Supernova of the Soul

At midday today, Friday 16 February 2024, a soul with all the brightness of a supernova left this place of space and time. Having surrounded him with love and soothing pats and strokes…conversations and most reverent wishes, Cathy and Torrey left the two of us lads together with the veterinarian at the hospital who would help send him forth to the Elysian Fields so worthy of Sawyer Close. At high noon, I supported his head with my left hand and rested my right on his classic Whippet ribcage, feeling the beating heart of earthly life. I kissed his head, fondled his soft ears, and whispered the depth of my love for him as the medicines were administered by IV. He didn’t stir, he just lay quietly and soon my right hand told the both sad and happy news. His pain and his curtailed life were over. I’m aware that some would lean on theistic pedantry and deny that dogs have souls. I care not a whit about such a viewpoint. Anyone who has observed this last decade of Sawyer and me, the “Y” chromosome soulmates, would know what a silly, patently false supposition that is. My higher authority on the subject is Will Rogers, who opined…”if there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went.”

Perhaps I should go back aways. The picture above is of him as a thirteen week-old puppy as we began our family life together. We acquired him from a breeder specializing in Whippets. He was one of a litter of twelve, and from the get-go as we made two trips to Fallbrook discerning behavior, he showed himself as happy and interested in us humans. He engaged with us. And he has continued to do so throughout the decade we’ve shared this mortal coil.

A gentle soul completely absent of vitriol or aggression, unless you happened to be a squirrel with the temerity to run across any of our hiking paths.

Whippets are sight hounds, and that says rather a lot about their genetic predisposition. Possessed of keen smell and hearing to go with fantastic vision, they are constantly alert to the chase of prey. Squirrels and coyotes, both immediate triggers. Zero to a Hundred in the blink of an eye. Oh, my goodness, what a thing of beauty to watch at full sprint.

Real or imagined prey in sight, rearing up for the explosive launch of “all ahead, flank speed.” Whippets have a very high metabolism, their thermostat likewise set way up there. He’d look for shade on warm sunny days, and relished cool temperature including snowy fields and trails. His feet never seemed to bother. In fact snow in the mountains really amped him up. We hiked mountain trails and those in the local mesas all the time.

And we didn’t just walk. He was keen to go mountain biking because then I could sally forth at a worthy speed for him. Uphill I might struggle for a generous pace, and downhill where the trail would allow twenty mph, he’d still be right with me, I swear, a grin with that lolling tongue, tucked in at the 5 o’clock or 7 o’clock position beside me. Except for the times he was on Point, and I’b be tasked with keeping up with him. Look closely and you’ll see my odometer is at 6.2 miles, and we’ve yet a goodly ways to go. Not just speed, but endurance. I could ride 8 miles, and he’d run at least 10 on the same jaunt, racing off trail, bounding over bushes and boulders, sharing his joie de vivre with me and the entirety of the outdoors.

Now I don’t mean to imply that I got all of his face time. Cathy and Torrey and I were his home pack, I mean it literally. And if you were in with this Del Martian in-crowd, by extension you, too were part of his pack. And you know who you are—both other family members and friends. He’d gladly head off on the next jaunt if you were on his Sawyer team. Torrey and the lad hiking in the Sierras.

Or grandson, Matty and Sawyer, with me, embarking on the next adventure…grand or small.

If any of us three housemates gave the slightest hint of heading out, say the jingle of car keys coming out of the entryway drawer, Sawyer was Johnny-on-the-spot, nose to the as yet, still closed front door, an unspoken FOMO query of “where we going now?” Unspoken, because, as you Whippet cognoscenti know, they are silent, stealth technology in a dog. Silent foot plants and none of that yipping or barking at passing dogs or people. The one unique Sawyer exception is a low in the belly guttural combined bark-growl when in full flight after prey. If any of us managed a casa disembarkation without him, you could plan on a couple of things. He’d go to the laundry basket and drag a bit of clothing (the more scent-laden the better, if you get my drift) to his kennel in our master bedroom. He never damaged it, no matter how delicate the fabric, but it would be there as his personal remembrance of the presently departed. Whenever we couldn’t find a garment, the mental lightbulb would come on, and sure enough it was tucked into or under the blanket or doggie bed in the dimness of the kennel. The unknowing might think a wire-metal box would be an unkindly thing to offer a beloved dog, but for Sawyer it was both his safe zone and his lair. Anyway, the other thing you’d expect—upon return, a joyous wiggly, tail metronome at Allegro Vivace. Torrey, would receive nibbles on the tip of her nose. Cathy got ear nibbles. And I’d get him pushing his head into my person, presumably a trading of guy smells, a claiming of ownership, as often as not in my groin. I know. It’s a guy thing, I guess. But several times a day. Every Day. We’d be off together to explore this Eden called Earth, finding places near and far to churn away the miles, and revel in the exercise and the quiet times of rest and reflection.

And not infrequently upon return, a little rest might be called for. He never faltered in the outdoors, but that’s not to say that he didn’t know how to chill out when the charging was over.

You may know that I tinker with photography. And to say that Sawyer was photogenic is a world-class understatement.

I can tell you that hundreds, if not thousands of times over our decade, we’d come upon passers-by who would announce without solicitation, “What a beautiful dog!” I’d mostly politely agree and add a thank you, but my impish side would occasionally get the better of me, and I’d ask “What about me?” Embarrassed titters, the happy result. But more to the point, his true beauty was his heart and soul, his inner charm, his flagrant love-no-strings-attached self. He was an all-in antidote to any incipient human churlishness. You always knew where you stood with Sawyer, and it was front and center, every bit the embodiment of Christ’s admonition to treat others lovingly as you would dream to be appreciated and embraced yourself. Damn, but I already ache in his absence.

