I miss him every day. I wrote this shortly after he died. I can't read it without crying.

Cab, Who Taught Us Much

In his tenth year, we lost our darling Cab and then we all grew up in a hurry. A classic yellow Labrador in looks and temperament, he never revealed the pain he was surely in, until that final week. Generations of breeding to perfect a companion for hunting, a gun dog, has produced a breed so affable, so even-tempered that they would endure almost anything to stay useful and in your good graces. Even gunshots, more painful to a dog’s sensitive ear, were taken in stride so long as they could remain at their partner’s side. And our Cabot was no different. There were no hunting parties of course, but there were plenty of dinner parties, and birthday parties and festive Christmas cocktail parties and little girls’ pretend tea parties. And for those grade school, Wonder Years, coming-of-age years, Cab was there for each and every one.

Cab was as much a Zulkoski as the rest of us. When catching up with friends, after the perfunctory queries about kids and trips and school, the conversation always included ‘so how is Cab’? Like the best dogs, he was a reflection of who we were as a family — our value system, our moral code. Smart, handsome, kind, funny. He was the perfected canine version of our best selves. I never had friends to dinner without Cab under the table, quiet at my feet. He was in our family portraits and Christmas cards, he was mentioned in our prayers. He seamlessly filled a void, patching the cracks in the spinning Zulkoski family orb, making us whole, completed. I never considered him one of the kids or worse, my baby. I always felt that attitude was symptomatic of a society that misunderstands dogs at a basic level and was ultimately disrespectful. To treat them as a human was to deny their inherent canine gifts. He was a dog. A wonderful, perfect dog.

While living in Singapore, in a bungalow off Bukit Timah, he had uncharacteristically slipped through our open gate and was hit by a car on busy 6th Avenue a few blocks away. A crew of Bangladeshi workers, perpetually installing cable under the streets in those days, surrounded him with traffic cones, presumably to protect him from oncoming cars. It was there we found him, lying in the street, conscious but unable to stand.

At first glance there was no obvious trauma, but his expression was unfocussed and dazed. Closer inspection revealed he was marked all over by light scrapes and abrasions and there was a gash on his back leg, so we rushed him to the Veterinarian’s office to be examined. We had never met the doctor on call that day, an Australian old-timer, grey haired and affable. Up on the examination table, he palpated all Cab’s long bones and our boy regained his awareness and remained calm. Cab held the Vet’s gaze steadily with those sentient, amber eyes. “You see that? Dr. Harris said. “This is an exceptional fellow. Only a Lab would allow a stranger to examine him this way after so much trauma, but it takes a special dog to look at you with such trust.”

Unflappable, sweet, stoic — this is standard behavior for Labrador Retrievers, and so Cab continued to perform his duties (mostly supervisory in nature, besides fetching the newspaper everyday), until just a few days before he died. His fidelity, as always, was with us, putting his needs second to ours. And though his body was riddled with cancer, his golden face now white and slack, his leg joints covered with raw, angry calluses — he protected us, even in death. No, no – never a watch dog in the traditional sense, Cab provided a different type of security all together, demonstrated every day through steadfast loyalty; warm, dependable companionship and his persistent, abiding love. Though physically wrecked, he safeguarded us still, not from robbers, not from strangers at the door, but from the doubt and uncertainty that often accompanies the end of a pet’s life. He let us know it was time, just as he had let us know when it was dinnertime or when a walk was a good idea. He let us know.

