Scully

On Saturday night we put our beloved dog Scully down. She’d been sick all week and had been nursed back to the point that we were going to try to see if she could recover without more costly medical attention. We brought her home from the hospital and she lay outside in the sunshine while Soren and Deanna pulled weeds. That night she ate food but could not keep it down and we had decided that the emotional roller coaster needed to end. Our vet arrived and took care of her and it broke all of our hearts in a way that I cannot describe.
I’ve had much experience with death: my mother died when I was four; one of my best friends when I was twelve; on of my cousins was killed by a drunk driver; most of my grandparents are also gone. Those experiences left me very stoic but ending Scully’s life was difficult and extremely emotional. She’d been with us for most of the eight years Deanna and I have known each other and was around for my transformation from an angry depressed loner to a family man with friends and hope for the future. She was fierce in her protection and gentleness with Soren. The hardest part beyond my own feelings of emptiness is how to work it with Soren. He’s three years old and I don’t know how much he understands. He’s been very angry and defiant this week so I know he is going through the steps that all of us deal with yet he doesn’t realize what is happening. As I said in the email to our friends: we will all remember Scully but Soren may not, so I am creating a book of her life and compiling pictures of her so that he may remember the gentle creature who was around at the beginning of his life.

Advertisement