B'bett

Hansie Haier

If you ever see the movie “Jaws” - the very first one - shortly into it you’ll catch a glimpse of B’bett. Not my B’bett, but a black Lab very like her as a young dog. And so my B’bett was named. Playful, mischievous, stubborn and challenging enough to take on a great white. And I, going by the books, an equally stubborn disciplinarian. Our first few years were snarling conflicts mixed with romps and hugs and endless games of fetch. It was touch and go for awhile. Then learning that my own attentive instincts knew more of her than dissociated trainers’ tips, I finally tapped into the pure joy that was B’bett.

Although she was powerful and assertive and could be a fierce defender of home and mistress, she adored children and their timid strokes, was ever tolerant of their bolder tugs and chasings. I often kept careful watch when dog met child, never for fear that B’bett would retaliate but anxious she’d suffer too much abuse too easily. Through everything, years of love and due appreciation gave her a characteristic panting laugh, an obvious enjoyment of life simply as it presented itself. Winter snow and summer’s critters amused her; and scrootchings in a favorite spot pleased her to no end. Once set aglow and confident in love, she asked so little, put up with so much.

Yet to come though was her greater beauty, her infinite grace in aging. Seventeen plus years is a very long life for a Labrador retriever. And old age comes neither suddenly nor easily. As B’bett lost youth and pleasure in excruciating inches, I watched, knowing but not wanting to know. Her time to die was coming, with little regard for wishes to the contrary. I thought about it, reluctantly. Often I hugged her strong hard neck and laid near her, face to face, heart to heart in long whispered talks. I tried to see her, really see her, waiting for an answer, a date, a time, a reason.

In the end, “Jaws” didn’t undo my beautiful Lab. I did. Gently, lovingly, insistently. As the vet attended to the mechanics, I attended to the spirit, reassuring her (and myself), ultimately releasing her. To my surprise, her freed spirit grew stronger in me in the same moment it moved on to infinite breadth.

In white cotton candy clouds and in a certain sweeping green field along 29 North, I catch glimpses of B’bett, her shining jet form scampering about, sometimes in liberated solitude, sometimes in tandem with Saint Peter, the old German shepherd she once adored. I don’t know how I know; but I do know. She’s blissfully free, in a final prime stunning for her eternal grace. No longer bound by arthritic pains and grimly determined duty, she plays while waiting, ever patient, for those of us whose lives she’s touched, for her admiring mistress, for me.

©July 21, 2003 Hansie Haier

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