So in that Spring of 2009, while living at Goodwood Hill, our antique, ramshackled barn of a house, we noticed one morning he couldn’t reach the newspaper left by the delivery man. The sound of his approaching motorcycle would always send Cab flying down the long drive, and when reaching the gate, he would get up on his hind legs and carefully pull the folded paper out and carry it gingerly, taco-style, up the drive. His head and tail held high, he’d carry it to the kitchen where praise and a treat awaited. This duty was sacred to him. Within a day or so he seemed to slow down tremendously and had more trouble than usual with stairs. A trip to our regular Vet, the exuberantly-named Oksana Bodnurak, confirmed something was very wrong. The scan she ordered confirmed our worst fears — cancer. I was home, in our bedroom I remember, when the call came. I listened politely and hopefully asked the pertinent, appropriate questions, but who knows. After taking a moment to collect myself, I went downstairs to find our helper, Vicenta, the only other person home in the middle of the day. Before I could even call Robert, I had to let her know, to share the burden of knowing with someone else, to get some of the crush, the suffocating weight, off my chest. I found her in the laundry room, a separate building really, behind the main house and like in all those made-for-TV melodramas, the words got caught in my throat, refusing to form, refusing to issue forth. When I was finally able to croak out ‘it’s cancer,’ Vicenta started crying and with her sweet, childlike expression could only say: why, why would God take such a good dog? She cried so much over the next week she developed an eye infection that lasted six months.

What happened over the next days is a tangle of memories that I remember only as a single block of time: the last week. An inextricable whirl of last ditch Vet visits, cleaning him up after he vomited, seeing Nick & Leah off to school, Robert’s quiet sadness, deliveries from Dial-A-Curry, friends’ phone calls. I remember a pang of pride when Nicholas, 15 at the time, skipped an important Model United Nations conference to stay close that last weekend. Mom, I just don’t want to break down in the middle of Ang Mo Kio. Unable to climb the stairs or walk more than a few steps, I made a bed for Cab, first in our family room off the kitchen, where I could sleep on the couch next to him and then a few days later, in the kitchen for both of us. This was the hub of activity after all, we could keep an eye on him during the day and he had easy access to the outdoors. He had always slept where he wanted, over the years his preferences changed, from our room, to the kids', to Vicenta’s — but always with someone. His allegiance to us, his loyalty was demonstrated through his unflinching companionship, and this included the sleeping hours. It was inconceivable to me that he sleep alone, especially now when his strength was ebbing away and I knew above all, I couldn’t let him die alone.

We started our lives together on a beautiful winter day in Vermont — a clear sky scrubbed clean and so blue it hurt to look at, six inches of fresh snow on the ground. We were living in Salisbury at the time, between jobs as they say, and thoroughly enjoying our extended home-leave in the States. Our youngest, Leah, was now 4, and it seemed a good time to get a dog. Robert & I always knew we’d have a dog, but with three kids born less than three years apart, we also knew that we’d have to wait until they could participate. That, and the fact that four of my friends were having babies within the next few months set my nesting instinct to Osprey-sized. So I cut an ad out of the Classified section of the newspaper advertising purebred Labs. Though I grew up with a gaggle of lovable mutts, Robert & I were sold on the idea of a Lab, a chocolate female, and a check was dispatched posthaste to reserve a puppy from the upcoming litter. The breeder cautioned against deciding on the dog sight unseen and suggested we let the ‘dog choose us’ which is exactly what happened. He was quite simply ours from the minute we saw him, our beautiful blond boy. After the name was decided, the money paid and the last minute instructions given, we bundled him up and headed to Red Rover, our minivan. There we found Mild Cheddar, Cab’s mother, sitting patiently in the back seat, all ready to go. It took some persuading to get her to, at last remove herself, and we all felt more than a pang of guilt at separating mother and son. Our buoyancy and excitement was tempered by the sight of her ever diminishing form in the rearview mirror, fixed steadfast in the middle of the snow-covered road. If I close my eyes, I can still see her sitting there.

We brought him home to the old Salisbury farmhouse on that adoption day in 1997, all of 10 weeks old. Bounding out of the car, his first official act as a Zulkoski was to jump onto Alex’s lap, and calmly slide down the snowy hill next to the driveway on a saucer sled. Spinning like a top, but planted firmly on her lap, he was, from that point on, along for the ride.

