Scotty Heropoulos
Reminder Publishing photo by Staasi Heropoulos
It was 2021 when a veterinary oncologist blew up our world. Our cherished dog Scotty had cancer. Chemotherapy was said to give him six months more to live, so we gave it a shot.
With five treatments and God’s blessings, he lived three years before his time ran out this Christmas season.
We arranged for a veterinarian to put Scotty to sleep at home, tucked in his blankets in the living room. My family and I had one stipulation — we wanted Scotty to be unaware of what was happening. He was not to see a stranger come into his home holding a black bag and a needle walking towards him.
It was a windy, bitter cold morning when the vet pulled into our driveway. I went outside to meet her. I might have been freezing in my T-shirt, but I didn’t notice. I was dizzy and numb, sleep walking through it all. I didn’t know it was cold, I didn’t care if it was freezing because my soulmate was about to die, and with him, part of my spirit.
The vet gave me a syringe holding an agent that would sedate Scotty. I went back inside and administered it orally to him. When the doctor came inside 10 minutes later, Scotty was still alive, but in a deep sleep. The vet injected two agents, and two minutes later, he died quietly, peacefully and with grace. My wife, daughter and I saw him take his last breath.
That set off the first 48 hours of grieving, sadness I had never experienced, worse than I had been bracing myself for — deep and debilitating, as bad as it gets.
The rest is told through texts I sent to family and friends, shared here in their most raw form… first, to my brother:
“I still can’t fathom what just happened. I wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to the van and just collapsed onto him hugging him and kissing him and sobbing and telling him how much I love him and what he meant to me.
“I had an icon and palm cross with Scotty as he died. I now have the icon with me. The cross went with him for his body to be cremated. It will be with him and then come back with him. It will stay with him all the time, and we can put it near his ashes along with the icon.
“I couldn’t protect him from the cancer, but I wanted to protect his soul.
“You know, when you have a wound to your body, it continues to bleed slowly as you heal.
“It seems when you have a wound to the heart, tears continue seeping from your eyes, in much the same way, as you heal from something so terribly sad.”
I took a break from texting and walked across the street to tell a neighbor what happened. Their golden retriever and Scotty grew up together. They were puppies together. Now he had died and she was aging. We hugged and cried.
I went back home and texted a friend:
“A few weeks ago, I brought Scotty to have his nails clipped and he had the same girl he always has and he is always very compliant. Well, as his tumors grew unbeknownst to me, when he went for his trimming, the girl went to pick him up and she grabbed him near one of his tumors, and he yelped and snapped a little bit because she hurt him. So they came running out, saying he tried to bite her, but still he settled down and she trimmed his nails.
“I went back into that store today and looked for the girl. I was crying and could barely speak, but I wanted her to know why he did what he did, that he was a good dog and would never want to bite her and it was important for her to know that. And she just looked at me and almost cried.
“I’m so sad I could scream until I can’t breathe.
“I’m back home, thinking of what lies ahead. There is no way to continue on the path I had taken with Scotty. There are too many gaps, cervices left by his absence. We’ll have to find a new way;” I texted another friend:
“Scotty always used to beg food from us and we used to give him handouts the older he got to get him to eat. I literally have tears in my eyes right now thinking of making dinner and sitting at the counter without him begging.
“I went to get some cheese out of the refrigerator this morning and it was right next to the sliced chicken we bought for him, just to get him to eat. Again, the tears flowed. I threw the chicken out with such ferocity, driving it in my fist to the bottom of the trash. I’m so [expletive] sad.”
I lit a candle for Scotty in church today and am now pulling into the driveway of our home. His stunning brown eyes and floppy black ears are not peeking over the window sill; he is not barking when I pull into the garage. There is only silence when I walk into the kitchen.
This is all so unbearable, but it’s only been 48 hours.
