Dog’s Death – A Poem

Dog’s Death

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, “Good dog!
Good dog!”

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest’s bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet’s, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.

John Updike, POETSPEAK
In Their Work, About Their Work (A Selection by Paul B. Janeczko)

Muttshack Foundation for Animal Rescue
The Muttshack Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes the creation of MuttShack foster homes for abandoned and abused animals.

Muttshackers rescue and nurture animals in their homes where they rehabilitate, socialize, spay and neuter and find them new quality forever homes.

The Muttshack Foundation’s target is to get millions of animals off the streets and stop killings of healthy animals in overcrowded shelters. http://www.muttshack.org/