Adoption Day, 1997.  Keith & Pha were there too. — Adoption Day, 1997. Keith & Pha were there too.

Over the next 9 years, the ride was sometimes smooth and sometimes bumpy, but never dull and he committed himself to us completely, trusted us implicitly. I could not leave him alone now, a condition he surely feared more than terminal cancer. So I dragged a mattress used in happier times for sleepovers into the kitchen and slept beside him. Though not fully conscious of it, on some level I knew we were teaching the kids how to handle the death of a pet. This after all is one of the many reasons we decide to have pets, to teach our children the cycle of life and what real responsibility is, and what sacrifice is. Sometime in that last week, it must have been Saturday, he raised his head from my lap and looked at me with such a naked, rational expression that I knew. It said simply — it’s up to you now. Please. He was letting me know it was time, there was no mistaking it. Though we all loved him, I was his closest ally and he was letting me know. What I remember about that expression was the complete surety of his thoughts: I’m supposed to take care of you, not the other way around. Please don’t let me live in a world where I can not take care of all of you. My time here is done.

We could hear distant thunder rolling in, he and I, not an unusual way for dawn to break in Singapore. Throughout his life, Cab tried not to let on that he was scared of thunder, but he always sought out human companionship and sat close. The old I’m-not-scared-but-I-wanted-to-make-sure-you-were-OK dodge. Though walking now was impossible, he raised his head and looked at me to ask, ‘you alright?’ and I shifted enough to sit up in our makeshift bed, propping myself up on the wall behind me. Years ago, I had painted a lavish, detailed tree on this wall at the heart of the house, where the two kitchens met, seven feet high or so to mark the growth of family and friends and of course, at the very bottom, our pets. There was a painted banner woven in through the crown of leaves at the top of the tree that said: ‘Only Goodness Knows How Goodness Grows on Goodwood Hill.’ Sitting there, low and long rumbles filling the grey dawn as night lifted, it wasn’t lost on me sitting on the floor, leaning against our tree, that over my shoulder was written ‘The Great & Powerful Cabot of Caledonia, May 2004.’ I opened the backdoors from the kitchen to the outdoors, old double saloon-style things, to let the cool air in, that last morning. It was still dark outside, but morning was near, the drongos had started their chatter in the tembusu tree in our garden. A crowded City-State located on the equator — the cool, quiet moments in Singapore are precious indeed, and he and I shared that last beautiful dawn in perfect contentment. I stroked his big head, I told him he was a good dog, the best, our hero. I told him he should be proud, that we got the job done — the children were raised, it was OK to go, we are all safe. I snapped one last picture of us, Cab’s mighty head on my legs, the two of us welcoming his final day together. The house, the garden, the traffic on Orchard Road, the wider world — was quiet and still. It was Sunday, and I knew today had to be his last day.

After Robert woke up and I told him I thought today is the day. House call-making veterinarians is one of the many gracious advantages to living in Singapore, so I called Oksana and quite bizarrely, fixed an appointment for her to come to the house and euthanize our Cab. Does two o o’clock work for you? Logistically, a Sunday was not as ideal a day to have your dog put down as you might imagine. The government requires two medical professionals present, so she had to find a colleague willing to help on what must surely be a day off. There was also the matter of the body. Besides the unsettling idea of having Cab’s lifeless body at the house, the tropics is no place for a carcass, no matter how well loved in life. Once it was confirmed the Emergency Vet up the road was open on Sunday and was able to receive his body for cremation, well — our day’s agenda was set and was probably markedly different than those of our friends, enjoying a lazy day poolside or The American Club brunch. We passed the awkward hours, waiting for Oksana. Sundays were always the maid’s day off in Singapore, but Vicenta stuck close, of course she did. We called Alex, our oldest daughter. Now a freshman at Parsons in New York City, we had the 12-hour time difference to contend with and we wanted her to have her chance to say goodbye and tell him how much she loved him. She was at a party in Brooklyn when we called around midnight her time. A good thing too, at least she was surrounded by friends. She was so very far from home, she was all of 18 and she had never suffered a loss like this before.

