The Dearly Departed Wash Up

Rusty was dead. He was quite thoroughly and completely dead, and his passage to the hereafter appeared to have been marred by a certain amount of thrashing about and the loss of many unpleasant bodily fluids. He was the first thing that I noticed upon my arrival to work that morning.

Ugh.

After a year at the family kennel I had dropped out of high school in order to concentrate on building the premier pet care establishment in the tri-state area.  That didn’t take very long, and so I briefly tried college, driving home on weekends to work in the kennel.  Romantic disaster derailed my academic plan by the middle of spring semester, and from the depths of my heartbreak rose a vision.  Sparkling water, dramatic gorges, beautiful hippies frolicking on the lakeshore, brilliant intellectuals waving from the ivory towers of Cornell.  Ithaca!  I disappeared from college, hitched a trailer to my rusty green pickup truck, and went to seek my fortune.

The job market in Utopia was a little tight, and, strangely, the demand for double-dropouts-hoping-to-reinvent-themselves was not great.  Nevertheless I managed to land a job in a veterinary hospital not far from my lakeshore cabin apartment.  I worked from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 PM, which left plenty of time to sit on a discarded sofa outside the cabin with my dog, Amiga, contemplating the sunset and counting the pennies I had left after buying groceries and cheap beer.

Certain facets of my job as a veterinary kennelhand and technician were not very glamorous. Okay, maybe none of them were glamorous, but I enjoyed my work most of the time. This particular morning, not so much. I took care of the furry residents who were still in possession of their heartbeats, keeping busy until the vet could arrive and check out the Rusty situation. Cats purred, rambunctious terriers barked, and the ancient German Shepherd hobbled on three legs to the exercise run.

I had finished the basics and was getting ready to give the first water-therapy session to a spinal surgery patient when the vet stuck his head into the therapy room. “Ummmm…” he said, seeming to be searching for the right words.

That was unlike him, so I stopped what I was doing. “Yes?”

 “Ummm…Rusty needs a bath.”

I gave him a minute to see the error of his ways. He was young. Perhaps he’d ingested some recreational substance a bit too late last night. Seconds ticked by, and he wasn’t taking it back. “Alan,” I said, my voice calm and patient, “Rusty is dead.”

He shuffled more fully into the room and looked down at his shoes. “Yeah, I know. His owner wants to pick him up so that they can bury him in the back yard. We can’t send him out like this.”

No, of course not. I knew that. I could not imagine how to begin such a grisly task, though, so I just stared at him. I could see Rusty’s tail and left hind leg from there, deathly still, drenched in vomit, feces, and blood. I thought about the idea that there is a parallel universe for each person, and somewhere perhaps another version of me was lounging on the deck of a cruise ship headed for Havana. Was there a way to choose that reality, like a switch on a railroad track?  I didn’t know how not to imagine how Rusty’s last minutes had felt, and how it would be to be alone when everything is so horribly wrong.

“I’ll help you get him into the tub,” Alan said, and slipped on a rubber apron. We wrestled Rusty, blessedly not terribly stiff, yet, out of his stainless steel cage and onto a metal rack in the tub. Alan disappeared at that point, and I set about bathing the ex-dog.

I talked to Rusty as I worked, at first, trying to keep my revulsion under control. “There are advantages to this method, you know,” I said. “When you were alive, you were pretty much of a handful. Manners were not your long suit. Now, you’re a dream! Left paw up! There, see? It’s up! No resistance at all. Left paw down! Good dog. The only thing I can’t get you to do is roll over. Ready?” I flipped him over on the rack, the unnatural flaccidness simultaneously nauseating and amusing. “Next, leaping through flaming hoops! The Amazing Rusty and his world-famous handler will be touring Europe this spring. Get your tickets early, before the star begins to smell!”

“Umm…how’s it going?” asked Alan, who had reappeared while I was goofing around with the decedent. “Shall I bring you the dryer?”

The dryer? I not only had to wash the thing, I had to dry it? Can I interest you in a cut-‘n-curl? A permanent wave? A manicure? I bit my tongue, lest Alan get any new ideas. “Sure, that would be great.”

Drying him was actually easier than drying the average living dog. I wondered briefly whether there were canine funeral homes, and whether I might consider working in one. I’d never get bitten, never be barked at with the incessant fervor of a West Highland Terrier. It was something to think about. I directed the nozzle at his right ear, and the hair separated in a swirly pattern. “This is not so bad,” I admitted to Rusty, who still had no comment.

When I was finished, the dog was a work of art. No Springer Spaniel in the Westminster Dog Show had ever looked better. His expression was somewhat lackluster, and he was, overall, a tiny bit lethargic, but he looked like a million bucks.

Alan came in with a garbage bag. “Let’s bag him up; they’ll be here in a few minutes.”

I was indignant. “You had me slaving over a hot bathtub and a vomit-soaked dead dog, making him beautiful, and now we’re putting him in a trash bag?”

Alan shook his head and laughed, thinking that I was kidding. I was not kidding, but so be it. I helped to put my cosmetological masterpiece into a trash bag. When his owners arrived, tearful but resolute, Alan carried Rusty out to their car. I did wonder how he felt, the doctor in charge, telling a family that their beloved pet would never bound to greet them at the door again.  People hope that vets, like doctors, can work miracles, and it must be hard to be reminded that skill and knowledge aren’t always enough.

But my job required no miracles, just bleach. I looked over at the pen in which Rusty’s short life had ended, rolled up my sleeves, and got back to work.