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It was cruel, Kat thought, that in those final days they could not understand what Sherl was saying. It was as if, after 15 years of being able to understand the dog’s words, that little gift was taken away before their very hearts were taken with it.
It was early in the morning when Sherl tumbled over. Kat rushed over to his side with soft giggles, her short hair bouncing as she sat beside him.
“Did you get your paw caught in your harness again, Sherl? I don’t want to hear you laugh at me next time I talk about my knees hurting.”
She smiled as she reached out a hand to unlatch his paw from the leather harness around his chest, but stopped short when she realized his paw was not stuck, but Sherl was writhing and twitching, his teeth gnashing and grinding as his head shook back and forth. Kat sat there for agonizingly long moments that she should have bashed her own head in for not breaking out of sooner, before shouting,
“ TH-THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH SHERL! ERNEST, HELP!”
In a distant upstairs hallway of their shared home, Ernest dropped everything and ran down the stairs. Each footstep was as if he were desperately keeping himself from tripping over himself in an attempt to be by the dog’s side faster. Sherl was gently lifted into Ernest’s arms, and Ernest’s quivering voice provided what comfort he could.
“ Shh, shh. Sherl, relax. I-It’s okay, don’t try to stand just yet. Rest.”
After ten minutes dragged on in a torturous thousand years, Sherl’s shaking ceased, and after a few more moments, he was dragging his feet across the green carpeting to his nearby water bowl. He lapped at the liquids and finished the bowl within seconds. Ernest grabbed a pitcher to refill the bowl once more as Kat got to her knees next to Sherl and gently pet behind his ears.
“What was that? What can we do to help?”
Her voice was trembling, barely above a whisper. Sherl looked at her with sunken, tired eyes, and exhaled through his nose. He let out a deep whine, and got back to drinking his water.
Kat froze, mouth agape, eyes threatening to betray her stoicism.
“No… Oh, please, Sherl…”
But bit by bit, she crumbled.
Whines, grunts, grumbles, growls, all sounds she heard from any dog besides Sherl. Her broken composure spilled down her cheeks, and Ernest got down on his knees to hug her and Sherl.
“I don’t think he can talk to us right now, Kat.”
And he never talked to them again.
As his final days dragged on, the three did what they always did, but slower and with notably less conversation.
On his last walk, he tumbled into the grass in the park and started up his seizing once more. Determined to let their old friend continue his walk as usual like he always nagged them to allow, Ernest lifted Sherl over his shoulder and continued down the path. He paid no care to the foam and bile that gushed out of Sherl’s mouth on his sleeve. When holding him made his arms tremble from exhaustion, Kat gently took over and held Sherl in the same way.
The last seizure, violent and long, happened just as Kat and Ernest arrived at the front of their detective agency. Kat suddenly had a flash of memory back to when he stood there 15 years ago and boldly called for her attention as she had just finished setting up the hanging sign.
The two detectives panted as Kat scooped Sherl’s quivering form into her arms once more, and rushed inside when Ernest unlocked the front door. Kat clamored into the main room and fell to her knees next to the tea table, setting Sherl in his bed.
Rolling eyes, jaw clenching, his tongue being bitten down on as he made painful yelping sounds. Kat and Ernest huddled over him and hoped, prayed for an end to his suffering.
Katrielle sobbed desperately.
“We, we love you so much, Sherl.”
Ernest grit his teeth and pet the dog’s side.
“You don’t have to protect us anymore. P-Please, just let go. You, you’ve given us the best years of your life.”
Sherl’s brown eyes twitched as he looked at the two. His breathing became more wet and ragged.
The twitching subsided, his grunting too.
A final whisper escaped with his last breath.
“ I… love you. ”
Maybe, Kat thought as she and Ernest carried their friend to the pet crematorium wrapped in a blanket from his bed, maybe he wasn’t gone. Perhaps those were not his final words, and any minute now they would feel his chest begin to rise and fall, and he’d bark at them for daring to swaddle him like a baby!
Yet he stayed still the entire walk.
He stayed still as the owner of the crematorium lovingly examined him on the table and estimated the size of the tin his ashes would fit into.
He was still when the flickering flames danced over his blanket.
He was neatly collected and placed into a burgundy tin, wrapped in a piece of paper with a poem about a rainbow bridge written on it, and Katrielle had him in her lap once again.
She stared at the tin vacantly as she realized this, of all things, confirmed what she already knew when he first fell onto the carpet. Ernest held them both close, kissing the top of Katrielle’s head as she went limp in his arms, wailing into the crook of his neck.
Their beloved companion would not be talking to them ever again.