goodbye.

A little dog died yesterday.

He was a Pug, a classic, classy specimen of his breed; deep, perpetually worried face folds, a tight ice-cream-cone curl of a tail, ears like crushed velvet. He came in first on Saturday, vomiting, inappetent, and again yesterday morning, worse now, lethargic, painful, snapping when his belly was touched. Friday night, he had eaten part of a towel. Inconclusive x-rays notwithstanding, it was time to proceed to surgery.

I held his guts while the doctor sliced so carefully into them, extricating the foul-smelling chunk of "linear foreign body" that filled him from small intestine to colon. I kept an eye on his heart rate and respiration; I was pleased to see it remain so steady, bracycephalic (literally, "short-headed," used in medical terminology to denote flat-faced breeds such as Pugs, Bulldogs, Mastiffs, and the like) dogs being the anesthetic risks that they are. When surgery was done, I helped clean him up, put him away in a kennel, still intubated, snuggled in blankets and hot-water bottles, another assistant assigned to monitor him while I attended to the tidying of the surgical suite.

When the commotion started, it took me a second to notice. The assistant monitoring the Pug noticed that his breathing was shallow; she called over a doctor, and the doctor couldn't find a heartbeat.

Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of Atropine, Dopram, Epinephrine, chest compressions. Fifteen minutes hooked to pure oxygen, yet another assistant manipulating the bag, breathing for the patient who could not. Fifteen minutes of doctors cursing, assistants tight-lipped and silent, the hospital holding its breath in sympathy. Fifteen minutes of watching him go grayer, watching his flanks refuse to rise, his eyes and tongue dry slowly under the surgical lights.

He died there, under our hands, for no reason at all, a little dog who was sick, who went to sleep and never woke up.

The doctor made the call to the owner. We swaddled the little dog in blankets, placed him tenderly into a kennel, prepared him for a viewing, should the owner desire. A junior assistant wept quietly to herself while washing surgical tools. The rest of us knew better - these things happen, we said, especially to bracycephalic breeds, especially during traumatic surgery, arrhythmia, drug reactions, he was septic, a hundred reasons why the dog who should have survived, did not, a hundred justifications, a hundred reasons to go about your day, a hundred reasons not to cry.

When I left the hospital, he was still there, swaddled, silent, cold. Later that night, I crept into bed, buried my face, and wailed into the pillow, enraged, confused, shocked, appalled by nature and reality and the horror of my profession, the vile sucker punches that Fate sometimes delivers us when we're only in the ring fighting to save a life.

I went into work this morning as usual. I worked the day without a hitch. I remember an angry tabby cat; a Labrador who leaked urine post-surgically and whose bladder I had to express manually in his kennel while he gazed at me apologetically with morphine-dull brown eyes; a Shepherd cross who cried and cried after her biopsy, quieting only when I held her head and soothed her as her additional sedative took effect, sending her into restless, but blissfully painless, half-sleep.

When I got home from work this evening, I took a bath, sat down at my desk, did some web development, and then cried, and cried, and cried, for a little dog who should still be alive, whose tail was like a Dairy Queen soft-serve ice-cream, whose ears were soft like velvet, whose name I can't even state here due to client confidentiality, but whose name I will always remember, because he was the first dog whose surgery I assisted with who subsequently died without any reason to die, and because he, as all dogs are, was beautiful, and deserved to live forever, and because I love him.

R, wherever you are - Dog Heaven, a new dog body, another place - I hope you are loving it. I hope you can breathe freely, as you never could when you were a Pug, handsome though you were. I want you to know how fiercely you were loved in your last days. I hope you had a wonderful life last time around, and will have an even better one this time, if you are indeed going for another round. I barely knew you, but I adored you. I can only imagine how beloved you were by your family and friends.

R, you were a good dog. We miss you. We won't forget you.