August 5, 2015
Walter, 2012-2015
Walter the West Highland Terrier — my companion, my friend, my sweet boy, my first dog, that pup — died on the afternoon of Friday, July 31, 2015 at the home of Kristen's grandmother in Burlington, Iowa. He was just three years old.
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Although Walter had been sick with a bacterial infection for the last three weeks — after what we assume was eating or drinking something disgusting up off the ground somewhere in Western Ohio — each of the three vet visits that followed had shown nothing out of the ordinary. Aside from the infection, which was not seen as severe and had been under two courses of antibiotic treatment for more than two weeks, his blood work and other fluid samples indicated no problems beyond mild dehydration. His vaccinations were current. Up until he first got sick he had been a happy, healthy dog who thrived within a life on the road: stopping throughout the day to play in parks, meeting and delighting strangers, sleeping outside in the tent, and living out his days full of interesting sights and sounds and smells.
The infection caused Walter to lose a lot of weight and strength, so we had been away from the road for the last two weeks to let him rest. When it became clear he needed even more rest, we canceled the remainder of our trip to give him the best chance to recover to full health. And it seemed to be working; he seemed to be improving. Though he was still weaker than normal from trying to fight off the infection, he slept soundly between us the night before he died. He gave us head-butts and grunts of love and affection when we woke up on what turned out to be his last morning. We went for a walk and he barked at a stranger from the front lawn an hour later. He was eating and drinking. When I opened the door of the van late in the morning to rearrange some items inside, Walter leaped from the curb and in through the open door with more energy and excitement than I'd seen from him in weeks. He was happy to find himself back in a place he recognized and loved. Early in the afternoon he sat next to us on the floor of Kristen's aunt's hair salon, watching the action in the shop in front of him with a quiet calm, melting hearts with his adorable face and easy-going personality.
I took him home right after that, to let him rest in the air-conditioned cool while Kristen and I went out to an early dinner with her grandmother and great-aunt. After dinner we planned to pack up, leave Burlington, and start our long road trip back to Washington State.
"Walter, I'll be back," I said as I set him down on the living room floor, in the same way I always said it when I left him alone for more than a few minutes at a time. "I'll be back, little guy."
He looked up at me with his deep brown eyes and blinked once. He knew what I was telling him. Then I turned around, left the house, and went to dinner.
Those were the last words I ever spoke to Walter. When we returned an hour and a half later he was gone.
It's believed that when wild dogs know their end is coming, they leave their pack behind and head out into the world on their own. They don't want to burden the pack with their weakness or take away resources from the healthier members who they know will outlive them. They sacrifice so that others don't have to. In the immediate aftermath of Walter's death, it was all we could do to try and conceive of the fact that he was gone. In the spaces in between, our minds raced in all directions trying to figure out what terrible thing could have taken the life of a dog that only three weeks earlier was as happy and healthy as he'd ever been.
But later that evening, when we paused and looked back on the events of the days and hours that preceded Walter's passing, we realized that our dog made the decision to leave us behind in the best way he knew how. As we counted backward, it dawned on us that he hadn't been alone in the house at any point in the previous six days. Kristen, or me, or Kristen's grandmother was always just around the corner or just downstairs. And he knew it. Whether by sight, by way of his huge ears, or through his incredible sense of smell, he knew that one of us was there. He knew that it wasn't yet the right time.
Based on the condition in which we found him, it's clear that Walter passed no more than fifteen minutes after I left. He waited until he knew that all three of us were accounted for. He waited until we were out of the house. He waited until he knew that the final act of his life wouldn't be a burden on any of us. He waited — and then he waited no longer. And because of his profound sense of honor and purpose we didn't have to watch him die. We didn't have to try and save him. We didn't have to go through any of the stress and heartache and terror that watching a loved one die in front of you brings along with it. He was the definition of a good dog until his very last breath.
The vet performed an autopsy and found no obvious cause of death, such as choking or kidney failure or anything abnormal in Walter's stomach. What we know for sure is that his little heart failed suddenly and without warning. Even if we had been around to try and help, and even if we would have made it to the veterinary hospital within five minutes, there's nothing that could have saved him. Our lone point of solace comes from knowing that he didn't suffer in his passing.
