9-8-25

Guapo was referred to by nearly everyone who ever met him as my shadow or sometimes my bodyguard, and either of those titles would have stood up in a court of law, since I could scarcely make it to the bathroom without hearing him whimpering outside the door, wanting to gain access just to make sure I was safe and ‘everything was coming out okay.’ And while he wasn’t exactly a youngster – Dr. Suzanne, our veterinarian gauged him at somewhere around 13, and most of those hard years, too, he could still hold his own with any delivery driver or punk who happened to make it to the top of the hill, past all the NO TRESPASSING and PRIVATE PROPERTY signs and the abandoned meth camp just before you get to our driveway.

Despite his age and the hard life he’d lived, Guapo – a Pit Bull mix, was built out of something like granite, and his propensity to be oh-so-close to me had caused me to step backwards and fall over him more than a few times over the past 475 days. But even backing over this immovable object whose entire purpose was simply to be as close to me as possible only served to make me love him more.

After all, how many times in our lives do we ever experience a love so pure that the giver wants nothing more than to be as close to us as possible, just to breathe in the same air and be near our scent – good or bad? Will there ever be another love so attentive that it will sit at my feet or by my side, patiently waiting for me to figure out today’s WORDLE only to gaze up at me as if I’m the most brilliant human ever created? I don’t think so?

And as much as I love my husband, and I usually do, he doesn’t get nearly as overjoyed when I offer him a bite of the steak I brought home from dinner with our friends last night at that restaurant that we never go to because it’s way too fancy – read pricey for us to indulge. Offer Guapo even a tiny piece of the gristle, and you’d think he just won the Super Showcase on Let’s Make a Deal!  

So yeah, Guapo’s presence in my life for the past 475 days has been a gift of love I never bargained for when I saw his bloody and scrawny body lying in the middle of the road. Once I realized he was, indeed, still alive, I also realized nobody was ever going to come looking for him, and in fact, someone had probably left him in that spot because it was on a blind curve and just about the perfect spot to be finished off. I guess the only thing nobody had planned on was an idiot old lady like me coming by in a two-seater sports car and knowing I couldn’t leave that sad, brown-eyed boy in the road on a blind curve to die.

That was 475 days ago, and a few months before Dr. Suzanne found the tumor that was either in his bladder or bowel. “You can spend the money to find out which it is, but it isn’t going to change the end of the story,” was her pragmatic advice to us. And when we asked her if she thought we were selfish to wait and let Guapo make the decision about euthanizing, rather than making it pre-emptively, she let us know that she respected us for letting Guapo be the one to have the final say in when it was time to say goodbye.

Once, when we stopped in to pick up the medicine that helped Guapo continue to pee and poop despite the tumor that was blocking bladder or bowel, we brought Guapo with us – just to let them see how well he was doing. The entire office stopped everything and came out to make a fuss over this old fleahound with a wart on his head, calloused elbows, and an anus so protracted that it was as if he was trying to show it off like a Kardashian’s butt. No one could believe that Guapo was doing so well – I’m not sure who they thought was taking the pain medication they sent home with us each month, but seeing their response and sensing their delight, Guapo dug right in and put on one hell of a show for the ladies at the vet hospital, leaving them all cooing and gushing sweet words of admiration at his progress and stamina.

And for months and months, that’s how it went, with Guapo gobbling down every meal and matching me step for step, though that’s not exactly a high bar. When I picked blueberries, he’d come down and snuffle up the blueberries on the ground and just relish in being near me, and in the evenings, he’d pretend to like watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory almost as much as I.

A few months ago, the little dribbles of urine that sometimes followed him in after he returned from his trips outside got to be more than my Swiffer WetJet could handle, and Guapo had to endure the indignity of wearing doggie diapers, or man-bands as we liked to call them. They only covered the Number One part, so he still left us plenty of ‘Guap Drops,’ little chestnut sized balls of poo that he couldn’t squeeze no matter how hard he tried while awake, but slipped out easily as soon as he fell asleep.

We never minded cleaning up after him, but we tried to do it silently because if he realized he’d left you a mess, One or Two, he would appear to be mortified and would do whatever he could to clean it up himself. I’m not sure if that was out of fear from a previous life or simply because he wanted so much to please us. Still, our handsome stranger never seemed to be suffering, and the days slipped by us comfortably.

About two weeks ago, Dan and I began to notice small changes. Guapo started sleeping a little later in the morning, not eating every bit of his food when he did get up, and needing to get up multiple times each night because he felt an urgency to go. But he didn’t appear to be in pain and didn’t act as if he were anything other than just a little more fatigued than usual – until yesterday, when he didn’t get up until 11, didn’t finish his breakfast, and slipped off the couch with a thud while fast asleep, not hurting himself but surprising and perplexing himself.

He went through a multitude of diapers because he simply couldn’t manage to hold his bladder at all, but the washer works well, so it wasn’t an issue keeping up with him, and we just rotated out the ones with the stars, rockets, hamburgers and hotdogs, and even the hearts and exclamation points because those have been the ones he seemed to like wearing the most. But after having a little trouble finding a few pieces of homemade pizza crust tossed to him at dinner because he was too weary to come closer to the table than where he’d lay down earlier to rest after his own dinner, he seemed just plain worn out. I even had to help him up after dinner when he wanted to go out for a bit. 

But once he was up, he made it outside, where Dan let him out for his evening constitutional, something which usually only takes a few moments for him. When he wasn’t back in 15 minutes, I asked Dan where he was, and we both became concerned. It wasn’t dark, but it was getting close, and we both went out and called and looked, called and looked, and called and looked. We kept calling and kept looking until long after it was time for flashlights and four-wheelers, snake boots, and frantic tears. Guapo seemed to have disappeared without a trace. We looked all night long and again this morning as soon as there was enough light to start over, but as if he’d never been there in the first place, my sweet, handsome stranger was gone without so much as a wink and a nod.

I’m Irish, and though I can turn on the Irish charm when I need to, I am also no stranger to the Irish Goodbye, which happens at many family gatherings and often when I’ve been called to work at large, formal events that are taxing on me mentally and physically. Perhaps that’s what it was like for Guapo, too. Saying goodbye to the family he’d loved with such fierce loyalty for 475 days may have been more than he could have been able to bear – or more than he knew we could, and the kindest gift he could share was to simply walk out the door as if on an ordinary, everyday errand and then just…never come back, leaving no footprints or final words behind, but marking his time there with the tattoos of memories that have been burned into our souls until we can all meet again in another lifetime.