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

by Tom Ryan

Campbell said, “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life . . . The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damn thing in the cave that was dreaded has become the center.”

There are lyrics in the late Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem” that are perfect for what transpired that weekend. “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” That’s the way it was with William. The crack brought the light, and the light brought a new chance, and the chance brought a new beginning with new friends and a new voyage was born. Something else had changed on that May morning. There was no more William. There was only a Will, and his desire to live. Once again, spring was following winter.

I was ignoring the contemporary professionals on animal behavior and relying instead on a pair of fellows from Concord, Massachusetts, named Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. I suppose that might make me the only person to ever nurture first a puppy and then an angry old dog on the tenets of transcendentalism.

To help him put on weight, I added oil to his meals, gave him vitamins and supplements for his hips, and put his food and water in elevated bowls, which put less stress on his neck and legs and made swallowing easier.

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.”

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our journey.”

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. —RACHEL CARSON

There’s a cliché spun again and again by many who love dogs. “They have so much to teach us.” I agree with that, for I have learned much from the animals I’ve known. But I also believe we have much to teach them. For as long as people and dogs have been pairing up—about ten thousand years—it has been a symbiotic relationship. We teach each other. We take the lead in the civilized world while they often take the lead in the natural world. Together we have evolved into two species with a unique and universal friendship.

Our lessons never end. We teach ourselves, and we teach others, and the favor is returned as we become students.

Nature can show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds. —ECKHART TOLLE

The nursing home didn’t make it a priority for the residents to prepare to die with dignity and peace. Many of the residents were already dead, or at least they weren’t really living. Too often I found them sitting in their urine or feces, isolated in their dim rooms with food crusted on their clothes and faces. Women would sit staring out a window for hours at a time in a trance of loneliness. Men would be just as still, often in the dark, with stubble and dandruff and threadbare clothes. Theirs was a still life, an empty and forgotten life. So much for transformation. For all that they had survived to get to that point in life, no one was there to take note or to celebrate their years.

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return. —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

the best way to change this world is to change yourself and your perception of it.

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I quoted Barbara Brown Taylor, describing how my life had changed on the trails, “The only real difference between anxiety and excitement was my willingness to let go of fear.”

Richard Rohr wrote, “Faith is not for overcoming obstacles; it is for experiencing them—all the way through!”

I discovered the faith I had always longed for in the last place I looked for it—within me.

Nothing is guaranteed, nothing but this moment. I told myself this again and again. That doesn’t just go for elderly dogs and people. It goes for all of us, for all of life. It is forever fleeting.

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.

“Thousands of people who say they love animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs.”

Long after I moved north, a farm in Newbury, Massachusetts, was in the national news because of the haunting sounds their neighbors were reporting at night, wails of sadness and heartache. People from miles around thought a cow was being tortured. It was, but not in the way they thought. Local police reported she was mourning the loss of her calf, who had been taken from her soon after its birth so that milk meant for the calf could go to people.

Mark Hawthorne’s Bleating Hearts: The Hidden World of Animal Suffering has found its way among the ten most important books I’ve ever read, and it can be found on my favored shelf not far from Emerson’s Collected Essays or Thoreau’s Walden.

My compassion for animals flows more easily than it does with fellow humans, but I am reminded once again to strive to be a better human through my relationships with nonhuman animals. The writer Ram Dass said, “We are all just walking each other home.”

How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days. —JOHN BURROUGHS

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

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

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.”

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

In Japanese, the word kintsukuroi means “to repair with gold.” It is the art of mending broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more valuable for having been broken. What once was ruined forevermore glitters and glows at the broken places.

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 the face of all the death we see in November, and with frozen December approaching, all those seeds scattered across the forest floor are nature’s way of saying, “Onward, by all means.”

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

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope. —THOMAS MERTON

When life is challenging and I find that I’m blocked by fear and the only way forward is through the darkness, I’m most hopeful when I remember what’s important: simplicity. Simplicity in living, in loving, and in making our way through this world.

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. You see, I once knew a little white dog who taught me that old age is not a disease. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. —FREDERICK BUECHNER

Being human means being aware, trying to be kind, continued growth, compassion, and empathy.