Opinion | Our Pandemic Puppy Brought Pure Joy. Losing Him, Pure Heartbreak. - The New York Times

Guest Essay

By Margaret Renkl

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

The first good thing about Rascal was his wiggling, leaping “You’re awake!” greeting at the start of every day. My husband loves me, and my children love me, but not one human being has ever been as glad to see me as that buoyant little dog was every single morning of his life in our house.

Rascal was born to be airborne. For a creature with severe intervertebral disc disease, that kind of leaping is a disastrous risk. We tried at first to limit the danger — carried him down steps, closed doors to keep him off the beds, piled sofas high with items he couldn’t easily scale. No such efforts ever worked. Because the second good thing about Rascal was his irrepressible joy.

There is no gratitude like the gratitude of an animal rescued from a life of pain and fear and hunger. Rascal’s refusal to go on a walk with any house sitter told me he had never forgotten being a frightened stray scooped up from the Nashville streets by Metro Animal Control. The third good thing about Rascal was his undimmed delight in what may have been the first real home he ever had.

For this little rescue dog, home was at once a playground and a sanctuary. He turned bed making into a wrestling match with the covers. He turned laundry folding into a game of keep-away, and then a game of tug of war.

But even more than he loved erupting into play, he loved settling into ceremony. At our house, the workday was obliged to begin with lap time, coffee and a book, and to end with lap time, peppermint tea and a book. If I ever tried to skip one of these sacraments, sitting down too early at my desk or staying there too late, he would lick my feet until I remembered where I was supposed to be. The fourth and fifth good things about Rascal were the way he turned household tasks into games, and happy times into rituals.

Really, could there ever be a sweeter way for a dog to tell his person, “It’s time for our walk” or “I need to pee” or “You forgot to snuggle with me while you drink your coffee”? Sweetness was the sixth good thing about Rascal.

The seventh good thing about Rascal was the opposite of sweetness. This former street dog weighing all of 12 pounds took no chances with potential enemies. I didn’t love his fierce barking every time a bigger dog dared to approach, and I tried fruitlessly to train it out of him, but I admired his commitment to survival. It’s what gave us time to find him in the first place.

The eighth and ninth good things about Rascal were his multilingual ears. The ears-pricked excitement when I grabbed the leash. The ears-back sorrow when I grabbed the car keys. The ears-rotated suspicion that a bigger dog was sneaking up behind us on the street. The ears that bounced as he raced indoors from window to window, following the progress of an enemy dog walking down the street. Rascal’s ears were an interspecies Esperanto.

We didn’t believe the end could come so very soon, but we understood that letting Rascal be Rascal, even if we had no real choice in the matter, meant that we might not have him forever. By the time he died of a catastrophic spine injury, he’d had so many flare-ups of disc disease that most walks meant riding in a stroller, or being carried home.

The machinery of death is smaller in scale but not remarkably different for a pampered companion animal than it is for a beloved human. The racing to emergency rooms. The consulting with specialists. The failed attempts to stop the cascading calamities. The unbearable goodbye.

Later, but not too much later, friends and relations had to be told. Even people who knew Rascal only indirectly — from his frequent appearances in my essays for The Times and in my last book — somehow had to be told. People became invested in this pandemic puppy’s story. It’s only right for them to know how his story ended.

But no one needs to know Rascal, personally or indirectly, to understand what his death means. For all that separates us into camps and factions and tribes, the death of a beloved pet fells all walls. We all grieve when we lose a beloved companion animal, and we understand one another’s grief. Our species evolved amid the companionship of animals. Every creature is unique and irreplaceable, and yet most of the good things I remember about Rascal are good things that could be said of nearly any beloved dog — of any beloved pet at all.

And that’s why, despite all the texts and phone calls and drop-by visits “just to see how you’re doing,” there is still an inescapable absence that spreads into every crevice and corner of our house. A great yawning hole in the place where a mischievous, laughing little dog so recently lived.

I don’t think I will ever reconcile myself to having lost Rascal so young. I will never stop wondering how differently his injury might have played out if it hadn’t happened on the weekend, when there was no surgeon available while an operation still had reasonable odds of success. For the rest of my life, I will mourn the joyful little dog I lost for no reason but bad genes and bad timing.

In “The Tenth Good Thing About Barney,” the classic children’s book by Judith Viorst, a little boy can think of only nine good things to say at a backyard funeral for his cat, Barney. Later, he and the child next door argue about whether cats can go to heaven. Mortality is hard to accept at any age — not just its finality but also its universal reach. Every dog, every cat, every parakeet we love will someday need a backyard grave and words of praise and remembrance.

This is an unbearable truth, and yet we bear it again and again. Time passes, and we welcome another companion animal, knowing full well that it too will enter our hearts and break them into pieces. We do it because in between the loss and the loss, there is all that leaping, wiggling, prick-eared gladness. We accept the coming heartbreak because of the untrammeled joy.

In Ms. Viorst’s book, the 10th good thing about Barney is the way he becomes a part of the earth and so helps the flowers to grow. That’s an immortality beyond debate.

The 10th good thing about Rascal was his daily testimony of unconditional love. In his every waking, bouncing moment, in his every grateful, unguarded nap in my lap, he reminded me that love is always worth the price of heartbreak. And that’s a kind of immortality too.

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Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” “Graceland, at Last” and “Late Migrations.”

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