Now, in his decline, he grew irritable and surly, and ceased
to be our playmate. The last two or three months of his life were very
sad, and when it troubled us to see him so gaunt, with his big ribs
protruding from his sides, to watch his twitchings when he dozed,
groaning and wheezing the while, and marked, too, how painfully he
struggled to get up on his feet, we wanted to know why it was so--why
we could not give him something to make him well? For answer they
would open his great mouth to show us his teeth--the big blunt canines
and old molars worn down to stumps. Old age was what ailed him--he was
thirteen years old, and that did verily seem to me a great age, for I
was not half that, yet it seemed to me that I had been a very, very
long time in the world.
No one dreamed of such a thing as putting an end to him--no hint of
such a thing was ever spoken. It was not the custom in that country to
shoot an old dog because he was past work. I remember his last day,
and how often we came to look at him and tried to comfort him with
warm rugs and the offer of food and drink where he was lying in a
sheltered place, no longer able to stand up. And that night he died:
we knew it as soon as we were up in the morning. Then, after
breakfast, during which we had been very solemn and quiet, our
schoolmaster said: "We must bury him today--at twelve o'clock, when I
am free, will be the best time; the boys can come with me, and old
John can bring his spade.
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