Humphrey — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Say­ing Good­bye to an Old Friend

Wednes­day was a pretty rough day for me. One of my dogs has been bat­tling can­cer in his mouth. The bat­tle is over now. Humphrey was close to 16 years old, which is a pretty good run for a stray puppy who showed up out­side my parent’s door one after­noon. It seemed more like he adopted us than the other way around.

The vet esti­mated he was about 4 months old at the time. He was ner­vous around every­one but our fam­ily, but oth­er­wise seemed to be in fair health. We put up signs, but no one claimed him. I’m con­vinced that some­one abused him and tossed him out of their house. Maybe so, but it was bet­ter for him and my fam­ily that he showed up.

My father was retired and slow­ing down. Hav­ing a young dog around was just what he needed. For the few years my father had remain­ing, Humphrey was a good com­pan­ion while Dad had his morn­ing cof­fee out by the pool.

My par­ents didn’t call him Humphrey, though. They had a hard time agree­ing on a name for him and it got to be some­thing of an issue. When I vis­ited one day, my mother hap­pily told me they found a name they could agree upon for him — Cosby. So why do I call him Humphrey? Because that damn dog kept hump­ing my leg. The furry lit­tle bas­tard would hump damn near any­thing in sight for years. When my father passed away and he proved to be too dif­fi­cult for Mom to han­dle, I took him in and just called him Humphrey from that day for­ward. That was ten years ago.

Humphrey even­tu­ally learned to get along with women, but he never trusted a strange man. It wasn’t mal­ice, but fear, that got him riled up. That’s why I pre­sumed he was mis­treated as a pup. Oth­er­wise, he was about as mel­low as a Black Lab Retriever could be. When some­thing struck a nerve in him, his Chow side of the mix came into play.

Unfor­tu­nately, I never got a good photo of him. This shot above in my parent’s back yard is from 2007. He’s so dark that he just seems to absorb light. Even his tongue was black. That’s also frus­trat­ing because one of his favorite places to nap was in the dark hall­way lead­ing to my home office. More than once I’ve tripped over his body, hid­den in the shad­ows. About all you can do is mut­ter “damn dog” and con­tinue where you were going.

He had surgery to remove the can­cer from his mouth, but it was malig­nant. Although I was happy I didn’t have to say good­bye to him on the day I learned about it, I also knew that day would be com­ing soon. For a while, he seemed quite resilient after the surgery. His appetite was vora­cious and the vet assured me that was a good time. It meant blend­ing his food up into the con­sis­tency of gruel, but he lapped it up and wanted more. At least he did until the other evening.

He showed no inter­est in food. He barely drank any water. The next day was the same. This once ener­getic dog was trem­bling, barely able to move. I knew the time had come. It’s not an easy thing to say good­bye to him. I already lost my father. Now this was another piece of him going away. The vet exam­ined him and even he was shocked by Humphey’s pas­sive nature (he was a bit of a dif­fi­cult patient). He couldn’t eat. He could barely drink water. It was dif­fi­cult for him to move. We agreed the time had come to put him to sleep.

I got in the front of the table and kept eye con­tact with him the whole way, con­stantly scratch­ing his ear the way he likes it. Humphrey left peacefully.

My golden retriever, Zach, is feel­ing a bit down today. I’ve tossed the ball for him a few times and gave him a rawhide bone, but he’s shown no inter­est in it. I’m sure he under­stands that Humphrey isn’t com­ing back. I’ll prob­a­bly spoil him for a few days with atten­tion and food, but I also know that I need to find him a buddy for the times when I’m not home.

This cycle con­tin­ues. It hurts like hell when you have to say good­bye to an old friend, but the good times far out­weigh the dif­fi­cult days like this one.