Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: I Cried When Springer Looked Up at Me
By Milt Gross
May 14, 2007 - 8:01:12 AM

Having received no kitty tales from either kitties or their ownees, I feel it time to go to the dogs.

Which I did for many years, having owned and been pleased and frustrated by Labrador Retrievers, retriever-setter combinations, and one genuinely crazy Irish Setter who tore up the living room carpet behind the Christmas tree to have her litter of pups. This setter was so lacking in the mental department I had to wipe away the pups’ birth material to keep them alive. We never threw her a Mother’s Day party.

Springer, a lab-setter combination, I think was my favorite, although looking back on them all makes that a really hard call. She never rescued me from being "turned around" -- Maine bird hunters don’t actually get lost -- as did Brad. Nor did she swim a lake to come home after being dognapped, as did Candy, or prevent the kids from drowning in another lake, as Brad had done.

She did leap through a window, which is how we came to meet her or even know she lived at the house we had just leased. It turned out the landlady couldn’t take both her Saint Bernard and this lab-setter combination with her to her new home in Portland, so she left Springer at her house when we leased it. A nice house warming gift.

We got out of our car to examine our new home and first noticed a pane of glass missing from the front door. Then through that space where a pane should have been flew Springer -- right into our hearts.

Springer was young enough to fly then, and she stayed with us until old age caught up with her on the steep back slope of Moody Mountain on the Appalachian Trail. Before that she biked with us, canoed with us, sort-of hunted with me since I never really trained her, cross-country skied with me, gardened with me, hiked with us -- mistaken by one family as a black bear when she was charging full speed down a trail in the Maine part of the White Mountain National Forest.

"A bear, a bear!" I heard one of them scream.

I knew the bear’s name would be Springer, and sure enough in a few minutes she came panting happily back up the trail to tell us of her ventures in meeting a family of screaming hikers. We met the family too a few minutes later but didn’t have the heart to tell them their bear was a dog -- black to be certain, but nonetheless a dog.

Hunting partridge with her pretty much guaranteed a longer life for the noisy, speedy bird that always gave me a pretty fair imitation of a heart attack as it thundered away from its hiding place. To Springer, hunting didn’t mean wasting your time standing around pointing to where she could smell a bird. It was much more exciting to charge into the area beneath the tree and watch as Mr. P took off. Dad -- that is, I -- rarely even got a shot off, and when he did what primarily occurred was a spruce having some of its needles ruffled or removed.

Like all dogs, Springer was great in the water. As I beached the canoe, she would leap for shore, only to miss the shore and splash around in the shallow water instead. Then as I walked forward in the canoe and leaned down to take hold of the gunwales to keep my balance as I reached ahead to step onto the dry shore, she would shake. I think that shaking is on page 75 of the Doggie’s Manual for Handling Owners. I think that because I never had a dog which didn’t engage in that sport.

So early in my dogging years I learned to never wear a suit and tie while canoeing.

Springer also liked working at the gas station. On my way home one afternoon, I stopped there for gas, went inside to pay for it, got back in the car, and continued home. A mile later I realized Springer was missing. I drove back, and there she was, sitting by the gas pump waiting for me.

Springer’s cross-country skiing style would provide me with a winter’s worth of heart stoppers. She typically trotted or cantered -- walked if I was on level ground and out of shape at the beginning of the season -- in front of me. No, now I remember. In front was saved for downhills. The rest of the time she would use my trail to make life easier for her dainty paws.

But downhill skiing really got her excited, so as I careened basically out of control down a steep hill while following a snowmobile trail, she galloped happily ahead of me -- just ahead and right in the track and right where I would be in about two tenths of a second. Her skill at this was superb. Just as I was about to run her through with the fronts of the skis, she would step off the trail, look at me, wag her tail, and ask if I was having as much fun as was she.

It’s always fun breaking out into a cold sweat with your heart in your throat as you contemplate driving your skis through your loving pet.

She moved much slower up that Moody Mountain section of trail. It was a hot day and about mid afternoon when we started up the semi-open cliff. And that’s where she just lay down.

Because this was a trail-maintenance trip, I and three of my four kids were toting tools as well as the usual packs. We put everything down and waited, but Springer just lay there, looking for us to do something. She was 12, and we knew she had suffered some kind of attack. We made plans to start back to the car some two miles down the trail.

We first created a kind of carrier out of a pack frame, removing the pack and placing her on it. One of the kids held her on, but she still rolled off once and nearly fell down the cliff. So, we resorted to Dad’s toting Springer across his shoulders for 100 feet or so, then lying her on the ground and going back to help carry the equipment. The trail down also involved some "up" which slowed things down considerably.

At dusk we came down a hill to a brook, still a mile from the car.

"This is where we camp, kids," Dad announced.

"I’m not sleeping here in the dark," said Scott, "I’m going down to the car."

"Go ahead," I responded. "We’ll see you there in the morning."

We all slept on the trail by the brook.

But about 15 yards before the brook, I laid Springer on the ground. She got up, walked happily down to the brook, lay in it, and drank awhile. The next day we all -- including Springer -- walked the rest of the way to the car.

But she soon became lethargic and lay around the house, and in another year she lost the use of her legs.

Heart breaking, I took her to the vet to be "put to sleep." The vet invited me to stay with her for the procedure. He gave her an injection to numb the pain and then the fatal shot. I was holding Springer gently, supporting her a bit, when she turned and looked up at me. Was it love? Was it the realization of what was happening to her? Was she saying, "Goodbye, Dad?" Was it surprise, not understanding and looking to Dad for reassurance? I’ll never know.

Then she collapsed and died. I cried, and promised myself I would never have another pet "put to sleep."

I’ve had a dog die at my bedside, a cat die on my chest while I held her, and another kitty die three feet from me on the sofa while I wrote. Springer’s death was the most painful. As I write this, I see her in my memory racing down those snowy trails, scaring those partridge out of their wits, but mostly I see her looking up at me at the moment of her death.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@earthlink.net.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2007