For the Love of Lark

I am much better at hellos than goodbyes. 

But he is ready. It matters not that I am not. 

But are we ever ready to say goodbye?

Our Lark was so aptly named when we rescued him. We got him on a lark after our younger son took to playing pet store with his stuffed animals and begged me incessantly to look at doggie pictures on the internet. And almost presciently, Bird’s first word was “dog,” even though we didn’t have one. 

When we took a little family field trip to the SPCA, we spotted Lark, and we all took to each other without reservation. Those who knew our boy won’t believe he didn’t bark for two months. He didn’t let me do much without being attached to me somehow, so I worked with him plopped upon my lap, though he is decidedly not a lap dog. When Lark came into our lives we became those people. He sat in the backseat between the boys as we ran errands, he came with me to school pick up, and we only frequented trails where dogs were allowed. Many children from back then, who are young adults now, still remark about his velvety ears they remember stroking on the school playground. We will all remember him for being insanely food-driven, even absconding with an entire salami log off a charcuterie board once.

He ran through the house with it hanging out of his mouth like a cigar.

In Lark’s 14 ½ years with us, he ate sundry things that never made him sick. Lego bricks, Playmobil people, crayons, stuffed animals, toilet paper. There’s often a trail of toilet paper leading from the powder room around the house. Our own dog essentially teepeed us! And there’s the time he ate several gift wrapped packages of peanut butter chocolate truffles that were meant to be teacher gifts. All the plastic wrappers were strewn about as if he had opposable thumbs to open each one. Oh, and how he loved the trash. We had to keep the trash in the mud room because Lark figured out how to open the cabinets. There were too many days we came home to trash dragged throughout the house because someone forgot to shut the mud room door. He ate up all those scraps, and yup, he never got sick beyond an audible tummy gurgle time to time. Lark would be a military grade dog if he had opposable thumbs! Then again, as a beagle/corgi mix, he was a combination of two of the naughtiest (and cutest) breeds. 

We loved Lark’s naughty, barky ways because at his core, he was such a sweet dog. While his bark was piercing, filling our ear drums with an echoing cacophony of beagle terror, I know he was just trying to warn us of invaders in our space, never mind those invaders are our friends. He protected us from the harms of the mailman all these years. Mac Daddy jokes that Lark took pride in barking at all deliveries at the front door and trotted to us with a look of, “See guys, I saved you once again.” In his later years we never knew when the mail came as our old guy lost his hearing. One thing failed after another, as it does in old age. We’ve made the tough decision to say goodbye today, and I hope we haven’t failed Lark.

But still, I’m not ready.

I will miss him nuzzled between us in winter months, his legs splayed right in the center like the bar of the letter H. His snores became the brown noise of our slumber. The clippity clop of his nails on hardwood will be a deafening silence we will all have to get used to. I imagine Mac Daddy will feel this loss keenly as he won’t feel Lark’s presence under his desk as he works, no more snout resting atop his foot just to make a physical connection, a trait he carries from his puppy days. And perhaps the hardest will be for our Bird, who is 800 miles away in college and entering finals season. Sharing this news was not a parenting milestone we were prepared for. And now, we’ll mourn. We’ll adjust. We’ll remember. We’ll laugh. To have loved a pet for so long is a gift, but to have been loved unconditionally by a devoted furry friend is immeasureable.

Walking through the front door to be greeted by silence just might do us all in.

Our sweet Lark, may you follow a trail of treats over the rainbow bridge. Loving you all these years has been our treat.