Kaiser

Kaiser

            “Kaiser, I love you buddy”.  And with those words, I let go of the best dog that I’ve ever owned, and walked out of the veterinarian’s office.

I remember it like it was yesterday, I was nine years old riding with my dad and grandpa to go pick up a brand new puppy. Kaiser. Kaiser was a giant schnauzer, and the second dog my family has owned since I’ve been around. It took a while to get Kaiser both housetrained and during the first couple of weeks, he whined every single night that we put him in the crate. By the time he was a year old, he was almost the size of a Shetland pony, and weighed close to 60 pounds.

The first time that we took Kaiser up to the farm, it was the middle of January and it was his first time riding for a long distance in a car. We were 2 minutes from the driveway, when he threw up all over me. Needless to say I was not a happy camper when I had to get out of the truck and ride in the bed when it was 28 degrees outside. That December, we made a trip out to Colorado to my grandparents’ cabin and to ski and we took Kaiser with us. It was his first time seeing snow, and he absolutely loved it, which was kind of confusing because he had a thing about getting his feet wet.

As the years passed, Kaiser was always by my side. He was very perceptive as to what people around him were feeling, especially sadness or loneliness, in which case he would saunter on over and plop himself down on his feet or try to hop up in the chair with you. Even as he got older, he remained a big puppy.

It was the summer after my senior year, and Kaiser started having health problems, and then when August came around he suffered a massive seizure, but the vet’s that we took him to couldn’t figure out what was going on. The weekend before I moved to TCU for my freshman year, I was dog-sitting for some friends of the family, and was staying over at their house. Well, 6 AM Monday morning, I got a call from my mom that Kaiser had had another massive stroke and that it caused him to go blind. She continued by telling me that she and dad had decided to euthanize him to take him out of his pain. Needless to say, I quickly got dressed and rushed home to see Kaiser. I helped dad load him up in the van and we drove to the vet’s office. I did pretty well with keeping my emotions in check until after the vet administered the drugs that would ease him out, and then I lost it and bawled like a small child while enveloping Kaiser with my arms.