A writer looks ahead to a life of adventures without man’s best friend

Essay

Edison died one morning last October, right here on my living room floor. 

He had canine leukemia, his second cancer diagnosis since July. He might’ve survived a while on more chemotherapy, but I knew it was time. Edison was a regal creature — I couldn’t force him into a diminished existence by refusing to let go. An emergency vet, kind and patient, came to my Capitol Hill apartment and injected my best friend with a life-ending cocktail while I sat beside him and scratched his head. He departed so quietly and quickly that I didn’t have time to grasp the finality of what was happening. 

Six months later, my fatal choice still feels profane. I’m still processing Edison’s death and finding new perspectives amid the grief — but little that softens the blow. And now I’m faced with a lifetime of adventures without my dog.  

For 13 years, Edison imbued every little thing we did with an incommensurate joy that was almost comical: waking up, going to bed, getting in the car, coming home. Every walk dialed us into the intrigue of neighborhood squirrels, flowers, trees, birds, dogs. 

These days, going for a dogless walk feels pointless, so I don’t. 

And the bigger things, like the extended road trips and backpacking treks that cemented our adventurous kinship? I’m aching over the prospect, especially the coming summer. In the long, liberated days of summers past, we explored the American West’s epic outdoors, where Edison achieved his highest form: Silhouetted against crystalline sky and backlit by sunshine, his fur radiated a golden corona like some kind of mythical creature.

Our first-ever backpacking trip was in the Glacier Peak Wilderness over Labor Day weekend in 2011, a few months after I adopted him as a lanky 1-year-old from Seattle Humane. 

Edison and I hiked all day to reach remote Blue Lake. I set up camp near the shore, then carried a flask up to the ridge above to watch the sunset. I sat, took a swig and melted into the alpine panorama, feeling that comforting, cosmic smallness that stunning grandeur often imparts. Pastel clouds sailed across the serrated horizon. I glanced to my right, and there was Edison calmly taking in the same view, lost in his own thoughts. My dog.

We logged thousands of trail miles through the Pacific Northwest and beyond. We climbed big peaks: Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens (twice!), South Sister, Eagle Cap. We camped on wilderness beaches on the Olympic Peninsula and California’s Lost Coast. We encountered moose, bear, wolves, elk, mountain goats, seals, sea lions. It felt like we belonged among them. 

In the backcountry, Edison engaged a wilder, wiser mode, gleaning sensory information about our surroundings that expanded my own perception, connecting me to natural mysteries that were invisible yet undeniably present. While I slept in the tent, he remained outside and awake. On or off his leash, he stayed keen on my location, but was in fact exploring his own primal, ancient territory, a place from which modern humans mostly strayed long ago.

My love for the spectacular landscapes of the West grew alongside my love for Edison; the two are forever entwined. I admired how he moved through the world — elegant but effortless, considerate but self-possessed, seemingly tireless, ever curious. I wanted to be like him.

He was my closest relative in the nonhuman world — a world in which we center ourselves in the story, relegating literally everything else to the background. 

When a human invites an animal into their life, they start to share the story, just a little. They open the possibility of a more respectful, harmonious relationship with the nonhuman world. By nurturing this relationship, perhaps we can break the toxic cycle of man-made destruction. 

Even as domesticated pets, dogs remind humans that we’re also animals, interdependent with all the other nonhuman things we see — and even the things we don’t. 

“There is a spiritual dimension present in the human-dog relationship that transcends particular religious confessions,” said Brother Christopher Savage, the prior and head of dog training at New Skete Monastery in upstate New York, where Eastern Orthodox monks have been raising and training dogs since the 1960s.

“There’s a guilelessness and honesty with dogs that human beings are able to trust, and that trust elicits from us our best,” he said. “They’re able to pierce through our veneers, the protective shields that we put up in our ordinary human relationships. If the human being is awake, if they’re paying attention, they see the beneficial effect that relationship has on them and the dog, and see how the dog is not only maturing but deepening its own connection with the human being. And that hits us in profound ways.”

Cynics will say my friendship with Edison was one-sided, propelled by projection, anthropomorphization and delusion. It was not unconditional love he and I felt for each other but codependence; I fed him so he stuck around. 

But science confirms that dogs and humans have co-evolved to develop sympathetic emotions and motivations, while Indigenous teachings remind us that all living things are indeed related, our needs and actions reciprocal.

“I think it’s important to talk about honoring the feelings we have toward nonhumans, which seem to me extremely valid — or more valid sometimes than our feelings toward other humans,” said Alexandra Horowitz, who is a professor, the head of the Dog Cognition Lab at New York’s Barnard College and the author of several bestselling nonfiction books, including “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know.” 

“I would argue that Edison is not absent,” Horowitz said. “He changed how you perceived spaces, how you spent your day. Even though he’s not present physically, you’re recalling all these different ways that he enlarged what you were seeing, or how you experience, or what you would dare to do. That’s something I feel very similar to the death of a close family member. 

“The little moments, specific details — capturing those keeps them alive. They’re in you, and you go around with him with you, period.” 

Edison was extraordinary to me, my one and only “heart dog.” But as a dog he was not unique — he’s just the one I got close to. It’s our proximity, our relationships, that give our lives meaning. 

“(Dogs) give us emotional practice,” said Seattle author Garth Stein, whose bestselling novel “The Art of Racing in the Rain” is told from the point of view of a highly sensitive and intelligent lab mix named Enzo. “We have the joy, we have the fun, we have the frustrations to deal with. But it helps us forget. It helps us forgive. Dogs are here to teach us something about that. 

“Maybe that’s what Edison is telling you by leaving,” Stein told me. “‘You gotta do this on your own for a little bit.’” 

Over the years, I’ve learned that deep wilderness brings me closer to an ineffable, essential truth. The break from banal urbanity, the physical trials and scenic rewards of long-distance backpacking, the immersion into the perfection of nature — they all combine to narrow the gap between mortality and eternity. Edison was at home at the top of the mountain, the shore of the lake. I hope to find him there again someday.