**A Farewell Tree Above Emerald Lake**
Twelve years, two months, and these last three weeks, when I already knew something was ending, even though I hadn't said it out loud.
My name is Barbara, I'm sixty-one, I've lived in Aspen for thirty years, and my dog Denali — a Great Pyrenees, white as fresh snow on the mountain he's named for — is lying beside me now on a blanket in the back of my station wagon. I bought that car seven years ago for exactly this reason: enough room to drive him up into the hills.
It started last Thursday. My downstairs neighbor, Carol, knocked on my door at ten-thirty at night because she could hear Denali through the wall. He wasn't whimpering — he was howling. The whole hallway heard it. The people upstairs had some weather program going on their TV, and I was sitting on the kitchen floor trying to arrange him in a position that would give him some relief. There wasn't one. I kept shifting him from side to side until three in the morning, when I fell asleep with my hand on his paw, my back against the cabinet under the sink.
The vet, Dr. Ramirez at the clinic on Main Street, told me straight, no sugarcoating, when I showed up Friday morning with a cup of coffee I never got around to drinking. Cancer in the spine, the tumor had been growing for months, and the pain medication wasn't cutting it anymore. He asked if I wanted to try a stronger dose or if I'd rather let him go. I said I needed to think about it. He said he understood, and that it didn't have to be today.
But I knew it had to be this week. I'd seen the way Denali looked at his food bowl and didn't come. The way he tried to stand on his back legs and toppled sideways. The way he apologized to me with his eyes for not being able to run alongside my bike anymore, the way he used to when I'd take him all the way out to the reservoir trail.
I decided on Sunday. I scheduled the appointment for Monday, nine in the morning, with Dr. Ramirez, at home, not the clinic — he said he'd come to us so Denali could go on his own blanket, inside walls he knew. But before that, I decided we'd have one more day. One last trip.
We drove up to Maroon Lake. I got up at five to beat the crowds — by August, tourists can fill that parking lot before eight in the morning. On the way I stopped at a bakery on Main Street, the same one where I always used to get him a piece of turkey for our walks. He only ate half of it. I left the rest for the magpies circling the picnic tables near the trailhead.
We didn't walk the whole loop — that was out of the question. I parked closer than usual and carried him the last hundred yards so he could see the water. I sat with him on a boulder, his head resting against my knee, and I looked out at that mirror of a lake ringed by the Maroon Bells, thinking about all the times he used to race ahead of me, all the times I'd had to call him back so he wouldn't jump into that ice-cold water. This time he didn't move at all. He just breathed, heavy but steady, his nose pressed into the sleeve of my jacket.
On the way home I stopped at the gas station on Highway 82, and at the diner next to it I bought him an order of fries — I knew I shouldn't, but it didn't matter anymore. He ate three of them. The rest went in the trash.
Monday morning Dr. Ramirez arrived on time, carrying a black bag with everything he needed. He sat down on the floor next to Denali, the way I had, unhurried, even though I knew he had two more house calls scheduled that day. He asked if I was ready. I said no, but that it didn't matter.
I held his paw and talked into his ear, told him he was the best dog I'd ever had, that I remembered the day I brought him home as a puppy from a breeder outside Carbondale, when he weighed three pounds and fit inside the sleeve of my sweater. I felt his breathing slow, then go quiet, then stop. Dr. Ramirez said softly that he was gone, and stepped into the kitchen to give me a few minutes alone.
I left him there, on the blanket, for another hour. Then I called the pet crematorium off Highway 82 — they handled everything by evening, and the urn would be ready in three days.
Today, Tuesday, I went to see a lawyer downtown and changed my will. Four thousand dollars that I'd been saving for his continued treatment — money I'd set aside for six months, even selling the old mountain bike that had been sitting in my garage — I signed over to the animal shelter out on Highway 133. I signed the paperwork, the notary stamped it, and I walked out with a copy of the document in an envelope and drove straight to the shelter.
The shelter director, Diane, opened the gate for me and asked what had happened. I handed her the envelope and told her it was for the dogs still waiting. That mine didn't need anything anymore, but these ones needed everything.
In kennel number seven, a young shepherd mix was barking — maybe a year old, black and tan, one ear standing up and the other folded over. Diane told me nobody wanted him yet, too big for an apartment, too much energy for older folks.
I asked for a leash.
