What is the death of an old, beloved dog? It is an absence, it is silence instead of noise. There are no longer nails clicking across a wood floor or a bark when food delivery is delayed or a whine reminding of bed time or waking time, or eating time. It is the loss of a witness to the pleasures and pains of your daily life; more than that, it is the loss of a witness to your years, and what your years have brought you, what you have made of them and what you have lost.

When you think of that dog as your last dog, it is the end of an era of companionship, of having soft fur to stroke when things are hard, of having a wet nose thrust into your hand demanding a walk around the block when all you want to do is to pull the covers over your head. It is the end of an era of having a dog’s comfort when you need it, a dog’s joy to magnify yours—at coming home, taking a walk, or jumping into a cold river to swim. It is the end of an era of having a dog to care for who will be grateful for the care you give. It is the end of many hassles, but they are hassles you will miss every day.

My parents’ dog, April, died recently. She was very old and had been increasingly infirm in the last couple of years, and certainly they gave her a long and very happy life, so on one level there is nothing at all very sad about her passing. But we miss her.

Around the time my husband and I moved back to D.C., my parents, who also live in D.C., returned from the animal shelter with 20 pounds of flopsy mopsy terrier energy my mother named April. My mother thinks she was pure bred Tibetan terrier, and maybe she was. She was young but not a puppy when they got her, so we were never sure exactly how old she was.

That first year back in D.C., before my husband and I had Pundit, we would take April on walks in the woods with our dog Ubi and my parents’ other dog, Truck. Truck was a hound mix with a tremendously charismatic gravitas about him. He was calm and peaceful unless you tried to confine him—he would chew through any line attached to him—even metal—with manic determination, he once panicked in the car and chewed through both front seat seatbelts, although neither were confining him per se, and he took occasional forays from the house no matter how secured my parents made the fence. In his later years, after my parents had patched every hole he could wriggle through, he figured out how to open the latch on the back gate with some combination of nose and paw so that he could continue to take his jaunts through the neighborhood alleys. My parents attached a leash latch onto the gate latch. When the leash latch was hooked, he could not get the gate open, but whenever anyone forgot to put that leash latch back on after going in or out, Truck noticed immediately and off he went. Truck’s weak points only served to highlight an essential wild beauty within, and although you might laugh at his predicaments, the laughter was always undergirded with respect, even awe.

April, on the other hand, was a goofy ball of energy who, when she wasn’t killing any vermin she could catch, was just plain silly. Two early walks we took with her included one where she cheerfully waded through eight inches of snow in the woods until the snow balled around the long fur on her short legs and stomach to the point that she turned into a snow statue that could no longer move. We had to carry her back and soak off the snowballs in warm water. Another time, we were walking along a cliff high above Rock Creek when she leaped off it and tumbled into the water far below. We were gazing down at the water in horror when she popped out of the creek, scrambled up the bank, shook herself off, and started racing back and forth trying to figure out how to climb up to the narrow trail where we were standing.

Over the years, April took on different roles. As Truck aged and became increasingly infirm with arthritis, April became his companion and caretaker, checking on him, nuzzling him, curling next to him every night and licking his eyes and face clean every day. She took care of him until he was gone, and then she mourned, and then she became a calm and steady older dog who lived peacefully in my parents’ quiet house.

And then, as happens with dogs, April herself got old. For the last couple of years, she’d become increasingly ghostly, clicking around my parents’ house without fully acknowledging us, pooping wherever she felt like, walking only half way around the block and then only along the edge of my parents’ front yard. She became almost totally blind, and the last time I tried to walk her from my house, where she stayed for a weekend, I turned back after half a few steps because, not knowing the lay of the land, she panicked, and froze, and was miserable. At the same time, she happily poked around our yard that weekend. At one point, I couldn’t find her anywhere and finally found her down in the basement, down the rickety stairs that neither of my dogs will use, curled up on Truck’s old dog bed, which we had put out briefly in our dining room for Cholula and then abandoned in our unused basement until we got organized to get rid of it. I like to think that although Truck died nine years ago now, his faint scent on the bed lured her in her darkness down those basement stairs to curl up once again in the presence of her longtime partner.

