Crystal has been sliding downhill for the past year or so, doggedly clinging to her old food-seeking routines and spending her afternoons snoozing in the slivers of sunlight that spill into the house as the days tick by. But during the past few weeks, it became clear that she’d had enough. She’s been suffering from cancer and an assortment of heart maladies, and I knew it was time to let her go. But it wasn’t easy, and I wanted to do it as comfortably as possible. So we called our vet and arranged for them to come here to the house to put her down. She went quietly, at home, with me and Lara and Xena and Ozzy and Mully shedding tears nearby.
My mind has been drifting back, tracing the wonderful times we’ve shared during the past 15 years, to that moment a few days before Thanksgiving when I helped her mother, Brandi, give birth to a litter of yapping, yelping cockers …
To Crystal’s first walk, in an unlikely Birmingham snow, when she was so small I had to pick her up to get her over the curbs …
To that crazy trip across country, through Mississippi, Lousiania, Texas and finally to our new home in Albuquerque, that poor 1986 Ford Escort bristling with assorted possessions, a hyper cocker puppy and a demented lovebird named Gonzo …
To watching her and her best friend, PigPen, six months her junior, curled up in the New Mexico winter sunshine on our back porch …
To hot high-desert hikes when she and PigPen would run from one shady spot to the next, panting and ecstatic among the cactus and pinon …
To romps through Denver’s Washington Park, leaving contrails of dog prints in freshly fallen midnight snow …
To frenetically chasing sqeaky toys through our odd duplex-turned-single apartment in Austin, Texas, while barking PigPen egged her on, encouraging her to make another orbit of the room …
To the calmer days of old age in Tennessee when she lay her head on dying PigPen’s emaciated body, saying goodbye to her friend and partner in crime …
To all the joy she brought me for 15 years. Rest in peace, Little Chris. Rest in peace.