The final examination of his heart also told us something revealing: it was slightly enlarged in size. That didn't mean much to us in the moment, but the following day Kristen did some research about what might have been wrong with Walter. She wanted to try and bring us the sort of closure that the vet's vague and non-committal explanation never could. As near as we can tell based on that research, Walter was stricken with something called infective endocarditis — an infection of the heart. Given the symptoms he had, and the fact that his heart was enlarged, it's the most logical conclusion we've been able to find. And it turns out it's a horrible condition. It doesn't bring with it obvious symptoms beyond the vomiting and lethargy and weight loss that fifty other conditions have, so it's easy for it to go undetected. It doesn't often show up in blood work or other fluid tests either. Even if it's caught early on, the dog still has to be hospitalized for up to two weeks, all the while hooked up to an IV and a steady stream of antibiotics. After that it's massive doses of antibiotics at home for another few months, with who knows what kind of effects on the rest of the body. And still the survival rate is just twenty percent. That means eighty percent of the time the dog dies no matter what you do. Beyond that, even if the dog happens to survive, it has to be on medication for the rest of its life and the performance of its heart can be severely compromised.
The short version of the story is that our wonderful little dog drew a bad card. There was never much we could have done. And even if we had, if he had somehow survived, Walter's boundless energy and love for the outdoors would have been betrayed by a heart that was no longer up to the task of walking, hiking, playing fetch, running alongside the bikes, or even chasing us around a park. He would have been some smaller fraction of what he was before falling sick. We would still have preferred a gradual decline over many years instead of the sudden shock of the terrible afternoon that will never leave our memories, but it nevertheless brings me some kind of comfort to understand that he lived a full, active, happy life up until the very end. He knew such little pain, such little sadness, and such little suffering. We should all be so lucky.
Our hearts are hurt as we try to deal with a kind of loss we never could have imagined. Coming on the heels of what had been such a wonderful trip for all three of us, it's safe to say we're still in low-level shock. There's this kind of subtle vibration I feel inside of me that hasn't stopped since the moment I found Walter dead. Even though I sleep long and hard every night and haven't been pushing myself during the day, every evening still brings with it the heavy weight of exhaustion. My soul aches whenever I think about the fact that neither of us will have the chance to rub Walter's tiny little head or scratch his soft belly again. I can't go more than a few hours without thinking of that pup and then crying because I so badly want him back.
For all of these reasons, and a hundred more that I can't yet put into words, there's no way we can return to the bikes and press on toward the West Coast. As much as we enjoyed our time together as a team of two in New Zealand and Australia, this trip across America was about all three of us. It was the start of a new life, a life that we hoped would last another ten or twelve years, and Walter sat at the center of it. We drove to the East Coast instead of flying for Walter's sake. When my $3,000 cargo bike proved to be the wrong solution after only four days on the road, we dumped it for a trailer without hesitation. When Walter whined because he didn't like the roughness of gravel roads, we stopped riding on them. Although he demanded so little of us, our lives were centered around his simple routines: eating, bathroom breaks, playing in parks, rubbing his little head every time we stopped. As revealed by our less-than-blazing pace, this trip was only somewhat about cycling. It was more than anything a chance for the three of us to enjoy each other's company and experience the summer outdoors, together, day after day after day. That's where we all wanted to be. Without Walter the balance and pace and rhythm of life on the road that defined this trip have been irretrievably broken. What had been the happiest single period in each of our lives has come to an abrupt and final end. Team Hawthorne is gone. I'm sure we'll cycle again some day, but it won't be this year.
For now we're headed west in the van, bound for the Pacific Northwest. We're going to take a couple of weeks to get there. We need the time to ourselves.
Walter came into my life long before I met Kristen. She has never known me without him as a central part of my life. Yesterday she wrote the following:
I know that as the days pass the pain will fade. But right now it’s so hard. I still feel like he isn’t really gone, even having his ashes in a box in the back of the van. It’s like I’m expecting to see him in an hour or a day or a week.
That sweet, sweet, sweet little guy. We had all gotten so close on this trip. On walks I would say, "Walter, with me," and he would fall back to walk by my side. In the mornings he would walk up from the end of the sleeping bag to lick my chin and head-butt into our arms.
I knew Walter from the first day I knew Jeff. I thought it was a good sign that someone would incorporate walking his dog on a first date. And oh, was Walter as much a part of Portland for me as was Jeff or the house on Taylor Street or the hipsters working in the vegan restaurants. My absolute favorite moment was the day I was riding my bike home from work and I met them along the way. Jeff knew the approximate time and route of my ride and decided to try and cross paths with me. Walter came along, naturally. (They walked the streets of that town more than most people who had lived there for years.) When I saw them I stopped and pulled over, delighted. With a sudden threat into their moving circle of territory, Walter did his best to protect the pack by barking — for about 2.1 seconds. When he recognized my smell his ears went back and he jumped up on my legs and danced in a little back in forth motion that showed me what delighted really meant.
