6 - Zack Rabold - With no regrets

One summer day in 2014 everything was going great. My dad has just taken my sister Aly and I for milkshakes and we were about to watch a movie after we finished chores. As my sister was vacuuming, our oldest dog of two, Dutch, started to have a serious coughing fit. Aly took him outside believing he just had to throw up, so we went back to normal business while she took care of him for a moment. A minute or two later she came back saying he hasn’t stopped coughing. I started to panic and my dad assured me it was alright, that he just ate something that got stuck so he went outside to help. I watched through the back door and my dad’s face started to change from curiousness to worry, which is when I knew something was actually wrong because my dad was not one to get visibly panicked. I walked outside and he explained to us he doesn’t know what’s wrong. Dutch continued to cough and throw up and now blood was starting to come out with it. We were all scared. My dad went around the corner of the house to call my mom to ask if she could come home from work. While we waited for her we sat around Dutch who had finally stopped throwing up. I could tell he wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t know what to do. Or what to say. Or even what to feel. I’d never dealt with anything like this before. We took him to the vet and due to internal bleeding we had to put him down. I didn’t exactly understand death yet but I immediately felt regret. I should have played with him more, I could have taken him on more walks. All the things I did wrong. Or at least what I thought I did wrong. The guilt kept building when I realized I’d never get to make all those things up to him. I would never get to repay the dog that would make sure to stand directly under me or my sister whenever we would climb a tree or anything else just so he could break our fall if we slipped and let go, or the dog who would bark at our younger dog if he ever got too rough with us. Or even the dog who would always stand in front of us whenever someone he didn’t recognize knocked on the door. I couldn’t protect the dog who had protected me for years. But as the days went on and the grieving took its course I started to understand a little more about death. It was unpredictable. No pattern or warning. It’s just sudden. And from then I knew that I wanted every relationship I had with a parent, a friend, a pet, and car, and anything that has any emotional value to me to have no regrets. I can’t expect myself to be perfect because if I do I’ll never be satisfied, but I want to always know that I did my best. I treated them as good as possible so that when it ends whether it's me or them that has to leave, I can look back and appreciate my time with them.