Where the Tracks End

The Final Lessons of a Good Dog

We like to dress up death when it comes knocking.

There’s nothing people seem to love more than waxing poetic about those around us who die.

Every person who kicks the bucket is a saint if you believe the eulogies. They all lit up every room they ever walked into. They were kind, generous, hardworking, and devoted to family. They put others before themselves without hesitation.

Most of the time, what’s said is complete bullshit.

Dogs, though… dogs tend to earn those words. There is an honesty in them that people rarely match. They don’t pretend to be something they are not. They don’t angle for praise or spin a narrative to fit their own ideal stories. They live the way they are built to live, and they do not apologize for it or even consider why an apology would be needed. They just are.

As houndsmen, it seems we face the deaths of our field companions more often than most. We have packs of dogs; their lives mountain-hardened. And if they do live to old age, that finish line tends to come quicker than that of their pampered pet counterparts. Because of the timeline that our dogs have been added to the crew, we’ve been on a schedule of losing one or two a year. It never gets easier.

Jackie

Jackie was a hound, through and through. She embodied everything the title implies. She was not much to look at. Her coat was dull, marked with scars that told the story of her years in the field. Her face was worn, weathered by time and hard miles. Lipomas covered her body, some so large they would catch and tear, leaving slight traces of blood in her wake. She was rough. Her body was beaten by a life spent in pursuit. Her legs bore the cost of years spent chasing through brutal, unforgiving country.

Her life was simple, and it wasn’t always easy. She lived for the chase and the nap that followed. That was all she needed, all she ever asked for.

In her prime, she was a force, a streak of muscle and instinct that lived for the chase. Years in the high country, nose to the wind, voice echoing through canyons where only the ghosts of old hunters and those she hunted listened. She had seen the sun rise from ridgelines where few men dared to stand. She had run down lions in snow so deep it swallowed her to the shoulders. She had sliced open the pads of her paws on crusts of ice and never flinched.

Three years ago, she was with me on a lion hunt, playing a crucial role in the harvest.

Three days ago, she could barely walk. She seemed confused about where she was and what was happening. Her hearing was suddenly gone.

Last night, we found her baying, unable to stand, blood pooling beneath her back end, hemorrhaging from somewhere deep.

We knew, well before this, that Jackie was dying. We had a plan for her last hunt. We were going to pack her into the mountains, let the younger dogs do the work of treeing a cat, and place her at the base for one final success. We wanted, so badly, to give her one last hunt. She deserved to stand at the base of a big pine and bay her last at a waiting cat above. Wherever that tree stood, that would be where she stayed.

But plans, especially the ones we make for the end, have a way of falling apart. Death does not wait for sentiment or poetic meaning. This time, it did not offer us the chance for a beautiful departure.

Death showed up and told our plans to fuck off. Death was happening now.

An Expected, Unexpected End

A working dog like her deserves better than to fade away under fluorescent lights, surrounded by strangers, drowning in the hum of machines and the sterile scent of antiseptic. So we made the call. We didn’t do it out of cruelty. We didn’t do it out of convenience. We did it out of love. It was the kind of love that understands mercy when it is needed most.

She ate like royalty on that last night. It was a meal we wouldn’t have given her otherwise, knowing full well it would have wrecked her stomach and left a liquid mess of epic proportions painting her kennel floor. This time, we knew it didn't matter. She got all the joy of the taste. None of us would experience the consequence.

When I continually say we, I really mean he. For the bulk of this, I sat inside, sick from work travel, wrapped in a blanket, trying to keep my emotions in check. I watched a hardened mountain man walk out the door, gun in hand, shoulders squared. I stayed put, listening and waiting, until the end echoed across our property, through the walls, and into my heart.

I have heard thousands of gunshots in my life. None will ever cut as deep as these.

When he walked back in, he was not quite the same. He was less hardened, less burly. He was less indestructible. A man like Mark doesn’t wear his grief where others can see, but I could. I saw it in the way his chest rose and fell. I saw it in the kind man who hid beneath the gruff exterior. I saw it in the weight he carried back with him.

I know that weight. I’ve held it myself. I’ve been the one to pull the trigger. It’s a responsibility we owe to the dogs we love, but it’s a pain I would never wish on anyone.

That final moment is a strange thing. You think you’ll hesitate. You think your hands will shake. Maybe they will. Actually, they probably will. But when that time comes, and they look at you, really look at you, the way they always have, waiting for the next command, you understand there is no decision left to make.

The kindness of ending pain and stopping suffering is the best thing we can offer. I can only wish for the same when my own time comes, though we are unfortunately barred from that same mercy.

The unspoken burden of genuinely loving a dog is taking away their pain and, in return, carrying a piece of it with you in your chest.

