Happiness really is a warm puppy

"I think we should put her down. I'll take her right now."

I couldn't believe the words were coming out of my mouth. It was five days before Christmas, and I was telling my father that I thought the family dog, Honey, was in bad enough shape that she should be put to sleep. Merry Christmas, Dad.

I had just flown in to Ohio the afternoon before and I was exhausted. I had barely gotten to sleep when Honey started barking incessantly. Not the burglar-scaring attack-dog bark that I remembered, but the hoarse, strained bark of a 14-1/2-year-old German shepard/husky mix. She was alone downstairs and afraid; my parents were both at work. I stumbled groggily downstairs to lie next to her so we both could get some rest. It was finally quiet.

Honey was now a shadow of her former self. She had trouble walking, seeing and hearing; I was surprised she even recognized me.

Her beautiful blond fur was now graying, and her arthritis was so bad that she couldn't even wag her signature tail - the tail that used to knock over anything in her wake when she scurried through the house. Gone were the days of her boundless energy and affection. All that was left was an animal seemingly waiting to die. My parents couldn't bear to put her to sleep, though; she was their baby. And I felt horrible for even suggesting she should be euthanized.

In 1993, we decided to get a new dog after our previous one had died. There was an ad in the paper listing puppies for sale behind a transmission shop in Xenia, Ohio. My parents drove me out to the shop and let me pick out the dog.

One male puppy was licking my father's hand, and Dad seemed immediately attached to it. I spotted a blond female pup with a black face and decided she was the one. Female dogs, after all, as mom said, were more "polite" - her way of saying that females didn't lift their leg when they peed. We paid $50 for our new family member.

On the way home, I noticed that she was so small that she easily fit into the palms of my hands. By the end of the day, she had already learned how to fetch and managed to bark. I decided I would call her Honey due to her coloring, and the fact that she was so sweet, licking everyone in sight.

Honey was wild as a puppy. I would come home from school to find that she had destroyed mom's favorite chair - again - or emptied a pot of plants onto the living room carpet. I think for a while my father genuinely disliked her, often joking, or half-joking, that we should take her back to Xenia for a refund.

Honey grew from being itsy-bitsy to a svelte 50-pound table scrap-seeking attention hound. She was literally the center of attention whenever we would have visitors, especially when my then-girlfriend would come over to see me. Honey would always somehow manage to wiggle herself in between me and my high school sweetheart if we were sitting on the couch, often killing any chance I had for romance.

Eventually, I went to college and Honey became my parents' surrogate child. Honey and my father grew very close during this time, as she had stopped destroying furniture, and became even closer when he had a heart attack in 2002. As soon as dad came home from the hospital, Honey refused to leave his side, doting on him like he was one of her own puppies. From then on, Honey and dad were inseparable.

In the time since I was home at Christmas, Honey's condition had deteriorated to the point to where my parents finally chose to put her to sleep. Being far away from home meant I was more removed from the agonizing decision mom and dad had to make. I wasn't there when they drove her to the vet, and I wasn't there for the final goodbye. I think Honey's demise represents the death of the last bit of my childhood, or maybe it reminds me of my own mortality. Whatever it is, it hurts like hell.

When I was very young, my mother gave me a book by Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts, called Happiness is a Warm Puppy. It's a small book with sayings like (I'm paraphrasing) "Happiness is a piece of chocolate" or "Happiness is a kiss from someone you love." I never really understood what the book meant until the day we brought home a warm puppy that fit into the palms of my hands.

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Andy Comer is a copy editor for The Monitor. He can be reached at acomer@themonitor.com.