WE PUT OUR Australian herder, Sadie, down recently after she asked us to kindly do so. For 17-plus years, as I wrote here last February, she’d been a 24/7 worker, always tending to her humans (cattle being hard to come by in the suburbs). Then one day, she lay down on her dog bed, let her eyes fog over, and waited for us to get the message.
It took us a week, and then we took her to the vet. “Some owners wait too long, some not long enough,” he said, examining her. “This is perfect. She’s ready.” Yet another thing Sadie got exactly right and made easy for us.
In the car, our younger dog, Steph, watched Sadie go in and kept her eyes on the vet’s office door,…