Will's Red Coat: The Story of One Old Dog Who Chose to Live Again

by Tom Ryan

Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul. —PYTHAGORAS

Less strenuous didn’t mean less exceptional. A mountain doesn’t

know how big or small it is. It simply is. It doesn’t get caught up in the mundane the way we do while massaging our egos, or being urged onward to always do more, to always keep up with others. Increasingly, I understood that happiness comes at the places where we can be still.

It was in the stillness that we fed our souls, but in movement where we spread our wings.

“We teach best what we most need to learn.”

After all, who was I to tell Atticus it wasn’t cool for him to kill a vole while I was eating other animals, most of whom suffered during their short but hellacious lifetimes on factory farms?

At the heart of all of it was one seed. It was kindness. To live kindly was to live mindfully.

Zoos and circuses no longer seemed like fun or educational places. Instead, I saw them as the prisons they are.

“If the roles were reversed, would you be happy living in an aquarium? Do you think you could live behind bars and be satisfied in a zoo? Would you like living in the horrific conditions of animals on factory farms?”

Once Will decided to live, none of those milestones mattered any longer. What I cared about was how I filled his days.

Will may not have been able to hear music, and his body was breaking down, but it occurred to me his life had turned into a song of rapture.

Sharing a trail brings about an intimacy found rarely in other realms. The shared struggle, the views, long miles, and long hours—you can’t help but be close to those with whom you face both challenges and splendor. It is the basis of all true love.

He had surrendered to love and care and allowed it to wash over him like the gentle waters of the Ellis River.

Will did the heavy lifting himself. He made the most important decisions. Whether to live or not. Whether to believe again or to forgive. Whether to love or be loved again.

Anyone who has ever been broken knows that the only one who can rescue you is the one you see in the mirror.

A trust fall, when perhaps no one had ever been there to catch you in the past.

The theologian Frederick Buechner wrote, “Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.”

What I saw in the beginning was an old fellow who was down on his luck. He needed a place to rest his head and his tired body, a place to die with dignity. Heck, I didn’t even have to love him. I just needed to help him get to where he needed to be.

Will was getting weaker by the hour, it seemed, but he was serene. I was ready to let him go, but selfish enough to want a few more days with him.

Words are not always necessary in conveying the most important things in life. Often it’s the space between words that sends the message. In that pause, the sigh, the struggle to fight back a sob. We know when someone is smiling on the other end of the line. We also know when their hearts feel deeply.

We had entered into a sacred period of our lives, and in that acceptance of what was to be and the celebration of what had been, we were creating a sanctified place. Will had performed the ultimate trust fall, and I caught him.

I bought Will his favorite treats, played with him, held him more, and when I washed him in the tub, I felt as if I were preparing him for the mystery beyond. To be entrusted with this act of kindness empowered me. Everything we did in those closing days was a prayer. Every hug, every kiss, each time our eyes met in understanding.

Imagine the dreams those fragrances brought to his world. Imagine the comfort he took in falling deeply into what might as well have been an entire field of flowers.

Always in my head was my old contract with him: Will, you’ve come so far, you don’t owe anything to anyone. You are free to go whenever you want, but gosh, please know that you’re welcome to stay as long as you wish.

There may be some who are still alive but we are no longer close with for any number of reasons, or distance keeps us away from them, or circumstances. It doesn’t mean we love them less, or not at all. Marijane always urged me to offer my love to those who might not be able to accept. “Tommy, still mention them in your prayers. You don’t have to be with someone to offer your love to them. Keep them warm in your heart. You will be surprised how often those feelings will find their way to them.”

I’d always wanted to get Will to the point where pain and fear no longer held him captive. Similarly, I wanted him to meet death as if welcoming a friend after a well-lived life.

I’ve often thought about how people love Atticus, but it was different with Will. Atticus had a presence that was otherworldly, beyond all of us. But something about Will spoke to each and every one of us. He knew heartbreak, hopelessness, disappointment, pain, betrayal, and abandonment—the experiences we recognize in the lines of our own faces when we look into the mirror each day. We can all relate to the emptiness of going without love, understanding, compassion, or empathy. We know what it is like to be lonely or without a friend, whether for a day or a year.

