Skip to main content
opinion

On the last night of her life, my dog, Tulip, went outside to pee as, she'd want me to point out, she did a good 99.9 per cent of the times she peed and really I could be more relaxed about these things. Occasionally a Persian rug needs a little love too, she might argue, squatted, looking up at me with her dark, dark eyes.

There was, this time, her last night with me, a huge raccoon right outside the back door, and although Tulip was terribly weak at this point – her kidneys had been failing slowly for months, and in her last few days her condition had dramatically worsened – she saw that great big raccoon and unhesitatingly leapt straight up at him.

She was pure Tulip again in that moment, and it was as if the raccoon had come there – I have not seen a raccoon about for weeks – just to see my Tulip.

Tulip died on her bed by the fire the next afternoon; it was all very gentle. She got up to greet the veterinarian and her assistant when they came to the door, eagerly, as she did most visitors. She'd barely moved all morning and had declined a walk, for the first time in her life. But she was still Tulip just then: assuming all visitors meant more love, and must be met with same.

I met Tulip at a party, I told the vet when she asked. Tulip had jumped up next to me on the sofa and I felt my heart skip a beat.

In that moment, I understood how that turn of phrase had come to be.

We were in love, instantly. I'm fairly certain the whole room felt it. People stared over their wine glasses at us, and the owner of six-month-old Tulip, a lovely woman I barely knew at that point, asked me if, given the obvious connection, I'd care for Tulip, as she herself would be away for two weeks.

Two weeks led to more weeks, and within six months Tulip was officially my dog.

The first night I had Tulip, I put her little bed on the floor in the kitchen and went to my room, as I did with other dogs. But once in my own bed, way up on the third floor, I heard a loud thump, thump, thump as Tulip hurled her little whippet body against the kitchen door.

I ran downstairs, I told the vet as she readied a syringe, and brought Tulip's bed up to my room, because of course she was more than welcome to sleep there. But instead of curling up quietly on her bed, when I got under my own covers, Tulip began to cry. There's no other word for it; she cried. It was one of the few sounds I ever heard her make in her life – she would never make it again – and as I pulled back my heavy covers to see what was wrong, she leapt up and jumped under the blankets, burrowed way down to the foot of the bed, and the ground rules for the next 10 years had been set.

At night sometimes, while I was reading, she'd emerge from her duvet den and demand that I come downstairs with her to watch her eat. "Sorry," her eyes would say, "I am a social animal."

Tulip only ever slept alone once, a night at the vet's. When not with me because I was travelling, she graced my parents' bed and couch, and terrorized the squirrel population of Guelph, Ont.

In bed at night now, my foot instinctively seeks her out, sliding over, and over, searching for her, but there's only that very distinct cold of cold sheets – those modern, urban glaciers – down there now.

I told the vet, now so strangely in my living room, about how, a few times, Tulip had stolen a stick of butter, and been discovered in mid-joyous, buttery, smug mess, and how for a while she kept demanding to be let out three or four times in the middle of the night.

I had been confused by this sudden odd, insistent behaviour, and wondered if she was unwell, although she didn't seem ill at all, just terribly excited.

It turned out that she'd stolen a stick of butter and hidden it way under the throw pillows in the living room, and going outside was a ruse to go downstairs; she was trying to find a time to be alone with her treasure.

Because I work at home, Tulip was almost never alone. I've written virtually every column I've written for this paper with Tulip at my side, so please allow me to tell you all this …

As I told the story of Tulip and the butter, Tulip's eyes, though she was now heavily sedated, looked up at me eagerly when she heard her name.

My hand was on her heart. I felt its last pulse. If you cut me open, if I were a tree with rings, that last beat would be there, its own ring.

I am so lost, so overwhelmed with this; I see her everywhere in the house. It's as if, detached from her body, all her mannerisms, so many distinct little quirks, expressions, gestures, are separate entities now, wandering forever here.

I'm grateful she lunged one final time at a raccoon, a species she very much aimed to keep in check in her lifetime.

He looked almost animated, that almost mythical, large, last, enormous, late-season raccoon.

It was as if he had been pasted in from some charming Japanese film. He was a Hayao Miyazaki raccoon, a Totoro raccoon. He'd sat quiet and still on the fence, somehow looming over the whole garden; he meant something, I feel, and he sauntered away as my Tulip leapt at him.

Then he turned back and looked at her, meaningfully, as though he had come on behalf of his people, out of respect for a rival. He was there to say goodbye to his worthy adversary, and to my best friend.

Interact with The Globe