Writing by Riley Heath
I resented picking such a far away college when my family’s two eldest dogs got older. I felt a deep shame when I’d look at their faces and only see a timer counting down, like their wagging, boney tails were already molting and expired. They’d lick at my cheeks, and I’d find myself mourning the fact that their love would inevitably dry up. They’d conjure whatever play they had left in them to bring me a toy, and I’d mantra, “Remember this moment,” to myself, consciously aware that each time could easily be the last.
There was a staleness in the air when I came home for winter break during my sophomore university year. It was a whispering finality that I didn’t want to hear, actualized in the way Greta and Shelby’s joints popped when they’d try to sit. Their dog beds needed to be washed, but I couldn’t help thinking that maybe there was no point, and I think maybe my mother thought the same. “Any day now,” the voice in my head said, wafting up from the oily, fur marked spots on the dog bed fabric. I still wonder if my family could hear those voices, too.
Early one morning, I made my way down the stairs, looking over the unobstructed main room. The house is the kind of airy and open that carries sound and ripples it off the walls, amplifying it, but it was quiet aside from Greta’s typical pacing and my mom’s computer. She tapped at the keys, and occasionally the device would ding with an incoming email or text. Shelby snored on a dog bed somewhere near the TV. I stepped lightly, afraid to break the still with even a single floorboard creak.
Fergus, our younger labrador, heard me descending. He came high-tail running from a room across the house, toenails clicking ferociously as he raced towards me and crashed into my legs. Typical labrador behavior — they don’t know how to slow down.
Just recently, I was sitting with Fergus on a couch in that very room, working. He was snuggled up next to me while I typed, though, every time I lifted my hand off of him, he bucked his head back in search of attention I couldn’t give him. I have to write, Fergus, I thought to myself. He couldn’t understand. He made a throaty groaning noise, clearly dissatisfied with me.
I placed an elbow on top of his tummy, draping it in such a way that convinced him I was still petting him even when I reached back to click at my keyboard. Fergus wagged his tail and pushed his spine into me, but I noticed his ears perk at every passing noise. I wondered if he was even still there with me, or if he’d mentally already run off. I put a hand over his left ear as it raised to the sound of cutlery clinking in the kitchen, wondering if my touch would be enough to make him stay.
I find myself lingering in hugs with friends a little longer than I should, and overstaying my welcome in conversations after they’re already over. I grieve interactions before they’re completed, likely ushering them out the door faster. Fergus, for example, isn’t dying, he’s just living, but my brain can’t help but beat him — and everyone and everything — to the end that I know is coming.
I recognize it as a little voice in my head that whispers whenever I find something good. “This won’t last forever,” it says, again and again. Supposedly that’s my own personal white rabbit from Wonderland, but I think it’s more of a bully, pushing me out of interactions and circumstances so that I can’t presently appreciate them. But sometimes I think it’s my hand on the handle, not fate.
I could almost find it uncomfortable, that morning, the way Fergus was burrowed up next to me. His hair seeped its way into the tight-knit fabric of my clothing, so much so that I looked like a yellow lab myself. I was golden and hairy, warm and itchy. Pieces were neatly tucked between the letters on my keyboard — his head was practically lying flat on the keys anyway.
“Gosh, you’re just everywhere, aren’t you?” I said to Fergus sweetly, then sighed. He wagged his tail, then dove back down against my leg with his snout. I brushed at the hair collecting on my shirt, but then stopped. When I go back to school, I’ll find his hair in my suitcase. I often do — a lot of it. His hair will remain everywhere long after he’s gone, I reckon.
That morning during my sophomore winter break, a younger Fergus was bounding around me and hopped up to try and kiss my nose as if he hadn’t seen me just the day before. Greta stared at the wall like I didn’t exist — I still blame the deafness my mother always denied — and then a look of worry came over her Coonhound face. Up she got and off she went again, taking to the hallways in her search of my mother, who remained perched up on a barstool chair exactly where Greta had left her. She’d spend all of her remaining days on this trek, and only once she found my mom — or a lot of times, once my mother would come find her — could she rest easy.
Shelby woke to the fuss and sat up squinting, sleepy, and beaming at the sight of me. The name Great Dane is misleading, I decided, when looking at her fragile head. They’re large dogs, yes, but precious. She let out a soft whine, sneezed, and began a rather perilous-looking attempt at standing that her hind end almost didn’t follow.
“She doesn’t really get up for anyone anymore,” my mom said from behind me.
It felt like a punch to the jaw.
I knelt down to Shelby’s eye level once she reached me, leaning forward to rub at the velvet area of fur behind her ear. She tried to kick her leg up and thump the air like most dogs do, but thought better of it, settling for tilting her head instead.
“That’s my baby girl,” I said softly.
I looked to my mom, who was smiling from her chair like she’d just witnessed a miracle. Greta concluded what had to be her 39th search of the morning, her nose making contact with my mom’s foot. She rejoiced in a celebration of tail wags and happy foot taps like it was the first big win of her life.
“That dog really loves you,” my mom said.
Shelby watched me with her soft eyes, blinking just as much as her body was trembling. I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of guilt for being the reason she got up, and again when she began shifting paws from holding her own weight. Her bones jutted out through her skin. It was only skin, and the muscle I’d known was gone.
“And Greta loves you,” I said. My mom looked down at the creature below her, shaking her head but smiling at a typical Greta who was pawing at my mom’s leg as she often used to. It was so easy to overlook these things; I know that for certain now — now that they’re gone.
That winter break was the last time I saw Greta and Shelby alive.
Fergus got up to greet me as I passed by, but the older two didn’t move. Shelby was curled up, so sleepy she didn’t even lift her head, and next to her, Greta found my eyes. They were grey and glossy, like pearls.
“Riley, come on. You’re going to miss your flight,” my mom said to me. It was a ripe 3:45 a.m., and she was holding my suitcase. I couldn’t get my legs to move. I was stuck, staring down at the large dog bed by the door.
I can’t say I was ready when I tore myself away. I got in the car thinking about it, how I just knew it was the last time. I rubbed my fingers together like it would implant their oils from my last given scratches into my DNA forever.
From our spot on the couch, Fergus and I both could hear a door open and close down the hall, and I instinctively threw an arm fully around him like he was about to fall off a cliff. I rubbed at his chest, watching his golden fluff fly, but he jolted and pushed at my grip, begging to be set free. It was my mother who had just arrived home that he wanted to greet, but I only felt how he wanted to leave me.
At what point do I smack the white rabbit back down the hole in which he came? When do I send his ticking clock and all his warnings back to Wonderland, because is it really a loss if I loved so deeply? I can’t say I have the answer or that I’ve figured it out, because the voice is still there in every hug, every touch, every moment of my life.
I let him go, releasing my arm from around his body. Fergus bolted off the couch with fur in his wake. Aside from scraping toenails on the hardwood, there was a moment of calm again, until a laughing gasp came from the mudroom where, presumably, Fergus collided into my mom.
I turned back to my computer, smiling, shaking my head. I thought of Fergus’s furry snout, of my leg that still felt the phantom of his push at my side, and the warmth that was quickly fading from the spot next to me. My keyboard ticked, ticked, ticked, and my fingertips left traces of oil on the keys, and I wondered if anyone even thinks about these kinds of things.
