Episode 3 - Goodbyes

Hey there, Backyardigans. How y’all are? Hey it’s Jerimy, your humble host of the Backyard Bourbon Broadcast. Today’s show will be a bit of a departure from our regular type of show. A little sadder… well, a whole lot sadder. It’s the podcast I don’t really want to do, to be honest. There’s a saying: having a dog is hundreds of great days, followed by one really bad day. If you’ve ever had a dog, you know how this goes, and you know how you start subconsciously dreading that bad day in the back of your head from the first day. I know I did, and I just kept it way back there. Our Bernese Mountain Dog had liver cancer, and we had to put our beloved big boy down on March 22. Really ever since then, my wife and I have been numb. Our kids have done much better than we have, and I’m thankful for that. I think part of the reason is that you just don’t hold on to things as tightly when you’re younger than when you get older. When you’re older, you start realizing how temporary lives are and how permanent death is, and you react by trying to cling to things tighter and tighter as you get older and older.

So, here we go. First off, how do you end up naming a dog “Liam James”?? Well, my wife and I had always said if we ever had a boy, we would name him Liam James. And as fate would have it, we had two girls. So it seemed the name Liam James wouldn’t get used. We were living in Casper, Wyoming at the time, and we found this breeder out in Lander, and he brought out this little pup, and we got Liam in January of 2010 when he was 9 weeks old. We immediately named him Liam James. and he was just this black, cuddly little bear cub. If you’ve ever seen a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy, you know they’re just the cutest little things. They literally look like black bear cubs. And from day one, he was the best dog. He never chewed socks or shoes, never ran off, never dove into the trash, never rolled in God-knows-what in the backyard… Had a few bad experiences with a couple of Disney figurines, and found out the hard way how painful it is to pass a plastic Tinker Bell toy. He loved long walks out in the snow and the cold and the wind in Wyoming. The colder, the better, and the longer the walk, the better. He was the most patient dog with children. I have video somewhere of my daughters climbing all over Liam as he chewed on a bone. Never growled, never attacked them. Just kept on chewing his bone. “The boy,” as I always called him, always seemed happy, even if he was experiencing pain. A lot of Berners will get what they call “the gulps,” which is exactly what it sounds like. The dog just continually gulps for air, like it can’t swallow food or is drowning on dry land. It’s something with their digestive system, and occurs very frequently with the Bernese breed. It’ll scare you to death if it happens to your pup, because it seems like there’s nothing you can do for them. We took ours to the vet, who had never seen this before either, and next thing you know, Liam’s having a thousand dollar surgery on about a foot long opening in his stomach. Long story short, the vet had swore there was something obstructing his breathing, and claimed he could see it in X-rays, and it ended up being just air. Found out too late that the best thing for Liam when he would do that would be to go for a long walk. It’d stretch out his esophagus, and within 5 minutes he’d be fine. A thousand dollars to learn I could just walk my dog. Costly lesson, but it let us keep our boy! Through all of that, he was wagging his tail and appearing to be happy. In fact, any time you’d see that dog his tail was wagging and he was happy. He loved being around people, and even if he was enduring sore hips, or the gulps, or even when he endured a painful experience they call HGE, still was wagging his tail and trying to make everyone else happy. He never wanted to let us down.

I was able to get Liam into the therapy dog program here at Oklahoma State University, where he went through obedience training, teaching him how to behave properly around adults (and they taught me that too, though I don’t think I did half as good as Liam). Basically he had a job whenever he was on campus, and that was to let my coworkers and students pet him. I was always amazed at the change I could see within people in a matter of minutes of being around Liam. Walls fell down, stressed and panicked looks dissolved, and casual conversations started. Students would tell me about exams they were nervous about or dogs they missed back home. Adults would tell me stories of their own dogs and how much they loved them, or how they had once had a fear of dogs and overcame it. Sometimes people just sat in silence, ran their hands through Liam’s fur, wiped tears from their cheeks and walked away.

I had created social media accounts for Liam so that I could tell people where and when he’d be on campus. After we put him down, we were inundated with messages and pictures from people across the US and even in different countries around the world. People who had followed the little snippets of Liam’s life and the lives he touched reached out to say how they enjoyed seeing his experiences, and how they were saddened to hear of his passing. It was amazing, and it was humbling, to see the impact one dog could make on lives all over the world.

The days since March 22 have been a blur, and I don’t think I could tell you much of what has happened between then and now. Everything seems numb. Brandenburg pear trees started blossoming not long after, and I know I will forever associate that smell with Liam’s last day. Some days are better than others. Some days I’m able to remember things without buckling into a heaving mess. Other days, it just seems to come out of the blue and hit me in the gut. The hole in my chest doesn’t seem to be able to heal, and my eyes haven’t been dry in weeks. Memories seem to come out of nowhere and just bring my world to a halt. Thoughts about his last day just bring dark clouds into my mind, and things I don’t want to remember about that day grip my heart and tighten my throat.

Part of this is survivor guilt. I’m still here, still alive, and my Liam isn’t. Another part is just wanting to tell more people about Liam, about how great he was, about how many lives he touched and changed, if only for a little bit. And another part is just emptiness. I feel like I walk around like a heart donor who survived. Just a big empty hole where your heart used to be. It’s amazing that even though something so precious to you has left this Earth, the weight of it still sits directly on your chest. Some days it’s hard just to breathe. And sleeping… well, sleeping’s overrated, isn’t it?

I know things will get better with time, I do. And I know as far as the rest of the world is concerned, this isn’t even close to a small deal, let alone a big deal. People have to put down their pets every day, people lose their parents and their children to horrible diseases like cancer every day. But if you’ve ever had a dog, a dog who loved you, who loved others, who lived their life to serve, you know what a hard loss it is when that soul is no longer around you anymore. So that’s where I am. Grieving the loss of an incredible best friend who gave selflessly to his family.

Death is so hard to understand. Trying to wrap my mind around such a huge presence in my life no longer existing is an impossible task. I’ve been amazed at how it actually hurts my heart.

Whew, OK, folks, if any of you are left listening, that’s over! Thank you for listening to me pour my heart out. A great big thank you goes out to the literally HUNDREDS of people who contacted us, hugged our necks, sent us cards, messaged us through social media… We were overwhelmed at the kind response we got from so many people that we didn’t even know. I had setup social media accounts for Liam to announce his appearances on campus, and I had over 400 comments alone on his Twitter post, folks from all over the world offering condolences and saying how they loved following his adventures and would miss him. Some people had even made special photos of our boy, and it meant more than I could tell you. If you’ve gone through this yourself, can I just extend my sorrow to you for your loss? If you haven’t gone through it, and are about to… well, I’m certainly not someone who should give advice, so take this for what it’s worth: if your experience is like mine so far, you will go through waves of grief, and some are harder than others. Go through it and ride it out. It is a unique and indescribable pain, but you will come across so many people who will hug you and check in on you. You’ll come across the occasional dumbass who thinks pain is a competition and who will say the most insensitive things… do yourself a favor and forgive them as soon as they say it and move on. You’ll have more than enough to deal with that is more important than to give five seconds of thought to the pathetic hangnail that person is in your life. Concentrate on the good memories, the small changes your dog made in the lives of so many others, the unconditional love you received, and the blessing that animal brought to your existence!

I miss ya, Liam. I sure hope you know how much we loved you, and how much this decision tore our hearts, and I hope you’re in heaven just running through mountains of snow, and eating up as much of it as you want, and I hope you’re chasing squirrels and antelope, and I hope you have your own street lined with fire hydrants. I miss you and I love you and I sure hope I get to see you again someday.