Raven's spirit flies free.

Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved.

I took that photo eleven days ago: Raven, happily consumed by one of his favorite activities, chewing a bone.

Raven guards us from the spirit world now.

He'd been battling cancer for months, one massive abdominal tumor now grown to a point that it took a seventy-something-pound dog up to about 120 on the scale. In recent weeks, it was clear that his body was riddled with tumors, and yet, he was happy. Tired much of the time, sleeping more and more hours out of the day, occasionally overtaken by breathing difficulties as the tumors grew and shifted and impinged intermittently on his respiratory tract. But he was not, apparently, in any pain, and his other troubles were mostly intermittent, and he still loved his life.

We promised him that as long as he was taking joy in life, as long as he was not in pain or otherwise suffering, we would put in the work to keep him with us, comfortable and happy. All that changed overnight last night.

His breathing was always more labored at night, but it was episodic, and it would pass and allow him to rest, and he'd awaken ready to join us in the day, happy and engaged. Last night, it did not pass; the breathing difficulties persisted to a degree that they frightened him, and he was so consumed with fighting it that when I got down on the floor to try to help him, he didn't recognize me and struggled to his feet to move away, afraid. At long last, he dropped into a sleep born of pure involuntary exhaustion.

It was time.

We thought it would be done by shortly after eleven, since a vet other than his regular one was supposed to be out here for a follow-up with the horses. That person bailed at the last minute, leaving us to hope and pray that his vet could be persuaded on a surgical day (possibly complicated, it would turn out, by his status as the county's on-call vet for today and tonight for emergencies) to make an exception and come out to the house after hours. Fortunately, he knows us, knows our dogs, knows the kind of care we take of them, and he was willing to come after closing at five.

So we settled down for a six-hour-plus wait.

When he arrived, we led Raven, collarless and leashless but with the incentive of a bone, over to the area where Wings and his clan brother had spent the morning digging, in front of the dwarf blue spruce that, fed so well by Raven's siblings gone before, can no longer properly be called "dwarf." For a dog as large as he was, it was a sizeable hole, with a lot of work put into it. It had, of course, begun snowing and sleeting again shortly before, and while it had mostly stopped by then, everything was cold and wet, and I knelt down in the grass anyway and held his head and upper body in my arms. Ted, the vet, shaved a small space on his right front leg, then inserted the needle, and a moment or two later, Raven's head dropped against my heart. We set him down fully on the grass on his side, and his last breath, last movement, came at 5:19 PM.

The vet tech was a very big, burly guy, and Ted offered his services in helping us bury him. The tech and Wings lifted him down into the grave, and before leaving Ted asked whether it would be all right if he tossed a little dirt in, too.

This is why we love our vet.

A few moments before that point, as I came out with supplies and Wings and the vet tech had just laid his body in the grave, a raven rose up from the ground just beyond the fence where our boy's body lay: swooping upward, looking our way momentarily, chattering joyously; it flew into a nearby aspen, then flew off into the storm.

Raven's spirit flies free.

Earlier today, one of the guys that formerly supplied Wings with some of the cacti he planted around the land showed up out of nowhere. He left behind, free of charge, a tiny cactus budding with scarlet flowers, and instructions to put it on Raven's resting place. it's there now, in a little planter.

There is so much of Raven to tell, and I'm so very tired. It will wait for anniversaries. But our guardian boy who fought so hard for so long had, in a way, the best four or five months of his life: commanding our full attention, being at the center of everything we did or planned, always with us, always loved.

Fly to the spirit world; the others are waiting to guide you home, Gagaagishiinh. We love you, sweet Raven.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.