Coda; A Eulogy

May you forever soar the galaxy…free from the body that gave up well before your spirit ever would.

Re-published here on Substack, I wrote this essay July 12, 2023.

Today we put our dear old dog, Coda, down.

As he was cradled in the arms of his two favorite humans – my adult sons – he quietly went away. As his body relaxed, and then relaxed some more we realized just how much he’d been bracing for the many years before this. How much his body, in increasing pain from osteoarthritis and then cancer, became a thing to protect from any possible unexpected and unwanted contact. Which meant, of course, that he was bracing and protecting against everything.

We have had lifetimes together, this elkhound coyote and I. Years ago an animal communicator, consulted to help us understand why Coda had become so unbearably anxious all of a sudden, looked at me and said, in the most matter-of-fact way, well of course he’s been sent here as your guardian and protector. He’s not from this world. He is not interested in anyone or anything else.  

As my guardian, he also guarded my sons. Had it not been for Coda, I don’t imagine my older son would have made it through the long dark night of his addiction. Nor do I imagine my younger son would have made it either. Somehow, Coda managed to be glued to both of them, simultaneously. But he also managed to stand fierce and vigilant holding back whatever demon made its way through the gates of Hell and attempted to claim my family. 

He came to us as if he had a mission. One day, driving around town doing errands, I heard an unequivocal voice say go to the shelter and look at the dogs. The last thing on my mind was a puppy. In fact, perhaps for the first time in my life I was being responsible about the extraordinary amount of work it is to raise a puppy properly. Attachment parenting all the way. No separation. Lots of socializing. Endless patience. I was newly partnered with a man who also had two adolescent children. We had enough puppies running around the house – none of them housebroken the way we want our adolescents to be. Plenty of reasons to be up all night ringing our hands already without bringing a canine into the mix.  

But after two more errands, the voice persisted. And so I went. And there he was. Except he was a she. The shelter had erroneously tagged him as a female, and named her Scotlan, with no ‘d’. It took three more visits to discover that she was a he, as I painstakingly wrangled all four children to come meet this possible addition to our family. I was sitting on the adoption room floor with Simon (my younger son) and Scotlan/Coda. She/he was lying on her/his back exposing her/his belly when Simon, then 14, looked down and exclaimed Mom! She’s a he! And this interesting twist stayed with Coda all his life, with most everyone gendering him as her. This made sense to us. Coda was always everything: the first, the last, alpha and omega. The beginning and the end.

Coda, noun: the concluding passage of a piece or movement, typically forming an addition to the basic structure. 

Yes. 

Coda was my backwoods companion, endlessly exuberantly venturing off trail, straight up or straight down, bushwacking without hesitation. When I stopped to listen or look, he would stop, listen and look. We became so attuned to one another I could give him hand gestures if we were more than a few feet apart, to let him know to go left or right, or stop and look in time to watch a raptor soaring over our heads or a herd of elk galloping across a field. 

Twelve years ago, it was Coda who taught Simon, then fourteen, to find his alpha voice. We used respect-based training with him (as opposed to reward/treat-based training). To do this successfully we had to learn to speak in a tone of voice that was sure, commanding, generous but unequivocal. We had to learn to embody the true power-with leader. Simon, Coda and I were on a long road trip, camping throughout the Southwest from central Utah all the way down to the Chiricahua Mountains of southern Arizona. At just three months old Coda was all teeth and puppy play. Having categorized Simon as a littermate, he was making mincemeat out of Simon’s clothing and hands. As I drove us through the hours and hours of desert landscape Simon sat in the backseat with Coda, digging as deep as he could to find his alpha voice of respectful leadership, to no avail. Finally, several days into our journey and out of the blue, a voice I’d never heard came bellowing from the back seat, musical and strong, deep and loving and most of all, no doubt. Coda…No biting. He could have said I’m a monkey’s uncle and the result would have been the same for the transmission his voice alone delivered. Coda stopped as if the god of all Elkhound-Coyote himself had spoken. He immediately closed his muzzle, sat down, all eyes on Simon, awaiting his next instructions. 

Two years later, when my older son Henry came to me and told me he was addicted to heroin and needed help, it was as if all Coda´s previous training in endless devotion and fierce protection was in preparation for this moment. He enlisted himself as bodyguard, middle-of-the-night companion in all things, confidant, snuggler and patient endless eye gazer extraordinaire. And when it came time for someone to volunteer to walk into the maw of whatever demon drives addiction, Coda didn’t wait for anyone else to step forward. Almost like this was why he came to our family. I’ve heard it said that in several cultures there is a belief that animals will sacrifice themselves for their human people. That if Death is asking for an offering, an animal will step forward and lay themselves down as if to say spare this boy, and take me in his stead. For as Henry climbed, slowly but surely, out of the torture of heroin addiction, Coda descended down into his. Soon, any sound, any emotion, any change even in the breathing of the humans in the room, would send him diving under the bed or flying out of the room as if he were being chased by demons. His anxiety became bottomless at times, matched only by his continued protection of and devotion to us. 

And still, years went by and he sat, patiently and relentlessly, with every single client I had. Sometimes, in the middle of a particularly grueling couple’s session he would get right up on the small couch, pushing the couple apart so he could sit right between them. He had an uncanny ability to spot the one in the couple who was in need of the most support, turning his fierce, unwavering gaze on them as if to say I love you and support you and I know you can do this. For some of my clients, and one in particular, he was as much the reason she kept coming back as anything I could ever offer. And oh did they have a love affair like no other. On some days, just watching them in their dance was better than any therapy out there.