Atticus represents an ideal, a possibly unattainable hope. Will is us, with all our fears, scars, and possibilities.

Will was different. I will never stop imagining what that night in the kill shelter was like for him. It has haunted me since the beginning. When the time came, I wanted to hold Will, and let the last thing he felt be love, and the last thing he saw be my smile and my eyes. I wanted it to happen before he suffered too much.

Here was Will, that shelter long forgotten, his abandonment erased, warmed by quilts made just for him and by the sunshine reaching through the picture window to caress him. He was surrounded by an ocean of color and fragrance that could only seem like heaven on earth. This was what he had made of his life. This was his Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, his “Ode to Joy”!

With shaky legs he made his way down the garden path. He looked all around him, and when he paused too long or reached out too far with his nose, he fell again. He struggled to get up, and I kept helping him. When he tired, he lay down. Even then he tried to crawl across the floor to get closer to all those visitors who had come to say good-bye to him. His eyes were vibrant, brilliant, and alive. Twice he fell asleep, and I covered him.

Will grew light, and for that split second I wanted to pull his life back to me. But it was gone, and I felt it leave. He was gone.

I squeezed the vessel of that body I knew so well against my chest. I wanted it to feel my heart beat. I wanted Will to feel my love for him, and how proud I was to be part of his journey. Finally I raised him above my head in that October meadow and asked the mountain gods to look after him. “He is yours now. Please take care of him. I have loved him like no other.”

I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on top of the disheveled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame.

Whenever a friend experiences the death of one they love, and words are hard to come by, I ask them, “What does your faith tell you? What do you believe? This is when it matters most. This is when faith takes over.”

All the credit for Will’s rescue goes to him. We offered him hope, a home, some help along the way, but what he did with it was out of our control.

This is the core of Will’s story, his choice to live again. He made it that morning he crawled to my bedside after those first weeks, and he made it every day after that. I’ll never underestimate the courage that took. Looking at his various beds around the apartment, listening for snores I would no longer hear, thinking about how I would finally be able to sleep through my nights without a bell ringing or having to give him a surprise bath, I was exhausted. More important, though, I felt reverential. It’s nice to think that love can conquer all. It’s a Hallmark sentiment, and it may offer hope to the hopeless. But for those of us who have loved and lost, it doesn’t ring true. I have loved people in the past who were too broken, too far gone, to live again. They crawl into a bottle or take pills or get lost in anger. I have known some animals who were the same way. They couldn’t remake themselves. They couldn’t rise above their bitterness or what humankind had done to them. A fresh start was not possible, and opening their hearts again was not realistic. They were simply broken to never be made whole again. Love offers us her gifts, but she must be met somewhere in the middle with courage and faith. That’s part of Will’s legacy. He didn’t give up when he had every reason to do so.

Some treks up the mountain have to be made solo.

It was more important to put myself into his place than to look down upon him. If anything, I’d say, “Tell me what hurts.” I never really cared what had happened to him. I was more focused on what we could do to help him move forward.

and Campbell responded that we’re not looking for the meaning of life but for the experience of being alive.

To give your heart, to have it filled and renewed, knowing all the while it will one day break again because of that love—it’s all part of the experience. Vulnerability is a necessary component of love.

In our solitude I truly grasped that Will and I would forever be intertwined—not only with the rest of the world, but within me. That’s how I measure how important something is. I look ahead to when I’m on my deathbed, and if something is important enough, if it has touched me with profound intimacy, I believe it will float to the surface when I’m preparing to die. When that time comes, I know I will be visited by memories of Will.

It wasn’t impossibly difficult to deal with his death, because death doesn’t frighten me. What I mourned was the end of the physicality.

When do you lose someone forever? When are they really gone? I’m convinced it happens when they are no longer in our hearts. I knew Will wasn’t walking with us, but I also knew he was there. The last rose may have floated out of sight, but that little white dog never will.

It’s never too late to trust again, to love or be loved again, and it’s never too late to live again.

Ann Stampfer once told me, “It’s the hikes where something goes wrong, where things don’t turn out as expected, that are the most memorable.”

Whenever I get lost along the way from now on, I’ll consider where I’ve come from, hold the forest and my memories close, and use a map left for me by an old friend.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. —FREDERICK BUECHNER