Puppy-dog tales:: Near-death experience puts us within whisper of a divine mystery

This is a story about a boy and his God. It was spring. I had moved to Albany a month earlier to be with my beshert, Robyn. The late winter rains were receding, the days lengthening, and I was ready to start life afresh.

One day, my dog Lisa, a bright-eyed dobie mix, began limping for no apparent reason. X-rays revealed hip dysplasia. A sad diagnosis, but no surprise, as 8-year-old Lisa was getting on in years. The vet prescribed pain meds.

But Lisa got worse. Within a day, the limping morphed into lassitude. She wouldn't eat. We worried.

The next night she threw up on herself, a sickening yellow vomitus the color of death. I found her in the morning, slack and vacant-eyed. Frightened out of our minds, we raced her back to the vet.

Tests showed Lisa had leptospirosis, a deadly bacterial infection. Dogs contract it drinking rainwater befouled by raccoon urine. Just like the puddles Lisa liked to lap on our walks along the greenway.

The vet sent us to U.C. Davis, home to the finest veterinary facility in California. We didn't have long. Lisa was fading by the hour.

I sped northeastward on I-80 past the steep green hills of Vallejo and flatlands of Solano County. Lisa lay motionless on the backseat.

In the car, I screamed at God: "Why? Why now, just as I launch a new life? And why Lisa, the sweetest soul you ever created? I may have done some rotten things in my life, but don't punish me by taking her!"

At Davis, a team of vets whisked Lisa away to begin immediate i.v. antibiotic treatment. Her kidneys had shut down. The doctors just shook their heads.

When facing the death of a loved one (human variety), there's plenty to do -- cook a casserole, send flowers, hold a hand — but not much to do for yourself. I learned on those blustery spring days that prayer was the best thing for me to do.

Thus began a curious 10-day colloquy with God.

I shlepped out to Davis daily. Since I could only visit Lisa for a few minutes, I had time on my hands. So I'd walk around the campus, sip coffee in the cafeteria, read up on the canine renal system in the medical library and wander over to the corrals to pet the ailing horses.

There I held my private conversations with HaShem.

I had kept pets most of my life, so I understood the miraculous love between people and their companion animals. With all of my cats and dogs, even with my son's pet rat (who lived only 20 months), I had developed profound soul-to-soul connections.

That was the whole point of having a pet. Even with something as seemingly insignificant as a lab rat, relationship was possible: a relationship that crossed the arbitrary boundaries of species, a relationship that reflected the breadth and bearing of the divine. It always seemed very Jewish to me to have and to hold an animal.

So I begged God for Lisa's recovery. She was too young to die, and too precious to lose. She was (I explained) His daughter, created, I was sure, in His image too.

Lisa improved. By day six, I could take her on short walks. By day nine, I introduced her to the horses. By day 10, we bade farewell to the doctors who saved her and headed back to Albany.

She'd lost 20 pounds and she wasn't crazy about her new kidney-friendly food. But once at home, Lisa curled up on the old couch, putting up with 1,000 teary kisses from Robyn and me.

Two years later, Lisa is fine.

Sometimes I wonder whether my tefillah did the trick. I don't know the answer. Lisa might have recovered fully had I done nothing. Or she might have died had I prayed even harder. Praying can be a capricious business.

Now I'm back to the illusion of permanence that governs normal life. I've already forgotten, perhaps out of necessity, how abruptly everything can change for the worse.

But my conversations with God on the lawns of Davis helped me survive the ordeal. That near-death experience put me within a whisper of a divine mystery, and I found I desperately needed to talk. Thankfully, we Jews have a language for that.




Dan Pine lives and kvetches in Albany. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).