Oh, those eyes. Liquid amber, a well of his magnificent soul. And how lovingly they could look at you.

This is a remembrance and celebration of life, so let me share how we got here. Some two to three months ago Sawyer came down with a modest limp and disinclination to put weight solidly on his left rear foot and leg. We were in the process of trying to find a new veterinarian after the retirement of the wonderful vet we had for the past ten years. We heard good things about a splendid veterinarian in nearby Solana Beach. Dr. D B is all we could have hoped for, and I’ll be happy to provide referral contact information upon request. She cajoled us to agree to an x-ray, which wasn’t good, showing a large and darkly sinister shadow of a mass on the femur. We were referred to a veterinarian oncologist, and the diagnostics involved CT scans, x-rays, bone biopsies and other in-depth labs looking for either cancer or fungus, which can also produce masses like the scans showed. The labs ruled out fungus, and the biopsies (three or four different places along the femur) produced no cancer cells. Sawyer started a regimen of anti-inflammatory and pain medication and meds with demonstrable anti-cancer benefit. And then a watch and see, because Sawyer was otherwise symptom-free, in all respects his normal life-engaged self. At first recurrent x-rays showed no change in the femur mass, or a mass the CT had shown on his spleen. You could palpate the femur and he never flinched or yipped. But then, as we now know in our perfect twenty-twenty hindsight, Sawyer was the paradigm of stoicism. As long as he got to be with his pack, and continue to engage with life, you’d never guess he was suffering. For instance, in the midst of his travail we did a 10 km hike in the mountains of the Red Rock Canyon nature conservancy outside of Las Vegas. It was a combined pack thing with our daughter Paisley and son-in-law Aaron and their dog Lizzy. The two pooches blazed away, this way and that, adding additional cross trail miles to our 6.2, and also taking in the vistas solo. Hard to tell in the image, but his left rear foot is only touching the ground on his toes, a clue, but about the only one.

His new veterinarian and the veterinary oncologist both sought ways to bring us around to the recognition that with the continued bulge to his thigh, amputation was likely unavoidable. A hard pill to swallow for his guy buddy, especially with the biopsies revealing no cancer. Of course a negative biopsy is a sometimes equivocal one. And, in time it became obvious that the leg bulge was growing. So we sought a third opinion at another local veterinary hospital, this time with a veterinary orthopedist, yielding the same recommendation. And so, a week and a half ago, Sawyer and I did his final four-legged walk, a lovely morning with greenery and light fitting for the momentousness of it all. Here he is taking a short, and bad leg lop-sided sit down break on our way back to the trailhead. One word—stoicism—one look, bespeaking the same.

That afternoon he underwent surgery. The vets all told us the same thing, and it is largely true. Dogs get on fine without the limb, and in fact he hadn’t been using it for the last couple of months. He came home the next day, and the day after that he and I walked a favorite haunt of ours, a maybe half to three-quarters mile near dawn jaunt in the Del Mar Torrey Pines extension. The white curvature is his tail, not his missing left rear leg, the pinkish flesh from the shave before the surgery.

We probably should have curtailed our post-op walking to less and shorter, but he seemed keen to follow our history. The result became more pain and some swelling along the incision line than his meds were controlling. Two nights ago he descended into intractable whining, loss of appetite, and general lassitude. At four in the morning we headed to the veterinary ER. This coincided with the arrival at the veterinary hospital of a definitive osteosarcoma diagnosis from the removed limb. This is a particularly aggressive cancer of the bone. The wait and watch was fine at the outset following the earlier equivocal diagnosis, but in the past week, his cancer took off like a malevolent someone had thrown a switch. Also, ultrasound now showed a second mass on his spleen. An aggressive treatment plan would require hospitalized stabilizing the pain and inflammation (without infection) of the amputation site, then surgical removal of the spleen with its two tumors, and when healed and stabilized from that, chemotherapy. We were told that a very successful result from chemotherapy might extend his life six to twelve months. Of misery. Of inability to live the life he was born for. Or the life we were born to share. It was a relatively easy intellectual decision to choose euthanasia, but an absolute bitch of an emotional gut-check. I can’t hardly see my monitor as I type right now, and you know why. Damn, but I miss that guy. I wore a deep groove in the prayer ground between me and our Maker. Some of it was answered in an earthly-knowable timeframe, the part where I asked for all the help I could receive to cope with this and to be strong for Sawyer. It has been an honor these past few months to be there for him as he has always been there for me. Carrying him up the house stairs when he was having a particularly challenging three-legged day. Holding him and gently stroking his head and back and whispering my best calming voice when pain shown through or agitation would surface. Gently picking him back up when a perhaps drug-induced instability had him suddenly fall onto his side while doing a short night piddle foray in the back yard. None of it an easy thing for him to accede to, but a true honor to be the giver. He deserved better, but it’s all I had, and given his physical response, I know he accepted it with God-given grace.

I shall close with these snapshots of beauty in this terrestrial place and time. That photography habit. When I’d stop to set up a shot, Sawyer would patiently stop, sit down and wait for me, including this wonderful Spring wildflower moment in the June Wash area of the Anza Borrego desert during the height of the COVID lockdowns. We had each other, and we had nature. Both created for each other. Take your time, dad.

I make frequent mention of this time and place. It exists, no question. But, as a Christian, I see this as just this particular reality. I am fully on board with the promise of the next stage being without the brokenness of this one. C.S. Lewis likens this life as to being the mere frontispiece of the book of life, and when our mortal time concludes, we turn the cover and step forth into the next chapter in the eternal book. I look forward to taking my seat at the table with all my loved ones who have gone on before me. And I relish the time to exult in Sawyer racing, full tilt in those Elysian Fields. Go with my eternal love, Sawyer. Save some trail time for me. We’ll have some catching up to do. Love, Dad.