I got Sasha when I was 9, and I don’t really think I knew what I was getting into. I was a kid, and so the whole a-dog-is-a-responsibility thing hadn’t fully clicked in my mind. We went to my dad’s friend’s home; he was a breeder (I think) and made his own dog food. There were 8 puppies in the litter, Sasha was the prettiest. I don’t know where the name Sasha came from, but it felt right.
Sasha loved people. Sasha’s spot was just outside of the back door; she wanted to be able to watch us through the glass. When people would come over, she’d want to be inside to say hi. When we didn’t let her in, she’d run and bodyslam the door to let us know that she really wanted to come inside. The door never broke, thankfully.
She’d escape the backyard and run around — we had to be careful about locking the garage door and making sure there weren’t any holes in the fence, else she’d run away. At least the block knew whose dog she was.
Sasha loved food, and she did not eat like other dogs. She convinced my mom to make her multiple eggs every morning for breakfast, along with a slice of American cheese. She was a Gujurati dog, and had her fair share of roti and chicken curry. When we’d grill out, she was out there with us, and her energy level showed how excited she was to eat the food that she knew she’d inevitably get. This was not always the case. When we first got her, she was perfectly content with dry dog food, and I tried teaching her to eat different colors of dog food, since I didn’t yet know that dogs saw a muted color space.
Sasha loved car rides. She’d stick her face out of the window to sample all of the sights and smells in the air; my car was hers. To the very last day, she looked forward to car rides.
I left for college in the middle of Sasha’s life, and I was no longer with her on a daily basis. I would come home to visit during breaks, but I wouldn’t know her routine. I knew that she was going to go eventually, especially at her age - she was prone to slips and falls and couldn’t get up by herself. She was a bit overweight for most of her life and had a fatty mass on her rear left leg. I knew it was coming, but she was still my dog.
I was visiting my girlfriend in San Francisco one weekend, and had issues with connecting my phone to the cell network. When I got it fixed Sunday morning, I saw a text from the day prior that my mom had sent - Sasha would be put down that week on Friday. At the time, I felt sad, but not broken or destroyed. I didn’t cry. I knew that this was coming, I hadn’t lived with her daily for six and a half years, and I trusted my parents to make the right decision on when it was time.
The day before, my friend told me that she had lost her dog. That night, my dad and I grilled out for her. She got a filet and a good chunk of my dad’s ribeye. We raised a glass of wine to her life, and took her on a nice long walk. It was cold, which made her feel better. I knew it was my last night with her, but it hadn’t fully hit yet.
At work the next day, I went on a walk with the same friend, and told her that I felt like I saw the train coming, but couldn’t tell if I was on the tracks or at the station. The appointment was at 3. I left work around 1:15, picked up a double-meat hamburger at my mom’s request (just bread and meat), and fed her piece by piece. She scarfed it down happily. Sasha, my mom, and I drove over to our old neighborhood and I let her walk around - she seemed happy and excited to be in her old stomping grounds, where she spent fourteen years of her life before moving elsewhere. I was fine, emotionally.
In the vet clinic, I weighed her on the scale. 49.5 pounds, down 3 or 4 in the past month. I watched as they put an IV tube in. That was when I realized that I was very, very much on the tracks, and I broke down crying next to my mom. She comforted me as she did the same. The vets gave us time to say our last goodbyes to her, and I gave her two kisses.
We called them back in, and I watched as the final two liquids went through the tube. The first was white, and I watched my dog fall asleep. The second was a pinkish-reddish color, and I knew from the moment I saw it that it was the tube of death. I ugly cried as I watched 5 mL of liquid death slowly flow into her. Afterwards, my dad gave her her last command: Go Play!
