My dog died two Tuesdays ago. Paddy Lilly Lovell – she was 14-years-old and I had known her half my life.
    My parents and I adopted her from a shelter called the Ark four hours north of here when she was 1-year-old. She just had five puppies and as shelter staff helped us get to know Paddy – or Patches as she was called – her former owner came by to see about getting her puppies back.
    Paddy saw them that day. She got so excited, as a loyal dog would – probably thought they were coming back for her.
    It was my father who brought her home, though. During the four-hour ride from our house in northern Maine to our home in Biddeford, they bonded. It was evident throughout her life – her heart always belonged to my father.
    Her first night with us my mother and I came home and there she was at the front door, jumping and panting, tongue hanging out the side of her mouth in anticipation to meet us again.
    That’s the way she would always be. Before the tip of your key touched the lock, she was there, ready. At least that’s the way I remembered her until the Saturday before last.
    I opened the door to find her still right there, but different. She laid there and didn’t even lift her head. Her breathing sounded heavy and unhealthy, she was trembling and her belly was swollen.
    I covered her with a towel and laid on the floor with her.
    She always had a way of knowing when you were home. Even if I had been away for a while I would come back, sometimes begrudgingly after a failed relationship, and she’d be there at the front door. Once, in the middle of the night I came home, feeling miserable and broken and there she was – happy as could be to see me at the doorstep.
    As for that Saturday, I knew she was dying as did my parents. Two days later they called to say it was time to put her to sleep. She had woken up that morning with a bad patch of exposed flesh on her leg – a bed sore. In prior weeks her deterioration had been obvious. Her hips didn’t work right and sometimes she had to be lifted up and down the stairs to go outside.
    The night before she was scheduled to go to the vet I laid with her again. We shared mini-chocolate bars – a decadent treat she never was allowed to have.
    “I know people I would rather see put to sleep,” my mother said. I laughed and agreed. My parents and I sat and reminisced about Paddy the way you would a family member about to pass on.
    We took her with us to New York City once. As we walked into the lobby of this glitzy, shiny hotel over looking Time Square, there was Paddy, pulling and panting making a sound I only wish I could describe. People stared and I was embarrassed – but we laughed hard when we talked about it two weeks ago. That same trip my mother took her out to pee at 5 a.m., just as mobs of kids, stoned out of their minds, were leaving a rave. They oohed and aahed over Paddy and she loved it.
    My father was the one to drive her to the vet two Tuesdays ago. When I saw them pull in, I got out of my car, stood there and was overcome as if I was watching a funeral procession pass by.
    We had a few moments in the car before going in. She had two little paws in the front door and I broke down again. I stepped outside so I didn’t scare the kids that were waiting inside the door.
    We didn’t wait too long before they took us. A man sitting in the waiting room with his dog gave me a sympathetic look. It was obvious why we were there, and it was obvious he understood. Dog lovers always understand. For those of you who are not, you probably think all this is silly.
    Her tail wagged wearily most of the time we were there. That’s when you begin to wonder if you’re doing the right thing, but it was, the spark that was once in her eyes was tired, she came to us 13 years ago and did what she was brought to us to do.
    We went through a lot in 13 years and Paddy was a fixture throughout it all. She served a different and important purpose for each of us, that’s why this was so hard.
    Waiting in the exam room knowing that we were waiting for her to die was terrible. She had a sedative to calm her down, but Paddy was so weak she was practically gone after that. I sat on the floor and she circled the room once before laying her head on my shoe. The vet put her on the table and my father and I stood on either side of her. We cried and told her we loved her, that she was a good girl.
    “Have you done this before?” the vet asked.
    My father and I half heartedly chuckled. “We’re a team when it comes to this,” my father said. We both put down our cat when I was a junior in high school. We owed it to her to be there just as we owed it to Paddy.
    We stayed with her a while after her heart stopped. Her whiskers twitched and my dad likened it to when you go to a wake and swear you see the person in the casket move. Just to make sure, we asked the vet if it was normal. He said it was.
    We left, hesitantly. “See you on the other side,” my dad said.
    After, we stood in the parking lot the way people do after a funeral, just chatting, knowing that once we pulled away, it would finally be over.
              – Molly Lovell