People told me I would know when it was time, but we never really did for sure. I can tell you that a few months ago we noticed that Dog was … the best words I can use are winding down, which makes me think of clichéd metaphors involving dying clocks, but that’s exactly what it was like. She was slowing down. She started coughing and making messes in the laundry room where she sleeps at night. The vet told us her heart was failing, which was creating excess fluids she was too weak to fully expel from her lungs. They gave us antibiotics and not much hope. She was a very old dog, after all.

In the last couple weeks something changed in her. She stopped wagging her tail, she stopped circling the kitchen looking for dropped treats, she stopped expending any energy at all. She barely moved all day long. I wouldn’t go so far as to say there was a sense of despair about her, but there was a sort of silent, sad, enduring resignation. She would eat, but with no interest whatsoever. She had lost so much weight she had this awful gaunt appearance around her back, like her flesh was barely covering her spine.

Last night JB walked her to the park that’s about a block away, and she nearly couldn’t make it back. I watched her, later in the evening, as she lay on the carpet nearby; you could see the effort of her chest rising and falling. I put my hand on her and I could feel her watery, labored breathing. Her overworked heart.

She slowly put one paw up to touch my hand, a broken version of the robust and silly Dog handshake she used to do, and I guess I did know, or maybe I didn’t for sure, maybe I’m just trying to convince myself. We can’t know what she really felt like, we can’t know what she would have wanted. But I believe she had passed some sort of point of no return, that her days would have become increasingly painful. Exhaustion, suffocation, drowning.

The vet helped ease her out of this life today. JB and I were there to comfort her and pet her as she went. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done. Oh, Dog.

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JB’s main Father’s Day present was a new grill, something he’s been wanting for the past few summers. I couldn’t figure out a way to pick it up ahead of time and somehow keep it hidden around the house somewhere, so in lieu of trying to gift-wrap a Char-Broil I made him don a blindfold (hot!) for the trip to Home Depot will-call desk. It was really sort of ridiculously fun.

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It was a perfect Dad-centric day, with lots of bike riding, BB gun shooting, and an epic pre-bedtime wrestlefest. God, those kids love their father. I feel like there’s something extra wonderful in this for me, in that my own dad was kind of not so great and now I get to experience what it’s supposed to be like. My boys are growing up with the knowledge that their father loves them more than anything, and will be always, always be there for them. I don’t need a holiday to be reminded how awesome that is, but it’s all I kept thinking about today. How lucky we are.

Did you and yours have a good Father’s Day? What did you do today?

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