After coming back from Australia I was so happy to be with Walter and take on the care of the little guy. We worked on commands, I started brushing his teeth, I cut his hair, chose his food — he became my dog as much as Jeff’s. But when I started pulling him on the trailer, that was when he became a part of me. We were together almost every minute of the day. Consciously or unconsciously, he was never out of my thoughts: where the trailer was in relation to what was on the road in front of me, the angle of the sun, what kind of wind he was getting based on the weather and how fast I was going. I could feel his movements while riding. I talked and sang to him. I chose where to stop and park based on him. When he got sick I thought about him all the more. When he wouldn’t eat I fed him with a syringe.
I feel like a piece of my heart is missing and will never come back.
Walter wasn't just a pet. He sat at the center of my life. He was a source of so much joy and contentment. And he was one of the few things in my life that had the ability to make me a more thoughtful, caring, better person. He was pure of thought and lived his life without motive. All he wanted was to be a good dog, to do whatever it was that I asked of him. That's what gave him his purpose. If I could give back everything I've seen and done over the last year in exchange for the happy, healthy dog I loved so much I would make that trade in an instant.
But it doesn't work that way. I'm exactly here, no more and no less. I've spent so many hours reflecting on all of the wonderful times Walter and I shared over the last three years. I smile when I think about holding his tiny puppy body in my arms for the first time. I laugh when I remember trying to take him for a walk as a ten-week-old puppy, but he was already so obstinate that he planted himself in place at the end of the driveway and refused to move even one step farther. There was that early morning in San Francisco where I watched him run free on the sandy shores of the Pacific, and then all of the trail hikes in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest that followed: Dog Mountain, Angel's Rest, and so many trails in the Tillamook State Forest and around Mt. Hood. My soul feels warm when I think about walking the streets of Portland every day after we moved there, exploring the sights and sounds and smells of our new home together. I remember introducing him to Kristen only a few hours into our first date; watching the feeling of excitement trigger in his head when I returned from Australia and he recognized my long-lost face and my voice; and the joy I felt when he climbed up into the bicycle trailer we bought for him back in Maine, sniffed around a little, then plopped down for a nap. In that moment he gave us the chance to continue cycling across America together, where all of the wonderful moments captured in the pages of this journal soon followed.
But for as much as I know I should be positive, I can't get there. I've spent just as much time thinking of all the things about Walter that I'll never again experience. I can't call out "Walter!" and watching his head pop up and his eyes lock onto mine. I can't rub his chest, tell him that he's a good dog, and mean it absolutely. I can't hold his body tight as he sticks his head out the window of a fast-moving car, watch smiles spread across the faces of strangers in the moment they first notice his adorable face, or kiss and smell the top of his head. I no longer have the privilege of throwing a tennis ball and watching him charge after it with the force of hundreds of years of mouse-chasing instincts pushing him on. I don't get to teach him any more of the behaviors he needed to know to be content and successful in this human-centered world. I'll never see him roll on his back in the grass with the kind of energy and happy grunting that could only mean complete happiness. There will be no more moments where he'll howl because he's so excited that he just can't hold it back anymore. I won't get to watch my dad play with Walter and see his love for that dog come through in his words and his actions. I'll never again walk up to the van after having been away for a few minutes and see my precious boy sitting on the counter top or the back of the bench seat, watching like a sentry, scanning the horizon, waiting for me to return.
All of the activities that Kristen and I loved so much — cycle-touring, hiking in the woods, walking the streets of big cities, sleeping under the clouds or the stars, traveling in my Volkswagen van, napping — were things that Walter loved as well. We didn't head out on these adventures after locking our dog up at home or stashing him with someone else. We took them on with him charging out in front of us, sniffing from his seat in the bike trailer, or laying at our sides. With Walter we not only learned what was possible with a dog, but how rewarding and joyful all of those possibilities could feel. And following from this, we vowed to never again leave him behind, and to instead arrange our existence in a way where we'd experience all that life has to offer as the full Team Hawthorne, a team of three. We thought we had another ten years of happiness and challenge and love ahead of us.
We were wrong.
I know that some day these awful feelings of loss will pass. I know that in time I will think more about Walter's life than his death. I know that joy will return to my mind and my heart. But knowing what's coming does nothing to change the fact that I sit here and write these words and look at these pictures with so many tears running warm down my cheeks.
Goodbye my sweet boy.
Goodbye.
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