Backbone > Frankly Speaking
Odin's Last Days
by Frank Crocitto; Illustration by Leslie Bender

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Why Howard had to get rid of Odin was never quite clear to me. Something was said about the size of his apartment—he might have moved to a smaller one—something about Odin’s age—how old was never mentioned—and something about kids, of which there had been a sudden influx. My wife handed me this bouquet of vagaries, dramatizing Howard’s plight with the tragic urgency she used whenever she had volunteered me for something and didn’t want to hear any objections.

Our setting was ideal. We lived as caretakers of an estate comprising some 35 acres on a gentle slope on the east side of the Shawangunk ridge. There were open meadows and two orchards, apple and pear, some woods and a large field a local farmer kept cultivated with cow corn. The county road wiggling up to the place was seldom traveled, while the dirt road past the two bumpy fieldstone pillars was used only by me and the UPS man. We occupied the upstairs of a drafty old carriage barn that had room downstairs for a carriage or two and a big mud room that would happily hold a bed and blankets for Odin, a perfect resting place after a free-spirited romp around the property.

Odin was a pedigree, I found out, and he had a thick coat and he was a he but he was old, old enough to deserve to run free in green pastures till the fulfillment of his latter days. According to my wife and everybody else that called on Odin’s behalf, it would be a favor to Howard and the whole animal kingdom to take him in.

My reputation was at stake as well. All the world knew of my incomparable kindness, and in this world of ordinary people there were people who were looking to me to provide a shining example. Angels and the hosts of heaven were arrayed, on one side cheering me on, their flushed cheeks aglow, their eyes flashing with expectation, while upon the other, behind their hot and rusty gates glowered the devil’s band, spitting out intelligent objections based on time and money and responsibilities and a vastly over-extended schedule. Oh their eyes were piercing and their good sense impeccable.

The day that Howard arrived in his yellow station wagon, with right rear fender flapping, was a fine, crisp October day. I was chopping wood and in a state of inner distress as my mind raced ahead to all I had to do before sun fell. The absurdity of chopping wood in the 20th century had roused my dozing imagination to invent simple, easily-constructed machines that could chop and split wood at the press of a button, utilizing wind power and sun power and water power and if all else failed the power generated by the patient decay of radiocarbon.

Howard’s vehicle was in keeping with his name—Shott, as were all his other vehicles before this. The inside of the thing was a jungle of screaming kids, his and his neighbors’, and before Howard had navigated it to a safe, rolling stop—against one of my driveway boulders—the doors blasted open and children-shot-from-guns tumbled out and went racing off to indefinite destinations. Then, quietly, nonchalantly, out stepped Odin. Till that moment I had never realized what an enormity is an Airedale.

Most of us live with a lot of pictures in our minds, which rarely have a relationship to reality. My picture of an Airedale had been that of a cute little dog, curly-haired, with dainty feet and a small, perky head, the kind of dog that could jump on your lap without doing damage. Odin was not that kind of dog.

A big dog means big everything—a big bed, a big space, a big feed, a big turd, a big vet bill. I had only had small- to medium-sized dogs except for Rex, a German shepherd, and I was only a boy then, when everything looked big. My pictures were all of smallish dogs. Odin was a large undertaking.

I watched him as he lumbered out of Howard’s station wagon. His big head came out first and then, bending his legs so he could make it through the door opening, the rest of his vastness followed. Before me stood the undeniable consequence of not asking the right questions, of being oh-too-ready to say OK and never determining exactly what I was getting into.

He circled around the station wagon once or twice, as if he were looking for something or somebody, and then loped slowly, slowly to my wife’s little Zen garden where he lifted a leg, rather magnificently, onto her prized statue of Gautama the Buddha.

She screeched, N-o-o-o-ahh!

I bellowed, Get away from there!

Howie Shott moaned, lamely.

—Odin, not over there.

Then Howie turned to us and apologized. He said he was sorry seven times. I smiled and when my wife took offense, I wiped it away, explaining that I was thinking of a joke. She insisted there was nothing funny about the incident. And there wasn’t, but the joke was funny. It was about someone heeding nature’s call in a dark movie theater and the boyfriend of the girl whose leg was wet proclaiming something like,

—Sorry, you say you’re sorry!? You pee on my girlfriend’s leg and you say you’re sorry!!

