I wrapped him up in the softest blanket we could find. It was the only favorite thing of his left that he could still enjoy. He had stopped eating anything a few days earlier, while I was on a bicycle riding through Big Sur. I had tried popping some popcorn, one of his favorite snacks, but he was either too weak or too sick to eat any. He refused the broth I offered, the fresh tuna, and any of his other favorite treats.

He had lost 5 pounds since I had left him a week and a half earlier. He was coated in fleas, despite two treatments of the expensive flea medication. I was angry at the fleas as they crawled over his nose. They were invading my best friend, making his last days miserable as they fed off of his weak little body. But he no longer seemed to mind them, or at least, he no longer had the energy to mind.

I lifted him up onto the bed so we could snuggle on our last day together. He tried to jump down and his front legs gave out beneath him as his face smashed into the floor. He tried to walk a few steps, but his hip was giving out on him after 15 years, and he stumbled and collapsed. I moved him over to the rug in front of a sunny window, always a favorite spot of his.

Wrapped in his blanket, my friend sped us to the vet. It was an appointment i really didn't mind being late for. He slept on my lap, and let his face fall into my heaving chest as tears fell on his head. I carried him into the vet's office and a man rushed in front of me to the counter. i didn't think such a person should be allowed to have any pets. And then a lady went to the counter and said we could be seen first. She then sat down next to me, my cheeks wet with tears and my lip wet with snot, and asked what was wrong with him. I told her he was old, and could no longer walk, and was nearly blind, almost deaf, and hadn't eaten anything for a while. I didn't tell her how guilty I felt that my move to DC had probably overstressed my little guy, that the multiple moves and an unexpected stay at a pet sitter probably hastened his demise, that I wondered if maybe his little bed's absence through the last two stays had made him felt abandoned...

I will always remember stroking his little body, still wrapped in that soft blue blanket, as the doctor injected poison into him. I was telling him what a good little boy he was, and how much I loved him, and how sweet he was to stay with me for so long. I was looking into his huge brown eyes as the light left them and there was nothing but a furry body left on the table, but not the friend i had had since I was 14 years old.

I will also always remember one of our last walks to the pet store together, a few months ago. I had already paid for his food when I looked down and saw that he had quietly taken a pig's ear from the bin below the counter. He looked up at me with those huge eyes and began wagging his tail. I told him, "But I've already paid, sweetheart. Give it here, babe." I only weakly tried to take the treat away, and saw how happy he was to have it. I dug around in my purse again, paid the $1.79, and he carried that pig's ear all the way home with such pride. it was one of the quickest walks we ever took together. Precedent set, he got a pig's ear with his bag of food almost every time from that day forward.

He liked apple cores and the rind off of my brie. When he was a puppy, I would sit crossed-legged on the floor, cradling him like a baby, while he ate the apple core like it was his bottle.

He was fond of humping. Though he was fixed, he would become excited every time there was a party or a date over to the house. If the guests weren't accepting of his advances (and they usually weren't), he would find a blanket to hump across the length of apartment...looking up every once in a while to pant with satisfaction. I often told my guests, "Don't worry about it. I mean, listen, if you weren dependent upon someone else to masturbate, wouldn't you hope they would help you out?" Once, though, my friend's boyfriend was laying on the floor watching tv when of a sudden, he yelled out, "what the fuck???" Suki was humping his head. i think I might have peed my pants a little from laughing so hard.

When he caught frisbees, the wind would usually catch the frisbee and turn my little Shih Tzu into a kite. He ran into a screen door once, and never trusted patio doors again. In the wintertime in Indiana, he would often get stuck out in the snowy yard, one paw raised in an attempt to warm it. he couldn't bear to put that paw back into the snow to come inside. He could also jump onto pool tables, over the back of couches, and of course, over any child gates we set up during his potty-training phase. In the last months, of course, he needed help getting onto my couch--in any way. He was pretty excited about the sleeping mat arrangement I had during the last weeks of our time at the apartment in San Diego.

We could communite so well. Location+cry type let me know what he wanted, and motion+voice command let him know I wanted. If i wanted onto a chair he was on, I simply said "Down" and he jumped down. Or, I would pat the spot I wanted him to move to, and he would sweetly oblige. if he wanted to go outside and i was in the middle of some task, i would say "in a minute sweetheart," and he would wait up to five minutes before reminding me that he did, in fact, need to pee, and dude, I'm a dog, so let's step to it, shall we? Once outside, of course, when I needed him back, I had to yell "TWEAT!!!" and he would sprint to me. I think he probably couldn't hear that these last few years.

When they began to put the actual poison into him, I fought every desire to wrap him tighter in that blanket and take him home. But i didn't want him to suffer for me; I didn't want him to be hungry any longer and unable to eat, to want to move into the sunshine but unable to walk there. he didn't close his eyes and go to sleep, but he didn't suffer any pain or stress. I wish I could have saved my sobbing for afterward, and just let him see me smiling back at my very good little boy.