I know it's hard to see but imagine, if you will, a hole in that back yard two feet deep and sort of... bi-lobed. When my three year old son stands in it, it comes up past his waist. I've been told that the previous owners of this home had a swimming pool in the back yard. That explains the sandy texture and mixture of weeds where grass should be. We never got around to doing the weed-and-feed thing, but after Gilbert the Greyhound got his paws into that sandy soil, we knew it would be worthless to even try. For a few years I would fill in the hole with a shovel and replant grass somewhere halfway through the summer, only to find it all torn apart and dug up again within a week. I even bought fill dirt. After a couple of years I gave up on filling in the hole and focused instead on stopping the dog from digging it in the first place. I spent entire afternoons (before the kids) sitting in the upstairs bedroom that overlooks the yard waiting for him to start digging so I could give him a bump with the static collar. It would stop him for a few weeks, maybe even the rest of the summer. When kids came, though, it was just plain not even on my to-do list anymore to keep the dog from digging up the yard. It was one spot in a yard full of mess and dog poop and weeds. After all, when he WAS digging, you could tell it was pure glee. A sort of joy that you don't see often in the reserved animals that greyhounds can be. Certainly out of character for Gilbert, who was always oh-so-modest and hardly ever excited about anything at all.
In fact, I described Gilbert as "about as plain vanilla as they come." He was sweet, he was lazy, he was kinda dumb (which frustrated us to no end, but what could you do?). He was handsome, patient with the kids, and in the end very brave. He gave whole blood donations to more pets than I can remember at my first veterinary job, enduring a 14 gauge needle to the neck with no need for sedation - just a calming buddy to "hold" him on the table. After, he would refuse to eat his special can of food I'd always give him. Nevertheless, he saved lives with his "universal donor" blood in a small clinic that would otherwise have not been able to provide blood products to their patients.
Gilbert fought the good fight against bone cancer for far longer than average. The prognosis for bone cancer in a Greyhound (without pursuing limb amputation and follow up chemo) is that they'll be gone to heaven in about three months. As a veterinarian, I knew this all too well and it hit me like a freight train on October 17th, 2016 when I watched his radiograph pop up on our screen at the office. Ain't technology great? Now I know my dog is going to die in 3 months, give or take. A few days later I made a new friend - the owner of a local bagel shop as she confided in me that her dog had the same disease. She hugged me as I broke down saying "I just can't believe he won't be here for Halloween next year." and began to cry. A few weeks later, I helped her say goodbye to her girl and I came home to stare at my boy and weep. Two more months, I thought. Gilbert went through an inexplicably long asymptomatic phase. He DID see Halloween this year - at least part of it. From the time of diagnosis until his passing, Gilbert lived 349 days - a remarkable amount of time given the disease. (Academically this was certainly not a typical osteosarcoma - perhaps some other -oma of lesser malignancy, but it progressed the same, just slower).
Gilbert scarfed two whole cans of dog food and left this world with a full belly and hopefully a full heart. I don't know how long it will take me to fill in the hole he dug in the yard, but the hole he left in my heart will remain until we are reunited in the great beyond.
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