 And then it happened. Almost overnight. One day early this last Winter, while on one of our daily runs, as the other two younger canines cavorted and galloped, I noticed he wasn’t by my side. I am the slowest runner in all the world and Coda (in his arthritic condition) and I were perfect ‘running’ partners. But no longer. I turned around to see him stopped in the middle of the trail, looking confused and frozen. As if he couldn’t remember why we were out here or what was expected of him, his back legs in too much pain to keep going.  I tried a few more times after that to take him with us, slowing down even more, to his pace. But the slower I got, the slower he got. He would walk for ten feet then stop, looking back in the direction of the trailhead and the car. For the last five months I’ve left him home when we go out for our runs, instead taking him around the block in the neighborhood. But even this began to be too much. I imagine this is how it will be for me – a person who has always been game to go on adventures, to explore off trail, to learn new things. Eventually I imagine I will simply prefer to stay on the couch, perhaps the memories of my adventures being plenty to keep me company as the rest of this world goes on without me. Perhaps already in such compelling conversations with the other world I will barely notice that my place in this one is waning. I felt a sense of grief I could not explain each time we went out for a run, Ruby Dragon, Snugs and I.  

A few weeks after that, at a vet visit, came the news that Coda had cancer. It won’t be a long journey the vet told me. You’ll want to prepare yourself, prepare your sons. But life went on and Coda went on. Tail wagging, bouncing up and down every time Henry or Simon came over. Anytime anyone walked into the house without knocking (which happens everyday all day long as clients and friends come and go…all members of our family as far as Coda was concerned), he was joyful, excited and ready to cuddle. He was still thoroughly living his life, despite the diagnosis. 

Of course there is no hacking Death. Nor would or should we want to. Everything and everyone must die. I know, as one who is very much alive, my job is to rail against this fact all the while knowing there is no stopping it. Like the mothers of the sons who head out into the wild bush to become men, wailing and fighting against the arms that hold them back as they watch their babies leave, never to return. I’m certain it’s our job to acknowledge the impossibility of losing those we love while being asked to carry on. But I honestly don’t know the answer to the obvious question: How does our family function without Coda? In fact, what is our family without Coda? Like a coda must, he indelibly changed the shape of our family. There is no going back, or sideways or any way.

Then, three weeks ago, exhausted from a night spent at the emergency vet (which is really just the most efficient place to part with inordinate amounts of cash you likely don’t have to begin with) I was in shock from the even-more-dire news I received there. A tumor was pressing on Coda’s warrior heart and causing mini-events like seizures – terrifying for both of us. The vet, well practiced at extremely bad news left no room for wondering He will go and he will go soon. You do not want him to die while having one of these events. It will be long and painful and he will be terrified. 

Shock is such a bizarre bird – at some point during the day, circles under my eyes, I found myself frantically removing the grout behind the bathroom sink with a pair of tweezers, even though the grout had been exactly like that for five years and I’d never had a problem with it. All day I paced the house in search of Coda, as if I expected not to find him. Because one day soon, like today, I wouldn’t. Lately he’d found new places to rest his painful bones, far away from any rough housing the younger dogs might get up to. When I found him, his eyes were milky and muddled. His muzzle grey and his once-shiny black nose faded and dry. Each time I was shocked to see that he was actually an old dog; half here and half somewhere else. Or maybe it was not even as generous a ratio as that. He looked at me as if to say, this is what will happen next…I will leave you…and you will stay…and you will be okay.  

The afternoon after the all-night emergency vet, I went running with the younger dogs and then raced home to drop them off and pick up Coda to take him around the corner from our house where we would both submerge ourselves in the frigid rushing waters of the Boulder Creek. I held his atrophied body in the water, and he let me bear the entirety of his dwindling 55 pounds. I gently cradled him as the water (which is simply melted snow to the elkhound from Norway) blessedly massaged his pain away. He was … almost … spry as we walked back along the creek, the setting sun meeting us full on in our exhausted faces reminding us, this is someone’s sunset and it is someone’s long night of grieving. And it is just the way it works. There is nothing at all wrong.

As I walked with him, this treasured moment, I knew. When it happens, when Coda leaves us, there will be no fan fare large enough. There will be no throngs of people lining up to place flowers or pay their respects. No town square with candles lit for him or pictures placed of him. There will simply be a space that will never be filled. There will be the phantom of an elkhound coyote out of the corner of our eyes and an echo of the sound I’ve heard every morning for thirteen years, of his front feet bouncing on the wood floor as he jumps in eager anticipation of his beloved breakfast. And there will be the gratitude that, at times, he was the only one allowed to snuggle with Henry as he went through opiate withdrawal, for the second then third time. There will be flashes, like spontaneous slideshows, that catapult me into grief. They were already happening. Images of memories, already fading around the edges. Coda learning how to sled on his belly down the side of a newly snow-covered hill. Coda catching snowballs hurled at him the faster the better. Coda running with Simon across the buff stone cliffs of Boulder Utah, then navigating the rapids of Deer Creek with saddle bags weighted down with his food for the week. Coda sitting up with me during all-night vigils when praying was all I knew to do to see the family through the next moment. 

Today we said good bye. What a strange thing to make that decision for someone else. To decide that the good in life is no longer keeping up with the rest. I believe that the warrior part of Coda would have fought to stay here until both my sons were no longer breathing, he took his mission to protect us that seriously. But a life – his life – no longer able to walk into the woods, no longer able to swim in the creek, no longer able to catch the snowballs or sticks, no longer certain he could protect according to his impeccable standards, was no life worth living for him. And, even more to the point, Coda’s mission has been accomplished. We are safe. And beyond safe, we are so very well. It is time for him to rest.

As I laid with Coda this morning, before anyone else was awake, I found myself whispering to him You have done what you came here to do. We are so well. We are on our way. And it is time to be on yours. We will never, never, forget you.