Nigel and The Rainbow Bridge
On Sunday, Kaye texted, telling me about a dog with a broken leg on Gunn Road in Robertson County. I’ve known Kaye for almost five years. She’s forty-something with a quiet sense of humor and soft heart. She had named the dog Nigel.
Kaye had tried to catch Nigel, but he wouldn’t come near her. After her last failed attempt, she asked, “So do I just pretend I never saw him?”
It took me two days to get to Gunn Road. I had a lot on my plate, and to be honest, I rationalized there wasn’t much I could do for a dog with a busted leg that wouldn’t come near a human. Finally, on Wednesday morning, Mason and I drove through countryside filled with acres of grazing or resting cattle, searching for Nigel, a black mutt that might have gotten hit by a car or attacked by a pack of coyotes.
A cold front had moved in the night before and the drizzling sky was slate gray, buzzards gliding over farmland.
Kaye’s directions had been spot on, and it didn’t take us long to find him, sitting against a garage, resting in a mound of leaves. At first, from afar, when I saw a medium-sized, furry dog with a face like a teddy bear, I thought he was too cute to be sick or ignored, but the closer we got, the easier it was to see something was severely wrong.
Mason approached the dog, calm and steady. Nigel stood up, wobbled, but couldn’t make it more than a few feet. My husband scooped him up as easily as an empty bucket, carrying him without an ounce of effort. On top of everything, he was emaciated. He’d been on the street for a long, long time.
As we settled him in the backseat, I saw the dog’s busted limb, a gash so deep the bone and muscle were clear as day, pus oozing out the sides. Everywhere, his hair was clotted with blood, mud, and shit. Nigel’s black eyes were sunken in his skull, like he was trying not to see anything anymore, like he was done trying to live.
**
Thirty minutes later, Nigel lay on the stainless steel table at the vet’s office. Donna, ICHBA’s head honcho, had called ahead, warning them we were bringing in a beat-up dog found on the roadside.
For a few ridiculous, hopeful moments, I texted Kaye, asking if she would foster him, thinking that he had a chance of recovery. That he’d get to smell something besides that metal table. That he’d get to experience something besides suffering.
But the infection was too deep. He was too dehydrated. Even if we tried to save him, his front right leg, from paw to shoulder, would have to be amputated, and the chance of Nigel surviving surgery was slim.
Euthanizing him was the humane decision.
Mason and I stayed with him until the end, touching him, loving him. I’m not a religious person, but right before Nigel died, I bent close and whispered in his fluffy, matted ear that one day I’d see him on The Rainbow Bridge.
