I hadn't noticed Arvo at first because he wasn't jumping or barking or begging for attention like the other animals. He lay quietly on the floor, peering out with wise, brown eyes. He was too skinny. And he had the markings of a rottweiler, though he was too slender and his ears were too long and floppy to be related to the breed. We requested he be brought to a visitation room where he and I met. I pet him and sat with him on the floor and we peered at each other. Meeting Arvo, before he had decided to love you, was a little unimpressive. He was a big, big dog (weighing 75 pounds with long hound-dog legs and an amazingly athletic build), but he was very, very standoffish.
I left the room temporarily to meet another of the dogs who was a younger pup with a feisty personality who was ecstatic to be around a human. I was completely indecisive about which of the dogs was the right choice for me. But when I returned to the room where my mom waited with Arvo, she said he had cried as soon as I left the room. He had whimpered and whined and laid down again. And that was the beginning of one of the great love stories of my life.
The magnitude of grief I felt at his passing was something visceral and raw and ugly; it still washes over me in moments of deep despair and sadness and inexplicable bouts of crying. This is especially true when I am out in nature, walking, and I think about how much he would love to be out there with me. I always joked that I was not his master; he and I had come to an agreement that as long as I took him out into large swaths of land where he could smell and run and hunt as close to daily as possible, he would stick around and offer me company.
And he did stick around and he was, always, the best company.
I thought of him a few days ago when I went walking and it was -8 degrees. It was the sort of weather that brought every molecule of Arvo's body alive. His thick, rough coat finally felt useful in the weather and the smell of the rabbits and other prey his nose was so attuned to were easier to track in the fresh snow. Even as he aged, when we went out in cold weather, he was the most at ease and at peace.
Though I like the idea of living for a bit longer, I detest the idea of being here without him. He had ears that felt like silk and he always smelled of the Earth (even if he had just been given a bath). He had no interest in being anyone's pet, but he was fiercely loyal to the humans he ultimately called friend (which, by the end of his life, was almost everyone with a hand). He was next to me every minute he possibly could--even after it became evident how much his old joints ached and how difficult things like eating and drinking had become--until his very last breath.
As they injected the medicine that would make all of his aches and pains numb and go away, I reminded him of the bunnies he had chased on the reservation, of the eight-foot fences he had leaped over, and of the coyotes he had driven mad on some of our hikes. I apologized for the years he was neglected when we had young babies and I told him that I hoped he would wait for me in the great beyond.
If there is a place for me after this life, I like to imagine he will be waiting. Because it was always, always a rule that regardless of where life took me, he took care of me every bit as much as I took care of him. And if there is a place where he has gone, where his energy still exists, there's substantially less to mourn in leaving this world; wherever he and I went, as long as he was with me, I was completely and entirely home.
And because these thoughts wouldn't be complete without The Good Place (which, aptly, features my favorite song by Arvo Part whom Arvo was named after):
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