It's been over a week now since Toby died, and while overall I'm doing
better than I was immediately afterward, I'm still having ups and downs.
I know this'll happen for a while, I know this is a normal process, and
I can feel even now that the happy memories are moving to the foreground
of my mind--but there are times, like now, when I would literally give
anything to have him walk into the room and flop down under my chair, or
stretch up on his hind legs as far as can to bat my arm for attention.

What I didn't expect, and what nothing I've read anywhere prepared me
for, is the way the world has changed without him. This is the hardest
thing to take. I keep expecting other major parts of my life to
disappear out from under me. If Toby can be here one moment and gone
the next, what's to say some other major disaster couldn't strike out of
the blue? The unthinkable has already happened--that somehow translates
into the realization that *everything* that is unthinkable could happen.
I know this isn't rational, but this is where I am right now.

I frequently come home very late on Friday nights, usually after David
is already in bed, after spending time out with friends. Fidget is
usually comfortably ensconced somewhere and just woofs to say hi, but
Toby always would run out to greet me and would stand there, shifting
from foot to foot and wagging his tail in his eagerness to go outside.
I'd hook him up and off we would go. Never worried about anything, even
though it was sometimes 4am and this is, after all, a major city. Toby
loved walking me all by himself like this. We didn't go far at that
hour but we went up one side of the street, crossed to the other side,
went all the way down that side (with a couple of small detours he liked
to take), and back home.

I just got back in from taking Fidget out (I didn't go anywhere tonight,
I'm still recovering from whatever I came down with on Tuesday--living
on Jello and broth, and David is in North Carolina) and it was a
completely different experience. The world is much colder and now
completely indifferent, full of noisy rowdy drunken people staggering
home from the bars on 17th St. Have they appeared suddenly, or have
they always been there and I just never noticed because Toby's
indomitable spirit kept them from impinging on my conciousness?

I thought I knew what the words "heart dog" meant. But I didn't,
really, not in the visceral sense I do now. I really do feel like a
part of me has died. Ah, Toby, you left a much larger hole in my heart
than I thought a ten-pound ball of white fluff could have occupied. How
it continues to function without you is a mystery.

(Oh, and speaking of hearts--the vet who came to the house to put Toby
down not only sent a sympathy card, but made a donation in his memory
to the Rachel Carson Council, an association for the integrity of the
environment http://members.aol.com/rccouncil/ourpage/. On behalf of
a dog she only met ten minutes before he died. I haven't been following
the vet thread, but here is one who should definitely be allowed near
animals.)
--
Kevin Michael Vail | Dogbert: That's circular reasoning.
| Dilbert: I prefer to think of it as no loose ends.
http://www.vaildc.net/kevin/