The Lessons of a Hound

People talk about loyalty when they talk about dogs, but that is only a tiny piece of the bigger story. Dogs like Jackie don’t just teach devotion. They teach grit. They teach purpose. They remind you that life is not about waiting for something to happen; it’s about the chase, about finding something worth running toward. Ironically, much of Jackie’s life was, in fact, sitting around and waiting. The difference was that she never complained and always found joy wherever joy could be found. Waiting for the chase was her purpose.

Jackie never questioned her life or why she did what she did. She hunted because she was a hunter. She rested when she was tired. It was as simple as that. There was no existential crisis, no wondering if she should have been a house dog instead. She never wished to be a lap dog or a bird dog. She just was what she was.

Maybe that’s where we fail as humans. We spend so much time agonizing over things that don’t matter, worrying about what we could be or who we should be, and chasing that which does not feed us.

She taught me that the joy is in the work, in the running, in the feeling of being exactly where you are meant to be. And in the end, when the running is over, the luckiest of us are fortunate to go down with dignity next to the ones who ran beside us the longest.

The end is rarely as poetic as we hope. It's often ugly, painful, and traumatizing. We tell ourselves that when the time comes, it will be quiet, gentle, and wrapped in some kind of warmth. But death is rarely so kind. It does not wait for our schedules. It does not consider our wishes. It arrives when it pleases, indifferent to our plans and the stories we tell ourselves about how things should go.

Even so, there is beauty in the way we face it. There is beauty in offering mercy when suffering takes hold. There is beauty in choosing dignity over delay, in recognizing when love means letting go instead of holding on. The moment itself may not be what we wanted, but the care we give in those final breaths matters. The way we stand beside them, the way we do not let them leave this world alone, that is where grace can be found.

Even when the end is messy.

Even when it comes too soon.

Even when nothing goes as planned.

Paying What We Owe

The hardest part of loving a dog is knowing you will likely outlive them. At best, you get a handful of years before you have to say goodbye. Maybe that is the price of something so pure, something untouched by the complications and contradictions of human existence.

Dogs do not dwell on old grudges. Well… some of the best ones actually do, and they’re better for it. But they certainly don't lie awake at night regretting words left unsaid or choices they wish they had made differently. They live fully, without apology or hesitation, until they do not.

Working dogs seem to live even more purely, and often, they find their end more quickly. It’s not fair, but it is the way things are. They burn hot and bright. When that fire goes out, there's just no rekindling it.

When the time comes, when their bodies begin to fail, when their legs grow weak, and the light in their eyes fades, we owe them something in return for all they have given us. We owe them a good death. We owe them a familiar hand to steady them. We owe them a voice they know and trust. We owe them an ending free from fear.

Jackie earned a death better than she received. She earned a beautiful send-off in the mountains she loved. She earned more than we could give her on her last day, but death came, and we were there to help her along, regardless of the where, the how, and the when.

In the end, she earned the mercy of an old friend standing beside her, who gave her the same certainty and steadiness she had given all her life.

She left this world the way she lived in it. It wasn't traditionally beautiful or poetic, but it was intense, without hesitation, without fear, and with nothing left unspoken.

The Afterlife, If It Exists, Should Be For Them

I subscribe to no religion. The bulk of my cynicism is a gift from the lingering fingerprints of organized-religions-past. I have no holdover beliefs in my heart from the faiths that unfortunately shaped my youth.

As much as people seem to hate to hear it, I hold no illusions of being reunited with those I have lost. It is a beautiful thought, but to me, that is all it is—a thought. I am envious of those with belief. Blind faith must be a terribly comforting thing. Unfortunately, humanity and its chosen religions have let me down far too reliably, far too violently, and far too often.

If I could believe in anything, though, if I could hope for something beyond this life, it would be for my dogs.

I would hope that somewhere out there, past whatever comes next, they have their own kind of heaven, a place with fresh tracks laid out before them, with crisp scents on the wind and mature cats waiting just beyond the ridge. If anyone deserves an eternity of running free, it is them, certainly more than we do.

I am comforted by that idea. I take solace in imagining Jackie in her prime, chasing lions through the mountains, her voice rolling across the hills like thunder. My eyes well up at the thought of her excitement about a cheeseburger as payment for a job well done.

Maybe that is the closest I will ever come to genuine faith. Maybe that feeling, that glimpse of something bigger, is what others find in their own beliefs about the afterlife.

I don’t know what waits beyond this world if anything, but I do hope that if some eternal justice exists, our dogs will be there, running ahead of us, always on the scent of something wild.

You were loved, Jackie.

You were a good girl.

Rest well.