Goodnight, Wabi Sabi
A good dog, a good death, and the beauty of imperfection
When Wabi came to us in 2013, he was named Austin—a four-month-old puppy with three legs. His right hind leg had been amputated the month before after an accident we never learned the nature of.
We were looking for a dog who could run and hike with us, who could help stitch together our new makeshift family. My then-partner, now-husband Quinton was moving in with me, bringing along his two kids (13 and 15) on the part-time basis of his custody arrangement. It was a fraught undertaking. We thought a puppy would help. We were right.
Austin seemed perfect — low-maintenance on the grooming front, energetic, affectionate. But that missing leg worried us. The vet at the Humane Society assured us that it wouldn’t impede him from walking, hiking, or running, though he’d probably never be able to swim.
We brought him into the little visiting room at the Humane Society and he got so excited he peed on the floor, his tail wagging so hard his whole rear end swiveled on his one back leg. His skull was a giant knuckle sporting floppy velvet ears—still the most satisfying dog head I’ve ever stroked, so sturdy and absurd. It was a love match. We brought him home and named him Wabi, short for Wabi Sabi, the Japanese principle of the beauty of imperfection.
Everywhere we went, people asked us how he lost the leg, and we enjoyed coming up with replies: bar fight; meteor strike; shark attack. When he was 14, my stepson Gabe declared that we should tell people we’d had Wabi’s leg removed on purpose so we could get a better view of his penis.
However the leg was lost, it never slowed him down. He’d run as long and hard as we’d let him. We’d do five-mile loops from our house, Wabi chugging along at the end of his leash all the way, his one hind leg pumping like a pogo stick. In the mornings, we’d sing together, me making up nonsense lyrics, Wabi howling along. Then he’d perch his stump on the arm of my easy chair and nestle his knuckle skull against my heart.
Anytime I cooked asparagus, he’d come running when he heard me snap off the woody ends. They were his favorite treat, right up until the end. He’d eat a whole bunch’s worth, delicately taking one piece from my hand at a time.
A few years ago, our city had a parade as part of its summer festival. We were on one end of the route and my pregnant sister and her husband were camped out at the other. The sidewalks were so crowded, the only way to walk toward them was down the street. So Q, Wabi, and I joined the tail end of the parade. People went crazy, clapping and cheering for the three-legged dog. “This is the best part of the parade so far!” one lady yelled. “What an amazing dog!” shouted another. Wabi soaked it up: the court jester, the grand marshall, the mascot of our humble town. He was used to strangers adoring him. It happened all the time.
Two years ago, Q and I were on vacation in Florida when we got a call from Wabi’s dogsitter. He had fallen down her stairs and dislocated the hip of his only back leg. It was bad. The vet pushed the joint back into place, but he’d have to stay off his leg for a few days while the joint healed in a sling. We flew home early and picked him up, and spent the next few days supporting his rear end with a towel anytime he needed to move or go outside.
When the sling came off, his foot was curled under, and he still wasn’t putting any weight on it. The vet worried that there’d been too much nerve damage, and he may never be able to use it again—we’d know within the next day or two. We knew if the leg didn’t come back, we’d have to say goodbye. We cried and bargained with the universe: Let it heal, give us just one or two more years and we’ll be content, we swear. But it wasn’t looking good.
A friend called to commiserate and I took the call upstairs. Through tears, I told him we were wrapping our heads around having to let Wabi go. Then I heard something behind me. I turned to find Wabi standing in the doorway, looking up at me, triumphant. He’d just come up the stairs by himself. The leg was working. His ferocious life force wired those nerves back together out of sheer tenacity and heart. Within weeks, we were walking miles together again, his fans in the neighborhood pulling over to greet him.
This past January, Q, Wabi, and I traveled to Las Cruces, New Mexico—Wabi’s fifth or sixth visit to the state. We hiked rocky desert trails and sat on brewpub patios in the warm winter sun. At White Sands National Park, Wabi ran up a pristine dune into Quinton’s waiting arms, then threw himself down to writhe with joy in the otherworldly sand. It didn’t feel then like borrowed time, but it was, the tumor almost certainly already growing within his mighty ribs.
The lung cancer diagnosis came in May, a year and a half after his fall when we’d bargained to keep him with us just a little while longer. He’d been coughing for weeks, and a round of antibiotics hadn’t helped. An x-ray at the emergency vet revealed a mass in his lungs. There was no more bargaining. The deferred bill had come due.
Steroids bought us a final week, during which he often, confoundingly, seemed just fine. But just when we’d start to question the severity of his situation, he’d go into a long stretch of wheezing and coughing, laboring to breathe while lying on his side, and we knew we had to call it before his suffering got worse.
We said goodbye on a perfect summer morning in June. We took him to our favorite park, the scene of countless walks over the past ten years. He couldn’t make it very far, so we laid a blanket in the grass by the lake, and sat for an hour, just being, listening to the hum of summer life in the tall grasses, the birds and breezes in the oaks. When our appointment time drew near, we went back home, fed him all his favorite treats, and waited for the vet to come.
He went with his head in my lap in our backyard, beneath his favorite lilac tree. Sometimes in the summer, he’d plop himself right there and watch the sunset—one of the only things that would get him to voluntarily move more than a few feet from wherever we were sitting. He so hated being alone. Now he doesn’t ever have to be again.
His ashes will stay there, beneath the tree. It will bloom again. Presumably, by then we’ll have stopped looking for him every time we open the front door, every time we wake up, every time an asparagus spear snaps and there’s no eager click of nails on the kitchen floor. But the looking itself—and the emptiness that inspires it—is a testament to what we’ve lost, and a sort of harrowing and useful practice for all the other inevitable losses to come.
Among the many gifts our pets bestow, this may be one of the most valuable: the reminder that, as Kathryn Shultz writes in her stunning essay on loss, “We are here to keep watch, not to keep.” The love of a dog isn’t less for being brief. Somehow it’s concentrated, that arc from puppy to old man so swift, seven human years’ worth of love in every day. We give each other what we can, while we can. Then we open our palms—grateful, bereft, transformed—and we let go.
Such a touching story of love, friendship and loss. He will be in our hearts forever.
Such a beautifully written tribute to Wabi, with very beautiful photos. Thank you for this.