Dogs Remind Us of What Matters in Life

Or the value of pre-mourning

Carson

Carson, my dog, recently dealt with a health problem which he eventually overcame.

It reminded me of a lesson I’ve learned several times in the past from the loss of friends, both quadrupedal and bipedal, a lesson that for my part needs to be reiterated from time to time.

---

When I first read the following words of Epictetus, I assumed that the trials of his childhood as a slave had given him cause to rid himself of all emotion; that in order to escape the possibility of even more suffering, he numbed himself to the fate of others. But as with everything Epictetus, he is multiple layers more subtle than a first impression allows for.

“What harm is there if you whisper to yourself, at the very moment you are kissing your child, and say, ‘Tomorrow you will die?’” [Epictetus 3.24.88]

What then did this ancient teacher mean?

Carson had two teeth pulled, a minor operation that he had been through once before. When he woke up from the anesthetic, he was woozy and his tongue stuck out of his mouth, for which we obviously teased him. But then he began whimpering incessantly, a long drawn out wail riding every exhale until he had to inhale just enough to fuel the next whimpering exhale. On the rare moments he would stand up on trembling legs, he would vomit clear fluid without even heaving. He couldn’t drink. He couldn’t eat.

We thought he was dying. The surgery was on a Friday and the veterinary clinic was closed for the weekend, so we decided to drive him to the emergency room on a raining Saturday night. He was in the back seat, shaking, crying, and wet, and I kept looking back at him in the rear view mirror to tell him he was going to be alright.

Turning my eyes back to the road, a question interrupted my efforts to calm him: How much will the emergency visit cost? I then asked myself: What price would I place on Carson’s life? Something dropped inside of me when I asked that question. The answer was clear: everything I have. Nothing less than every penny I had ever earned would be spent to save his life. Dollars or life? Numbers on a glowing screen sitting in some virtual bank account, or the flesh, blood, breath, and devotion of this breathing thing that is violently hungry for life? I can make more money, but I cannot make another Carson.

I was reminded once again of how easily our time on this earth can be taken for granted and how quickly lessons of past hardship can be forgotten. I went from debating the various uses of my time on a Saturday night to sitting in a veterinary emergency room wanting nothing more than for Carson to survive until sunrise. Our baseline for contentment is not fixed: the more we contemplate mortality, the more we feel content with what lies before us.

What then would I be grasping for if I weren’t pacing in that white waiting room that smelled of disinfectant? What was I missing out on? Reading? What is reading compared to Carson? Worthless. Eating? Worthless. Googling new books? Worthless. Training? Would I have cared about those Saturday intervals if Carson had died that night on that sterile steel table? Looking back a few years from now, or even three decades from now, would I trade that sixty minute block of intervals for sixty more minutes with Carson in his moment of need, when he was sick, and vulnerable, and scared? No – intervals too are worthless. What is the use of training, writing, reading, and thinking if not to be more cognitively and emotionally in tune with the world around us, with those who depend upon us, and when it is no longer of value merely to think, but to do? There was nothing else that mattered more on earth than sitting beside him. Nothing more enjoyable, nothing more painful.

I wondered what I would say to someone else in this situation to ease their pain. “What matters is the time you were able to give him,” or “If you loved him, then you can know that you did right by him no matter what happens.” And yet when I said as much to myself, my advice fell to the tile floor of the vet office like a 9mm bullet halted by a steel silhouette. It is ironic how easy it is to give advice to others but fail to heed the same advice ourselves. This makes me wonder if those few individuals we call “wise” are those who have, in part, mastered the skill of obeying their own advice.

When my eyes came to rest on his sunken waist – how is that even possible in a twenty four hour time span? – I looked at him as if I had noticed him for the first time in my life. My eyes had been looking at him, but failed to see what lay beneath the concrete evidence of his existence: impermanence, a time span, a before-he-was-born and an after-he-is-no-more. I had tried to think on these truths, but it took the prospect of his death to clear my eyes of what they wanted to see in order to see him for what he actually is.

What then is Carson? Is he the smell that varies depending on whether it is on the top of his head, or his ears, or his paws, or his stomach? Is he the click click click I hear on the hardwood floors when he trots into the kitchen, or the scuffle I hear when he’s in front of the fireplace twisting and turning on his back with his legs flying about in the air? Is he the nose smudges on the windows or the nightmares where his eyelids twitch and his fangs show? Is he the feisty mood that makes him drop down to his forearms and stick his tail vertically in the air while pawing at his tennis ball? Is he the sculpted jaw, dramatic color scheme, and hero pose that makes everyone who walks by pause and say, “God, he’s handsome,” and the swell of pride I then feel as if his good looks reflect well on me?

He is all of these things and more. He’s the absence I feel in the rare moments he’s not tracing my footsteps to see which room I’m going to walk in or foot path I’m going to ruck. He's the nuisance who has dialed in the exact distance at which he can roam that isn’t close enough for comfort but which isn’t far enough for me to yell at him. He’s the monster he mutates into when we play tug of war with his shredded rope. He’s a 20,000 year old friendship. He’s the future pain in my stomach when he’s no longer with us.

He is all of these things, which taken in sum means he is whatever he happens to be in that precise second in time.

What then is the lesson?

The past is dead. The future is an if. This moment is all that will ever exist. Each second may be his last, which means I am either present with him or I am not, caring or careless, sane or insane. Each second offers us a choice: I either choose to focus or I choose not to. I either choose to shut the phone off or I choose not to. I either choose to rally my neurons around the things that matter and get down on my hands and knees and wrestle with him while he is still here or I choose not to.

I want Carson to stand as long as the Roman aqueducts, but no amount of wishing will make it so. They are stone and moss while he is blood and fur; their stones can carry water for two thousand years while his bones can harbor life for fifteen, if we’re lucky. The Giver has set limits on the gift of life. Figs ripen to brown, yellow, or purple, and grapes to red, green, or black in summer and autumn. In winter they die. Figs have a season. Grapes have a season. Carson has a season. You, and I, and all those we care for have a season.

“Tomorrow you will die,” was Epictetus’s reminder for us to use mortality as a means to more deeply consider those we care for – dog, friend, husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, sister, father, mother, and self. It’s not unimaginable that it’s the reminder of mortality when we lock eyes with those we love which makes love possible in the first place.

I now ask myself, “If he doesn’t wake up in the morning, will I know that the day prior I gave him my time? My attention? My focus?” A moment here and there is all it seems to take, at least for my part.

---

Thank you for reading What then?

If you found value in this essay, please like and share, as this is how more readers are able to find it on Substack.

See you for the next essay on Tuesday.