Linda Tintle and Bandit
Linda and Bandit. Photo courtesy of Dr. Linda Tintle
It was 1970. I was 15. We had moved to a new home in a rural area, just a few towns over from the suburban neighborhood where I had spent a mostly idyllic childhood, but our new address may as well have been in an alternate universe. My Great Dane, Bandit, had attacked a new friend from my new high school. As we two girls approached my front door in single file with me in the lead, he bashed out the screen door, ran for me, spotted her, sprang through the air knocking her flat on her back on the ground and biting ferociously into her neck. It happened in a few instants and changed everything.
He was scheduled for euthanasia after 10 days of post-bite quarantine in our house. Bandy was my best friend in a world that was wildly out of my control. I had spent 10 days lying with my head on his chest, stroking him, murmuring through tears how much I loved him, how much I would miss him, and sobbing how terribly sorry I was for all of this.
I never doubted that euthanasia was the best choice. He had bitten me once before this episode but that had been when I had thrown my arm between him and another dog in a dogfight. I still bear the scars on my forearm from that over 50 years later. The wide-eyed look of horror on his face the moment he realized he had my arm between his jaws is one I will never forget.
He was a high strung, unpredictable, unneutered 120-lb male and I didn't have the knowledge or skills back then to properly manage his issues and give him the secure boundaries and training he would have needed. Hell, I didn't have the boundaries or discipline to manage myself in that chaotic dysfunction of the 1970s Meyer household.
My friend's very wealthy father stated that if the dog was put down, he wouldn't sue us since my friend had been terrified but her wounds were minor. But even without that threat, I couldn't live with the idea that he might more seriously injure another person, and I did not have other options. I did not have the ability to keep him or anyone safe.
I was a freshman in high school. I did not get on the bus that morning, the only day that I missed that school year. My mother drove me to Dr. Meincke's office near our old home. I had grown up in the shadow of the veterinary hospital that had bordered our old neighborhood. He had helped me get my Girl Scout badge in animal first aid and restraint. I trusted and admired him. The man never turned away a neighborhood child with an injured bird or squirrel and he shaped how I saw veterinarians and the profession.
We did it on the cement porch outside the hospital entry. He had me squat next to Bandy, hold out the dog's big leg and hold off the vein. I can still vividly recall the bloom of red blood back into the syringe as he checked to see that he was in the vein. He injected the thick solution and time slowed. I gradually felt Bandit slump toward the ground. Time returned to normal speed as I heard my mother wailing and crying hysterically behind Dr. Meincke. As I curled down to cradle Bandit's loose dying body, Dr. Meincke gently lifted me and told me to go comfort my mother, that she needed me more than Bandit did.
I raged internally, a capped off volcano. Mentally screaming in pain at a cruel god, at my mother who should have been there to comfort me instead of vice versa, at everything. Mom drove me to school from there. I approached the principal's office to explain my tardiness. The secretary irritably asked me to explain why I was so late. “I just killed my f*cking dog,” my teenage fury spewed in her face before I blindly ran to my next class.
I thought of all this today as I euthanized a dog with end-stage cancer. As the blood bloomed back into the syringe, I helped him pass over the rainbow bridge as his human wept. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again.
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