Mochi

It was horrible.

My dog had been ill for awhile. Very ill. Getting skinnier and skinnier. Not eating, then wolfing down food, then nothing. For months. Fear for him and rushing him to the vet every few weeks. 

My dog wasn’t just skinny, she was almost emaciated, like people get in some countries for lack of food. My dog ate, but her body wouldn’t acknowledge the things she put into it. She had been taking medication for thyroid and another for some reason I’ve forgotten. I never missed her doses, because she was my best friend. I wanted the best for her.

My dog - her name was Mochi - was sixteen, almost seventeen, years old. Maybe even eighteen, because when I rescued her they couldn’t tell me her exact age.She was a beige, longish-haired mutt with a beautiful smile and the gentlest nature. I assumed she would live forever. Then, after fifteen years, she began to lose her stature. She didn’t stand at alert, took too many naps, lost muscle tone. All so gradually that only I noticed when it was impossible not to.

Mochi nearly died, or so we thought, over a year ago, but she pulled through. Her belly looked bloated and lopsided at times, but we tended to her every minute of the day and she kept going. It tugged on our budget, but we didn’t hesitate. She was a member of the family, after all. Then things got bad, and the crises were more frequent, although I don’t want to talk about that now.

Finally the last days had come and we all knew Mochi was struggling. She probably had become senile and whimpered a lot, had taken to staring at walls or through the glass pane of the front door. She would sleep stretched out flat on the floor or curled up near the screen in the bathroom window. I didn’t know if she was cold or hot. She had also taken to sleeping in the bathtub, but was it because it was cooler or the hard surface supported her withered muscles better? We all watched, and we suffered with her. I of course suffered the most.

As long as Mochi was up and about we couldn’t face the inevitable, but there came several days when we couldn’t tell what was going on, as her legs wobbled and she hung her head. Finally, I made the hardest decision yet in my life and called the vet, feeling intensely guilty. I knew, though. My daughter’s boyfriend went with me, and it helped, but not very much. What happened then was a nightmare.

The vet knew my dog and she had already said it was a dire situation. A week had gone by since our last visit and finally I was ready - in part - to take her to be put to sleep. I was in agony. During the whole process I tried to be brave, but in the end all I could do was embrace the lifeless little body with its stale, dry fur so unlike what it used to be. I could only love my heart into the well-known beige fluff, knowing that offering my own heart was a transplant that had come too late.

While we were at the vet clinic, I know I acted odd, but grief can do that to a person I mistook the vet for somebody else and felt stupid as tears ran down my cheeks. My companion in the room gripped my shoulders and hugged me. I don’t have any other memories. The poison that was pumped into Mochi’s veins was nameless, but the effect was clear.

It was over. Time to leave, taking the product of the murder home to be buried under the quince tree in the back yard. It wouldn’t be easy, because the weather was awful and the ground still hard in places. The spot had already been chosen. As we left, I think the vet was concerned and at the time I thought it was the good sort of concern, that it came from compassion or empathy, when she asked me, “Are you all right to drive?” I said yes. A bit later she asked the other person with me if I was going to be able to drive, and he said yes, that we didn’t have to go far. 

I drove home, and no, it wasn’t far. Desperately sad, I poured a glass of wine, then I had a second glass while I was digging the hole. Then my phone rang. It was the police wanting to talk with me. I had to agree, but when I went around front, there was a cop car on the street, and another appeared soon after. They started testing my sobriety. I was shocked because I had drunk the wine after arriving home, but had not been drinking when at the vet’s saying goodbye to my beloved Mochi. 

Needless to say, I was tested by the side of the street and deemed under the influence. Maybe so, but I hadn’t driven an inch in that condition; the wine was drunk after my car was parked and while I was digging. My daughter’s boyfriend arrived about the time the handcuffs went on and was told I was being taken for a breathalyzer test at the police station. I grew sadder and sadder - so sad that I was afraid to tell them that I’d only uncorked the cheap wine after arriving home with the corpse of dear Mochi.

The policemen didn’t believe me, or were trained not to believe me, because they took me to the station, my son’s girlfriend staring open-mouthed. I never reacted inappropriately, but my mind-numbing fear led me to deny I’d been drinking. I was thinking of while I was driving, because that’s why people get pulled over. No, I said, no, I haven’t. Off we went, while my daughter’s boyfriend, Phil, watched from the house.

I didn’t do well on the breathalyzer and they said I was getting booked for OUI, which wasn’t true. Why had they followed me, I wondered, and the question was easily resolved: the vet had called the police on me because she was convinced that my way of mourning my dear Mochi was not normal, that I was not sober.

The pain of having decided to end Mochi’s precious life had been horrendous and starting to dig a hole in the spot by the quince had aggravated that feeling, but being hustled off in handcuffs for the first time was almost as bad. I had acted stupidly, out of disorientation and fear, but I hadn’t meant to lie. I was still feeling the embrace of my dog just before they snuffed out her life so furtively and decisively, and was numb. Nothing made sense.

I had gotten arrested and booked for my anguish over losing my best friend and it had been because the very person in charge of the supposed human act had called to report me. Have you ever been caught off guard like that? Well, with no time to mourn, I sat on a hard bench until the police officers finished entering everything about me into the system. At long last I was free to go home.

One of the officers gave a ride back to the house. The drizzle had picked up and the corpse of the much-loved Mochi was still in my car. I kept fighting off what I felt about the inaccurate accusation, thinking the strange cigarettes I’d been smoking recently had given off a misleading odor. I only started smoking again as Mochi’s health was declining. 

It is never a pleasant experience when you order a life to be terminated. Those in charge of carrying out the termination should be the compassionate sort. They should know how we disintegrate twice: once when we make the decision for the animal who has no ability to speak, and once when the euthanasia takes place. Anyone who has had to do this understands perfectly. A veterinarian should be in this group. This time she was not. She called the police to arrest my aching heart.

I almost had to laugh. The police had called after I had parked my car, drunk the wine, and was digging a grave I never wanted to dig. I was issued an OUI for using a shovel in my own back yard. Betrayal.

It was horrible.