The Last Snowfall

On December 1, 2006, an old German Shepherd got up from his bed and looked out the patio door at his snow-covered deck and the sloping yard beyond. He felt a familiar tug of excitement at the first snowfall of the year, as he had each of his previous 11 winters. He envisioned bounding down the hill through the deep snow, heading towards the gate where his playing companion would presently arrive and open it, allowing him out onto the boundless snow- sea blanketing the golf course. I suspect he wondered now and then why I gated him "out" of his true yard -- the one where he leapt and ran and swam in the river, and once in a while trotted off with a golf ball that was in play, much to the consternation of the golfer, but more often than not, amusement.

And so, on this late-arriving season of snow, the dog waited downstairs while I helped my husband brush off cars and backed mine out onto the street so he could get out of the driveway and go to work.

Would the old pup want to venture out into this deep downfall, I wondered. It must have snowed eight inches during the night. It had been almost a year since he had negotiated any snow at all, let alone this depth, and over the past year the decline in the strength of his hind legs had been apparent. He had been suffering from arthritis and hip dysplasia for several years, and recently found it impossible to stay upright crossing the tiled kitchen floor. So we lined it with rugs.

I could hear him moving about downstairs. He was still laying on his bed in our bedroom when I got up, and I had given him his morning wake-up massage that I could tell he had begun looking forward to by the way he would curl up and his tail would wag slightly when I would approach him.

Rather than make the arduous journey up the curved staircase in the mornings, nowadays he waited for me to come down. After putting on my longjohns, sweat pants, turtleneck, coat, boots, gloves, earmuff headphones and fanny-pack filled with necessities which always included a Walkman, tissues, cell phone, and leash (although that wasn't used until the end of the walk when we got back to town) I would head downstairs with a small paper plate with exactly four pieces of lunch meat, two of them hiding one half of a pain pill each. He would gobble up his treats and I would put his collar on, and off we'd go towards the woods on the other side of the golf course.

On this day, though, my husband and I wondered. What would his abilities be in the snow this year? Would he hesitate negotiating the incline of the yard? Or would he take a wary look and decide to take a pass?

Once out on the deck, my questions were quickly answered. The invigorating flakes beneath his feet were too inviting, and, without hesitation, he bunny-hopped halfway down the yard and looked back at me.

I guess we were going.

I dug beneath the snow in his toy basket and pulled out his soft Frisbee. It was an unspoken fact between us that the Frisbee was strictly a snow toy. It just wasn't any fun to catch otherwise. I tossed the Frisbee down to him from the deck for the first time this year and he reached up and caught it.

He moved effortlessly in the deep but powdery snow, to my surprise. But I still dreaded the cold that was no doubt not far behind; the long days ahead that there would be no walks when the snow was too cold for his paws. I sensed a long, and maybe unhappy, winter ahead for this old boy with the wobbly hind quarters.

I tossed a couple of tennis balls far into the distance with my plastic arched launcher. He trotted towards where they landed and excitedly and dramatically dug for them in the powder, burying his head up to his shoulders.

I'd never known a dog who loved the snow like this dog. He would lay outside during a snowstorm and let the snow pile up on him until he was as white as a Standard Poodle. He laid in it. He dove in it. He rolled in it. He ate it. In the spring as the snow gradually melted off the golf course, he would find the tiniest remaining patch and lie down in it.

And so on this morning, the first snowfall of the year, and the last few moments of his life, no purer joy could be found on this earth than in Domer's heart, leaping about as best he could in the white-out of the first-snow blizzard.

As we played he led us to one of his favorite spots - a ravine area that turns into a small creek when the snow melts in the spring, and where the snow can get thigh-deep. I knew where he was headed and threw a tennis ball towards it. He eagerly dug it out, then sat down in the deep snow.

"Do you want to go home?" I asked. He had lost most of his hearing over the past year, but he looked at me and slowly got to his feet. He turned towards home and ventured a few steps and then sat back down.

"Come on," I encouraged him, and lifted the backside of his 110-pound frame. He took a couple more steps and sat down again.

Thinking that his hind legs had simply given out I took off my fanny pack and put it under his belly to help ease him back up.

No, I think I'll just stay here, he might have been thinking. Out here, in the snow. On the golf course that I love. It's like heaven out here.

And then he laid down on his side, on the soft bed of snow, and passed away.

The dog is a gentleman. I hope to go to his heaven, not man's. - Mark Twain