The incident was illuminating after all. We learned firsthand how very hard of hearing Odin was. He had to be maneuvered in the direction you wanted him to go. He was a willing dog, too—ready to go in any direction.

That winter was a bitter one, with snow flying nearly every day and the temperature sinking into the teens for weeks on end. The sun came out, but with a diffident shine. Without me or anyone else casting a vote, I had been elected the official dog walker in the family. It couldn’t be otherwise. My wife always had a million things to do in her kitchen when walk time came around and the boys couldn’t hold him back even when they dug in their heels. Neither of them could see over his back. So I walked him in all the wild weather.

Odin liked the cold Norse weather. He walked in an easy, meditative sway, stopping at every tree and post, deciphering messages, leaving detailed responses, oblivious of my impatience and my occasional cries when I felt my nose or one of my ears falling off. There’s nothing quite like a leisurely walk in cold that freezes the wax in your ears. But that’s how Odin liked to walk, and despite my resistance, that’s how he trained me to walk.

He was a good lug though. He let my boys ride him bareback, like a pony. One at a time, sometimes two. They even built a sort of surrey for him to haul them down the road. He was a mighty, massive dog and he rolled forward like a woolly mammoth. He never frightened a soul; he had such soft brown eyes and a hoarse bark that sounded like a bad case of strep.

At first, Howard would send up a few bucks—”to cover costs” as he put it. But that stopped after a few moons. He never wrote to us again. In fact he never came up to see us again. Perhaps once, and it was a flying visit. He was on his way to Albany. Apparently he’d gotten a position as principal in an elementary school and he complained that he was “busy beyond belief.”

So Odin became my dog. I walked him, fed him, combed him, washed him. He tagged around after me as I went about my chores. He wasn’t a burden; he was like my shadow, easy to take along. He became attached to me. So much so he waited outside the house all week for me the time I went on a business trip to Philly. Little by little it dawned on me Odin had something special in mind for me.

I think that’s why dogs come into our lives. They bring some event, some situation for us to face. I saw it coming during his second year galumphing among us.

He began going downhill in the fall, faster and faster. Winter came in with all its teeth bared. It clamped down and held tight. There was no January, just deepening cold. The stove, fired up and roaring day and night, could barely keep the white beast away from the windows and doors. I kept carting in wood, hoping to keep the house livable.

Odin lay dying, on a big Indian blanket I’d gotten at the Salvation Army. Only his eyes moved. We set him by the stove because he seemed to like that spot. He had a bowl of water near his head and with a little help he took an infrequent drink. After a few weeks he began to moan. His eyes got that faraway look I’d seen in people’s eyes when death appeared on their horizon.

My first attempt to carry him downstairs to do his business drove me to create a sling in a hand truck. With it I could bring him up or down a step at a time by myself. I would set him on his feet by a tree, where he would teeter, even with me supporting him. He’d lift his leg and nearly fall over; he’d squat and I had all to do to hold him up.

When I couldn’t bear his agony any longer I took to leaning against the wall by the stove, holding him, and whispering in his big ears. He’d look at me with what I construed to be gratitude. Whatever ship he was watching was getting closer. I didn’t work around the grounds for a couple of days. Finally my wife suggested I take him to the vet.

I packed him on the back seat of an old, stuttering Studebaker I had and rode out to Newburgh to a Dr. Whittaker somebody recommended. He was a bony man, full of smiles and quick moves. We put Odin on the table. The doctor looked like someone who had seen many dogs and could do something for Odin.

He did too. And fast. Before I knew it, before we could even talk or have some discussion he’d stuck a hypodermic needle into Odin’s thigh and that was it. The great dog went slack in my arms. I couldn’t find the words to ask him what he had done and why. I hadn’t brought the dog in to be killed. There hadn’t been a moment to say goodbye. Whittaker left and went to another room where I could hear him talking in short, quick sentences.

What’s the point of protesting when the deed is done and the dog is dead? I lifted him. Instead of being dead weight and heavier, he seemed lighter. I carried him through the waiting room, told the girl I’d send a check, crossed the parking lot with the snow flurrying around me, and put him back in the car.

The flurries never let up. I placed Odin in his downstairs bed and took a shovel and pickax with me as I scoured the property for a soft spot for him. The ground was frozen down a foot or more. I found a spot by the stream where the ground was mostly sand. I dug up enough of it to set Odin in and cover him. His covering was as thin as a raincoat. The sun set behind some black clouds. I walked away and never went to that part of the property again.