Front Porch: Saying goodbye to beloved pets

Anyone who has loved and lost a dog will understand.

Ellie, a big bundle of fluff masquerading as an Old English Sheepdog, came into my life about four and a half years ago. Living in Seattle with her human, Ryan, she became my granddoggie even before Ryan and my son, Sam, married this summer.

She never quite understood she wasn’t a lap dog and always brought out a smile and an “awwww” when people met her. Dodger the Dalmatian joined the family late last fall, so the senior citizen big sister had to put up with puppy shenanigans, which she seemed to do gracefully.

Sam and Ryan didn’t honeymoon after their wedding, but they did put together a special airline package for a quick over-and-back to Hawaii last month, a three-day minimoon they called it. On the second evening there, their dogsitter called and said Ellie was very sick. Two hours later the vet at the emergency clinic told them it was serious.

The guys took the red-eye home and went to the vet’s clinic, where Ellie was all tubed up and not especially conscious. They spent an hour with her, petting her and talking with her. Her temperature had spiked to 107 degrees and she was fighting a virulent infection. If she could get through the next 24-36 hours, she had a fairly decent chance of survival.

Sam and Ryan went home to check on Dodger, grab some food and were about to go back to the vet’s when they got the call. Ellie had died. Pneumonia and an infection that had gone septic. They went back and spent another hour with her for a final farewell.

Sam asked me if I thought she held on till they got there, that she waited for them to say goodbye before she let go.

Some years back, we had an experience with our own dog, Seltice. Her mother was a Vizsla and her father, who was seen hopping the fence after his one-and-only date with her mother, appeared to be a yellow Lab mix. Seltice had her father’s coloring but more of her mother’s bone structure. She was odd and quirky, and the dog of our sons’ mid- and later growing-up years. There were lots of adventures and lots of stories.

She developed an auto-immune disease in her middle years that required some special medications and treatments. One autumn 15 years ago, when she was older and in declining health, we had to go to Seattle for a medical matter. She could not come. She had always been terrified of auto travel, trembling and blowing coat anytime she had to be driven even the short distance to the vet’s.

There is a lovely petsitting service that came to the rescue. They came to the house in the morning, fed and walked her, spent a little time with her and cleaned up any messes that may have happened. The drill was repeated in the evening.

While in Seattle, we got a call from the sitter. Seltice was fading. We came home. When we walked in, Seltice was lying on a blanket in the front hallway, not especially conscious and breathing very hard. We sat with her, petting her and talking with her. We told her she had been a good doggie and that it was OK to let go.

Right then, her breathing started to get shallower … and shallower, and then was no more.

I don’t know what the science might be behind whether dogs can hold death at bay until their humans can come say goodbye, but I like to believe that they can. That they want to. That these sympathetic, intuitive and responsive animals who take full and total possession of our hearts and love us unconditionally will give us that very last gift … because they know we need it.

Ryan posted Ellie’s passing on Facebook, because she has a big fan club, from Seattle to Dallas (the place of her birth). And in his own saying goodbye to her, he sent her on her way with the words, “to the Rainbow Bridge you go.” It was a lovely image, but I didn’t know at the time there was something behind it.

I learned there is a Rainbow Bridge poem that tells how beloved pets go to the Rainbow Bridge upon death, where everything is beautiful and joyful and pain-free, and that when the human companion dies, they meet up there to travel together over the rainbow bridge. Author of the poem is unknown.

In poetry, as perhaps in life, too, our four-legged family members wait for us before moving on. Surely it is so.