When I died, I was relieved to find myself in some dim room that might’ve been my house, standing before a door that might’ve been my old front door, but surprised to find my dog waiting for me on the doormat with his head on his paws, because my dog had been dead for almost as many years, as he’d lived.
I never dared hope for such a reunion, but when I kneeled before him to scratch his ears, he stood up on his hind legs and told me to be silent. He was no longer my dog, he told me, but my judge.
I laughed at this, for my dog was always a joker. But he shook his shaggy head and told me that this was always the way, that every soul must be judged by the animal that knew him best.
On the one hand, this seemed spectacularly unfair. How could we hope to save ourselves, if we did not know that our judges were always watching us? My dog insisted that this was exactly why it was so, for what real goodness is there, when one knows one is being judged?
On the other hand, I could not contain my elation, for with Cassius as my judge, I had nothing to fear.
I’d had him for all of his eleven years. I didn’t want a dog, but he chose me. That’s what I always told people, but my wife brought him home to get me away from my desk. As everyone who ever met him reminded me, Cassius’s breed was very smart, and needed a job. He was a herding dog, and I was the herd.
I named him for Cassius Coolidge, the creator of the dogs-playing-poker genre of American kitsch art. There was often a cunning, bright-eyed Aussie Shepherd that looked like my puppy in Coolidge’s paintings, always a moment away from being caught cheating.
He was almost too smart to be a dog. It made him anxious, moody, made him think of himself as my partner, my equal. It pleased me to indulge him, to let him sit beside me on the couch, and eat off my plate when I finished.
Still, though he could go to the corner market on his own and wheedle a treat from the cashier, he was like any dog, unable to tell the difference between a minute and a day, but where a dumber dog would forget his owner the moment he disappeared, Cassius fretted until I returned. Waiting at the front door, overcome with joy to see me, whether I’d been gone on a long trip or I’d just been to the store or even stepped out to get the mail.
Our walks were a ritual that kept me somewhat healthy and sane, and the only exercise I ever got. On those days when it rained or I was too tired or busy, Cassius would glower at me like Anubis must stare at the souls of the dead, as their hearts are weighed on the scales against the Feather of Truth.
I never understood people who confused their dogs with children. What a sad and needless lot of pain to go through, for a relationship that would end before your next water heater. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to lose him the way it hurt all those people I reflexively grieved with, when they lost their own pets.
It was worse than they said.
He’d started to lose his footing occasionally when we were walking, and seemed to wear out quickly, but I thought he was just getting old. After I returned from a long business trip, he collapsed in the park and I had to carry him to the car. I expected the vet to tell me he needed medication or a change in diet, so I was quite unprepared to be told he had only a few days to live without open-heart surgery, which was, of course, out of the question.
His heart was compressed by fluid that refilled within minutes when they drained it with a large needle. I held him as they injected the fatal sedative, scratched his ears and told him how much I loved him, that he was only going to sleep for a minute and when he woke up, we’d go for a walk.
I cried over him for a half hour. I spread his ashes in the park and on the shore of the river where he loved to swim in the summer. I never thought of getting another pet, though a friend bought me a couple of axolotls, frolicsome water puppies that never left the womb. I stopped walking, and started smoking again, which no doubt hastened to my demise.
He stood before the door, staring into my eyes until I got uncomfortable, so I asked him what the afterlife was like, and he told me it was like the best walk we ever took, but it could go on forever, over rolling hills and sparkling streams. It was an eternal golden afternoon, and there was all the time in the world to enjoy it.
I told him that sounded wonderful, and asked when we could go.
He looked down on me where I sat on the doormat, opened the door and stepped through it, just sticking his snout in. The pearly light from behind the door gave a subtle luster to his grizzled whiskers before he pulled it shut.
