by Joe Couture
Jon never learned how old Iona was. The eleven years they spent together ended when Jon was forty. Her death came slowly, and they both sensed it. The first sign came when Iona failed to keep pace with Jon during their morning runs—that started when Jon was just thirty-six. Shortly after, the hairs on her muzzle turned white. By the time Jon was thirty-eight, her entire face had whitened, and her bright blue eyes became cloudy with blindness. Then, one morning, Jon awoke to find Iona panting weakly beside him and unable to stand. Jon drove her to the doctor’s office, but the doctor assured him there was nothing to be done.
“She’s just old,” the man said, “it’s her time.”
Jon couldn’t accept the suggestion behind the doctor’s sympathetic smile. Everyone was so quick to give up on Iona, who was still breathing, thinking, wanting and loving. He lifted her gently from the doctor’s cold steel table, where she was left to lie in discomfort, as the matter of her life was discussed with a candour that claimed she had simply worn out, like an old appliance.
The doctor noticed Jon’s flowing tears and shuddering breaths and felt the need to offer some reassurance. “She’s a very lucky dog, Jon. I’ve never met a better pet owner. You should be proud.”
Jon said nothing. Instead, he looked into the empty eyes that once glimmered at his sight; the eyes that told her to smile, Jon was looking; the eyes that he watched move beneath her three sets of eyelids, night after night, as they spun circles in dreams while her forepaws gave chase. As he slowly carried his eighty-pound lover back to their car, he knew what he had to do.
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