She had foretold this, Cab dying and her not being there, during a prolonged crying jag that left her spent and shaking; that required a two-hour nap just to recuperate from. It was August in Manhattan (need I go on?) and she and I were moving her into her dorm room at Parsons. The night before we tucked ourselves into our matching full-sized beds at the midtown Marriott, snug in our identical Lilly Pulitzer pajamas, our stomachs full of a fro-yo dinner from 40 Carats at Bloomingdale’s. The room was stacked high with luggage, we watched Pirates of the Caribbean while she made some last minute repairs to her beloved Puffy with the hotel room sewing kit. The next day dawned full of purpose, and somehow we managed to get her moved in, meet her roommate, check on her classes. On our third, (maybe fourth?) foray into the mayhem of super-sized New York City retail, choked with overwrought parents and nervous freshman, and made all the more menacing by the sheer scale of things (two huge floors of Bed, Bath and Beyond?) – I noticed a strange look on her face. Especially strange to Alex, who managed to pull off confident and self-possessed as a toddler. Was it? Did I see? Her bottom lip tremble, just ever so slightly? “Honey, do you need to get out of here?” I said. All she could manage was a nod. “Back to the dorm or back to the Marriott?” She said only ‘Marriott’ and so we abandoned our cart full of carefully considered 3m products, under bed storage and blue tack and put ourselves into a taxi headed uptown. I probably chattered some inane nonsense to fill those 40 blocks, but she said not a word. We got upstairs, she crawled in bed and then… it started.

She cried and cried, and when crying wasn’t enough, she sobbed. I held her close and let her exorcize all those demons, and through the tears came a deluge of angst: what if I don’t like it? Is my roommate going to be OK? Did I make the right decision? What if I don’t like New York? Will I be all right so far from home? And then — what if Cab dies and I’m not there? All her other concerns seemed so general and by the book, this last was so specific and one I hadn’t considered. I remember thinking only: that’s my girl. I knew she’d be OK, that this crying jag was a normal response to an overwhelming day and enormity of all that lay ahead. I remember feeling so grateful to be there, to hold her when she needed holding, to send her off to school with this memory in her back pocket. Somewhere beyond the gratitude, was pride and the quiet satisfaction of knowing that at least in this one thing we prevailed as parents — our daughter wasn’t just thinking of herself, she understood the responsibility that comes with owning a pet, that easing them out of this world was one of our most important jobs as pet owners.

And so we moved our Cab on his bed, litter-style, the few feet out of the kitchen onto the tiled, covered walkway that separates the main house from Vicenta’s; a favorite place for him. From this vantage point he could he could see the garden, feel the breeze and smell all that was going on. Gus, our little Westie, stayed very close as we all took turns and said our goodbyes. I explained to Leah and Nick that I was going to stay with him until he died, but whatever they wanted to do was fine. There was no right, there was no wrong. Oksana and her assistant arrived, and after a few perfunctory questions and preparations, she administered the lethal dose. I remember it looked like anti-freeze and it reminded me of that cold and bright February day, so long ago and far away, when he came home with us. I positioned myself so that he could look directly at me, without straining. I stroked his lovely face, and his gaze never faltered I watched the life fade away from those big brown eyes, turning slightly opaque, the way ice forms a skim over a pond. Then all was at last, still.

