog before.

We fortunately did not find her owners after not looking that hard. And Jenny turned out to be the perfect dog.

She walked herself; she looked both ways before she crossed the street; she never got lost; she was well trained; she didn’t bark too much or too little. She never annoyed anyone except the mailman. When she was caught snoozing on the couch, she hung her head and looked up with pleading, guilt-ridden eyes: “I sorry.”  She had a litter of puppies not long after she arrived and they only confirmed the general impression that Jenny brought a train of happiness with her.

Her family dispersed, but she had seven human children. We all did our share to make sure she was well fed and petted.

Fast forward many years, and the time had come when Jenny was incurably sick. My mother spoke to the veterinarian on the phone and he said, with the obligatory euphemism, it was time to “put her to sleep.”

My mother was a remarkably efficient, can-do sort of person. She got off the phone and said, “Well, we have no choice. So let’s go.”

She and I got in the car and drove to the vet. Within half an hour, Jenny was no more.

“Let’s go,” my mother said briskly, as we stood before the lifeless body of our beloved dog, everything that was Jenny irretrievably gone.

About an hour after we got home, the remorse began. Both my parents, over the next three days, sat for hours silently staring out the window.

“I was the one who did it,” my mother said, barely able to speak. “What was I thinking? Why couldn’t I have just waited?” I had never seen her so paralyzed with emotion.

It was her spirit of efficiency that had gotten the best of her. The business of life had propelled her forward. We should have spent a little more time with Jenny before she was disposed of in this sad way. But it was too late.

Remorse is an acutely painful experience. We act precipitously and we regret. We have set ourselves against the things we love most. Suddenly, we are in the spotlight and we are nothing. We cannot turn back the clock. We are powerless over ourselves and the forces of time. The inner voice, that internal interrogator that is our conscience, is still alive, but the knowledge of its existence is hardly consoling. We would do anything to trade ourselves in for a new model.

Jenny would not have lived much longer anyway.

But there was something true about my mother’s regret. Just when we think we are in control, we are most definitely not in control. Who could have thought up a creature as wonderful as Jenny? How could we have known how much she was before she was not? Where can we go to turn back the clock for good?

— Comments —

David Z. writes:

Animals, especially dogs, are some of the best people I’ve ever known. I love animals in general.

I’m very sorry for your loss.

Laura writes:

Thank you. : – )

George Weinbaum writes from Texas:

Well-behaved dogs are a blessing.

Not as big a blessing as a child, but still a blessing.

Apparently Jenny lived 13-14 years, normal for a dog.  I sympathize with you. Sooner or later, each of my dogs will meet his or her end too.

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