Big D in Dog, Little d in Death

I led my little poodle, 17 years old in a couple weeks, back into an animal shelter. As if the reason for going there weren't grim enough, it was wounding to think that he was completely innocent of that reason.  I don't like having such power over another creature.

I didn't bring him in to euthanize him, but just to break the ice with that eventuality. The people who work in the animal shelter must be experienced with knowing when it is time to put an animal down, whereas I had no such experience, the little poodle being my first dog. He made it out of the animal shelter (with a pulse) and back to the rest of his life.

Flashback from his youth, exploring Valley of Fire near Mesquite NV

Let's step back from the Here and the Now, and ask how our grandparents' generation would have ended their pet's life. Would they have just taken the old pet back behind the barn when the kids were at school, shot it, and then buried it? Or would they have asked a relative or neighbor to do the honors? Drowning the old pet would have been crueler. But without a gun, one must do things the modern way: fill out a form and pay money.

There is a grim gallows humor to the cost of euthanizing a pet. The high costs that I feared turned out to be a chimera. Euthanasia and no-questions-asked disposal of the body were inexpensive. Ahh but there were premium services offered as well. As a man with a bourgeois background, my eyes should have lit up at the mere mention of that. The high end was "community cremation", whatever that is.

When Socrates was nearing his execution he requested his friends and disciples make his carcass available to the beasts of the field, so that he might be of use to somebody. But his friends and disciples told him they would not comply. I'm sure there is a coyote or a turkey vulture that would appreciate the meat of my little poodle, but I too will not comply. In fact a coyote just barely missed his chance a couple years ago.

In leading your pet to the animal shelter, let's be honest about what we see. Look at his wobbling, slowness, and painful limping. In fact his overall behavior makes him unrecognizable from the little beast that you loved for so many years. Can you deny that Time is as real as his body? Consider how subversive this thought is. Our era is prone to considering Reality as material. But Time is not a material. 

It can be argued that the Time of the little beast's life is just as real as his fur or his pulse. In that case, death is highly exaggerated, since 98+ percent of his time is over now, regardless of whether he is breathing and has a pulse. 

This is a consolation only if it is taken seriously. But it's easy to make this argument and then hear a little voice in the back of the head say that this is just intellectual and metaphysical bullshit that won't mean squat as far as how you feel when the time comes. 

But this isn't just an exercise in Reason versus Emotion, because more than one emotion is involved and it is Reason that will adjudicate. Implicit in this blog's theme of early retirement is the idea that Time is just as real and important as the stuff that is bought with time: career, marriage, children, house, cars, and dozens of other toys and status symbols. If this notion is correct, and I'm vehement about it, then maybe I really can get genuine consolation from thinking of his Time as already being over -- dead -- and therefore why exaggerate the moment when his breathing and pulse stop?