Together Nick and Leah sat on the grand staircase at Goodwood Hill, side by side, his arm around her. With her head on his shoulder, they sobbed. They wept together, Nick muttering oh shit over and over again. Cursing was definitely not encouraged at our house, and if I told the kids anything about the use of four letter words, it was to use them sparingly so as not to dilute their power for when you really need them. This was definitely one of those times. The pain we were feeling could only be described as heartbreak. We were gutted, hollowed out, left wasted — by his absence. Cab, he gave us much. But he took, too. With his quiet passing, so went childhood. No debate, no fanfare, no swirling cloud of fairy dust above our heads to mark its hasty retreat. In that instant we all grew up, grew wiser, lost some of the luster of innocence. True heart break, the kind that leaves you shallow-breathed and bent over, matures its survivors. And so, like the best dogs — he enriched our lives, made us better people, he gave us joy and he gave us sorrow and he taught us much.

After Oksana confirmed he was no longer breathing, that his heart had stopped we covered him up with a blanket and Gus, always happy in his role as the Beta dog, jumped up and snuggled in, very close next to Cab’s still body. It was sweet and it was sad. We gave Gus a few minutes, said our goodbyes and thanks to Oksana and then braced ourselves for the gruesome job ahead. With much effort (she had warned us about ‘dead weight’ and how cumbersome a dead body could be) we loaded him into the back of our little SUV, which thankfully had a hatchback. Just up Stevens Road is the emergency vet, complete with animal crematorium, at most a 10 minute drive. I had called ahead, to make sure they could accept his body on a Sunday, and like many phone calls in Singapore — the social, cultural and language barriers proved almost too much.

Phone ringing...

“Hah-lo”

Thinking I might have the wrong number. “Hello, is this Mount Pleasant Animal Hospital?”

“Heh?”

Me, hyper-annunciating, a skill perfected over 18 years: “Is – this – Mount - Pleasant - Animal - Hospital?” For who wants to discuss the cremation of their dog with the unfortunate person at the wrong end of a misdialed number?

“Ya, ya, ya. What you want?”

“I’d like to bring in my deceased pet for cremation”

“Heh?”

Oh God, please. Please don’t make me say it again. “Our dog has died and we’d like him cremated, can we bring him in?” Explaining that I was asking a hypothetical question seemed beyond the scope of this conversation.

“You want us put your dog down?”

“No, no, the Vet will do that here at the house, we need to have him cremated afterward, can we bring his body in today?”

Then, always, regardless of what specific question you ask, Singaporean businesses will tell you the cost: “Group Cremation, $200 dollars. Private Cremation, $300. How big your dog?”

“OK, but can we bring him in today? He’s big…”

“You have appointment?”

“Appointment? (who the hell schedules that?)”

“Ya, ya, ya. You have appointment or you do over-counter service” she explained, as if ‘over counter’ was a perfect, obvious descriptor for this service they were providing. And maybe for a hamster or house cat it would be, a box once used for new shoes now literally being passed ‘over the counter,’ but nothing about our situation could be interpreted as 'a medication sold directly to the consumer without a doctor’s prescription'. And as usual, I was confused.

“Well, I have no appointment, so I guess we want over-the-counter service. What is over-the-counter service exactly?” Exasperated by the ignorant American lady: “It means you have no appointment.”

And on it went. After a few more painful minutes of one of the most bizarre phone calls I ever hope to have, I felt confident they could indeed do the grisly job. We arrived at the Emergency Vet, the lobby bustling with families and pets on this Sunday, and I approached the reception desk and asked them if perhaps there was a back door we could use. “No, back door, bring body this way” she gestured toward the front door.

“Are you seriously telling me that you’d like the four of us to carry 100 lbs of dead dog through this lobby, past all these children”? Turns out there was a back door. She explained the fee structure again, and what exactly a ‘group cremation’ entailed: “we’ll fill up the space, so depending on the size of your pet we add in a cat, maybe a couple of birds…” We opted for a private cremation, and hopefully, if all went according to plan, he was cremated with a fresh rawhide, his favorite rag bone, a piece of milk bread and the last newspaper he carried into the house. I cancelled our subscription to the Straits Times the very next day.

The last line of my journal entry for March 22nd, 2009: God himself must think we are very special people, to send us such a dog.