For a dog who was a ghost of herself for her last couple of years, April still leaves a great hole of quietness with her passing. It is strange not to hear her nails clicking on the wood floors when we enter my parents’ house for dinner, or to watch for her coming through the half open swinging door between kitchen and dining room. Strange for them, I think, not to have to check with each other, “Did you put April out?”, to walk with her up and down the sidewalk in front of the house, to fill her bowl with dog food and keep her water bowl clean. They do see April as their last dog. For all her silliness, she filled the role admirably; she bore her best doggy witness to a part of their lives that, like most 17 or so year spans, had its share of worry and pain, but also joy and pleasure and excitement. They were well-lived years, and April, more than anything else, was there for every moment.

Pundit is fifteen years old.  What’s that, 105 in dog years? When his hind legs slip out from under him at the bottom of the stairs or his leg floats behind him unnaturally as he walks around the block, it’s easy to dwell on all the things that Pundit can’t do anymore. Often, we have to impose his limitations; Pundit would play fetch until he couldn’t stand up, and so we only give him a few throws. Pundit would walk–slowly–until he collapsed, and so we have to decide whether to gear the walk to Pundit’s abilities or to leave him at home. Or remember, after he’s had a big day, to give him several days of rest. But for Valentines Day, I thought I’d catalogue what Pundit still does in his daily life.

He comes down for breakfast every morning to see what the chaos of three kids, five breakfasts, and three lunches being made will bring to the floor.

He sniffs.

He hikes with the family.

He picnics.

He plays.

He tugs.

He snuggles.

He works.

He launches himself off his spindly hind legs into bed for the story. Through painful joints and fading senses, he fiercely dedicates each of his remaining days to his life with us, our brave Sir Pundit, Mr. P, Pundy-head, Pundy-Wundy, Pindo, Penda, Pandit. That’s what we got when we brought home a little scrappy ball of fur who had been abandoned in the woods 15 years ago.

Since the unbelievable Snowmaggedon of 2010, when DC was buried in two snowstorms and school and work were cancelled for what seemed like weeks and we sledded and skiied and jumped off huge snow drifts into our snow-softened back alley–and left one of our cars parked in its own mini snow drifts out on the street for several weeks– D.C. has had so little snow that the kids have hardly had a chance to make a snowman or even taste it. February is coming, and it sometimes snows in D.C. in February, but I thought I should grab the chance to celebrate the little bit of snow that fell last week before it fades from memory–especially when a fluke 70 degree like today leads us to shed hats and coats and boots and play in the sun in the park.  So here are a few photos of the dogs experiencing the little snow of January — I hope that in this coming month I will get the chance to photograph the dogs bounding across snowy fields, or plowing through huge drifts carved out along the city streets, but these are still pretty, yes?

When we were up in Maine last week, we went to Popham Beach. Dogs aren’t allowed on the beach in the summer, when we are usually up there, so Pundit and Cholula had never been. The kids, cozy in front of the fire, hadn’t wanted to go– “We don’t want to go to the beach when we can’t swim!” — My six year old went so far as to state, “I am NOT going.” Nevertheless, we all went. We got to Popham at low tide, when there is a tremendous vista of sand stretching to the sea, with various inlets of ocean curling along the hard rippled sand and a sand bridge out to an island that becomes covered at high tide. There were a few other people out, and a few other dogs, but by far the overwhelming sensation was of sea and sand. It was lunch time, and we’d even brought chips. But as my husband and I chose a spot and put down our blankets and sweaters and picnic items and opened the chips, the kids and dogs just ran. The kids tossed off their shoes and grabbed the dogs’ leashes and took off across the sand, wading through the inlets of cold water and running on and on, to the ocean’s edge and then along it.

What could my husband and I do? We ran after them. Pundit, our water dog, was tremendously excited to get to the ocean and stand in it and bark. Cholula–I hadn’t predicted how Cholula would feel about the beach. But the open vista where she could see a mile in any direction and the brisk breeze put her in a frenzy of joy. At one point she pulled her leash out of my daughter’s hands and dashed off towards the horizon along the sand. I was momentarily fearful we’d spend the rest of the day looking for her–but she heeded my call and bounded back and jumped on me, and from then on, she ran on leash with us, happy to go in any direction, at any speed.

The sea gulls ate our chips while we were racing around, and a bag of cookies too. But I would so rather be among the ones who drop everything to enter the glory of the moment than among those who stick with their plan, who guard what they have gathered, who hold on to what they have.

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