(reposted from November 2008)



Yesterday was a very fine fall afternoon, a good afternoon to take Kiki for a longer walk than usual. I fetched him out of his kennel and out we went.

Kiki stayed a few paces ahead of me on his leash. Every so often he'd pause and look back at me. Sometimes he'd walk back and nudge my hand as if to suggest that maybe we could walk faster.

I'd heard that Kiki had bitten one of the other dog walking volunteers and so I stayed attentive to any indication that he might try something like that with me and, indeed, at one point he did get impatient with me and got a bit too mouthy. I put a stop to it, though, controlling him with the leash and saying a gruff "NO!" and that put an end to that.

I wondered if the mouthiness/biting could have had anything to do with the seizure he had the other morning. Was the behaviour just bad manners or was it indicative of some frazzled brain function? Kiki's personality seemed changed since his seizure. He was certainly less energetic. And his eyes seemed like they were clouding over but was that a recent change, post seizure, or something that I just hadn't noticed before?

We walked along the grassy patches around the south side of the CNE for about half an hour and then I sat down at a bench on a hill overlooking the Gardiner Expressway. Kiki looked at me and realized we were going to stay put for a bit so he laid down a couple of feet away on the grass. I sat back enjoying the sunshine and watched the traffic. Kiki did exactly the same, turning around a couple of times to make sure I was still there, and then settling back to contemplate the highway. I watched Kiki and thought that he was, at that moment, content. At least I was able to give him that much.

Just before I got up to bring Kiki back, he nudged my hand, gently this time, and yowled and said something to me but I had no idea what he was trying to say.

So that was yesterday and as it turned out, that would be Kiki's last walk. His biting had become a major liability issue (I found out he had bitten others as well, not just that one dog walker) and with the seizures on top of that there was no way he could be put up for adoption. A rescue that had expressed interest in taking him changed their minds when they found out about his illness. The rescue just didn't have room for another dog that wouldn't likely be adopted out anytime soon.

I had brought in a bone for Kiki this afternoon but by the time I got to TAS, he'd already been tranquilized in preparation for his euthanasia. I stuck my head into the room where he was kenneled and saw his front paws sticking out from under the kennel door. I didn't walk in any further. I didn't want him to see me and possibly get excited. Maybe I didn't want to see him either, sedated, less than the dog he was. And maybe I also didn't want to see him because despite everything, I could have taken him out of there and brought him home and looked after his health and dealt with his biting and given him at least a more tolerable final few days or weeks or however long before the underlying illness took him over. I could have saved him but I chose not to. I stood, once again, face to face with the limits of my own compassion and generosity. Not enough.

There's that saying we hear a lot in the dog rescue world - you can't save every dog in the world but for the dog you save, it is the world - or something like that. Well, that's nice but what are you supposed to say when you don't save a dog? What does that mean? Where's the platitude for failure?

This is what I see: We are on a grassy plain and Kiki is on leash walking a few paces ahead of me. Every few steps he slows and looks over his shoulder back at me to see why I am walking so slow. He wants to walk faster but knows he's not supposed to pull so he tries to contain his exuberance. We walk until we reach the edge of a hill and just as we're about to take the first step up, something further up top sets him off - a scent, a sound, I don't know what really - and he starts to strain at the leash. He pulls and I try to pull him back but he keeps pulling and then the leash breaks. For a moment we both stand there, surprised, and I'm about to say something to him, to call him back but we both know he doesn't have to listen to me anymore. He takes a step away, starts his ascent up the hill. He walks up the hill. Then he trots. Then he runs. And even as he's climbing, he keeps looking back at me. One, two, three times and then he is gone.