This is a photo of Avalanche, our family's American Bulldog. We got him in 1998 as a puppy and named him for his solid white color and resemblance to a natural disaster. The week before Dan and I came home to visit earlier this month, Av was diagnosed with cancer and had to be put to sleep. He was a happy, good-tempered dog, but he already had joint problems and other things that meant he was in a lot of pain a lot of the time as it was, and Mom and Dad didn't think it was right to let him suffer any more. It was the right thing to do, but it was a tough decision for them, I know.
I am not the animal lover in the family, since I am allergic to most things with fur. But I liked Av alright even though he was a dog, and he was definitely a source of amusement for our family. To the casual observer, he probably looked big and dangerous and aggressive, but the truth was that had there ever been any intruders on our property, Av would have been happy to follow them around and watch them steal all our worldly belongings as long as they would pet him and maybe feed him something he shouldn't have been eating. With no disrespect to the departed intended in this statement, he was not the smartest dog that ever lived. I can't count the number of mornings when I was living at home that he followed me when I left for work and then sat in front of my car, refusing to move in spite of my honking and flashing the lights at him. When he got like that, eventually you'd just have to get out of the car and shove him off the driveway. His great love in life was to chase the four wheeler that Dad uses on the land because he had a dangerous fascination with anything that had wheels. The result was that he was hit by at least two cars, maybe more. He never seemed to get seriously hurt, though.
His other great pastime was to try to get in the house, where he was strictly forbidden to enter because of his lack of interest in baths and his general bad manners. He knew good and well that he wasn't supposed to be in the house, but the minute you left the kitchen door cracked, he would butt the door open with his head and come on in, even though he was usually apprehended within seconds and forced back out onto the porch. A few times he managed to enter undetected, and on those occasions, he would head straight for the couch, which he seemed to think was his rightful property anyway. Once, when Mom and Dad left town to come and visit Dan and I in Albuquerque, Ryan was left with the responsibility of keeping an eye on Av. The led to Mom and Dad getting a phone call from Ryan asking "How do you get dog slobber out of couch cushions?"
Dad used to joke that when Dan came to ask Dad for my hand in marriage, he should have insisted that if Dan wanted to marry me, he would have to take "Haley's brother Av" off the family's hands, too, "as a dowry." But even though we used to joke about how generally worthless Av was and how the money that was spent to send him to obedience school might as well have been set on fire, it was really because we all loved that goofy dog as much for his faults as anything else.
The week before Av died, our cat of many years, Pounce, also died of a rare illness. It was a very weird coincedence, but in a way it was kind of appropriate. The two of them got along remarkably well for a cat and a dog. They shared Av's sleeping space at the top of the garage stairs in the winter when it was cold, and on warm days, you could find them both sprawled out in the sunlight on the deck within a few feet of each other. They were friends, and it would be sad to see one of them without the other. So now we're a petless family for the first time in probably 10 years. With almost everyone out of the house now, I don't think my parents will be getting any more animals, and that's OK. But it was a sad moment when we were cleaning food off of dinner plates one night when Dan and I were at home and realized that we were still setting aside all the scraps to take to a dog and cat that weren't there anymore. It's always hard to realize that something about home, even if it's a little thing, won't be the same any more.
We'll miss them.