Sadly saying goodbye to Coyote, the best dog in the world
by Kim Mooney

We said goodbye to Coyote one sad night in November. She had about 3 hours of a bad life before we gently helped her leave. How much gratitude can dog parents have knowing that she only suffered what she needed to to get out of her very sick body.

She was fine Thursday morning, had a long walk with her pack and then after dinner, she collapsed and the emergency vet said she had fluids around her pericardium and probably cancers. The vet said days to a couple weeks, but she was already saying goodbye to us.

We brought her body home and sat with her, drank whiskey, recalled stories of her whole life and told her what a good dog she’d been. We used to howl as a family and she would join us, but you could tell she was embarrassed at how bad our accents were.

I remember one night hearing a coyote pack howling back in the fields and we all howled together and they stopped, probably thinking what the hell was that? We learned that the family that howls together scares everything away – whether in pastures or in the car in traffic.

The morning after she left this life Kevin and I got up at sunrise and spent three hours digging a grave for her next to the little waterfall that dropped into her private pool in the ditch. She used go to the edge of the bank and we’d call her back. She’d turn and look at us and with all the chutzpa of a mature dog, totally ignore us and head down the bank to what she loved most – swimming.

We sent some things with her in her little cardboard coffin – the meager parts that were left of her shredded favorite toys, some leaves that had fallen from the family tree we’d planted when we moved into this house, an ‘indestructible’ heart chew toy that she destructed in about 3 hours when she was a pup, a hundred dog treats, and Kevin’s Marine Corp jacket to protect her on her journey, wherever she goes next.

We were lucky she found us and decided to stay. We were lucky Kevin was home when she collapsed. We were lucky we had the ready resources to end her suffering immediately.

And now she’s on the bank with the sound of water running and where the sun first touches our land every morning. Just like she went down the bank one last time.

We spent all day that feeling her heart and her absence, spontaneously finding ourselves saying Thank you, Coyote. Thank you, my dog.

Kim Mooney lives in Colorado and still feels the loss of her dear loved one.