A Great Friend

Wednesday, September 13th, 2006, Fort Smith, Arkansas.
My 13-year-old Golden Retriever died today. His name was Maclean (pronounced "Mack Clain"). I took the name from the author of the book "A River Runs Through It." Maclean was an amazing dog.

After my wife and I spent our last year in the Air Force stationed at separate bases in Korea, we left the military and moved in temporarily with my father in Oklahoma City. We were going to move to Fort Smith, Arkansas where I was to continue flying the F-16 as a member of the 188th Fighter Wing of the Arkansas Air National Guard. Not long after returning from Korea I interviewed for a job as a pilot at American Airlines and was hired there in May of 1992. I bought a Golden Retriever puppy for Sherri from a breeder in Oklahoma City. We named him Pratt. When we moved to our new home in Fort Smith we bought another Golden Retriever and named her Whitney. Shortly after that I began to spend a great deal of time away from home - either flying for American Airlines or flying for the Air National Guard. Pratt & Whitney became Sherri’s close friends. When Pratt was one year old he was out with Sherri for a walk in an open field near our house. Our best guess is that Pratt had a sudden heart attack. He was dead long before we got him to the vet. Sherri and I were heartbroken and Sherri was very lonely. So was Whitney.

And that led me to begin the search for the Golden Retriever who would become Maclean. I made a lot of phone calls, read a lot of books and magazines, talked to a lot of breeders and finally made contact with a lady named Mickey Strandberg in Wisconsin. One of her big-time hunting Golden Retrievers was about to have a litter of puppies. Seven weeks later I flew into Milwaukee, rented a car and drove halfway to Madison and was rewarded with the pick of the litter. I chose one that looked like all the rest but seemed to have the greatest interest in chasing a small rolled up sock. He was energetic, would look me in the eye, would lie on his back in my arms (but not for too long) and liked to play. I placed a blanket in my small pet carrier and brought the pup home with me on the airplane. We drove together to O’Hare Airport where I returned the rental car, cleared security and carefully placed Maclean in the front cargo compartment of an American Airlines jet. The flight took us to Tulsa, Oklahoma where Sherri was waiting to pick up us for the two hour drive to Fort Smith. It was a two-dog house again.

Whitney, our other Golden Retriever, was patient with Maclean – and she had to be. He climbed all over her, chewed on her ears, chased her around the house and generally annoyed her with his constant motion. I began to train Maclean to retrieve from the first day he moved in with us. It was all a game – a fun, wonderful game – where I would throw a rolled up sock and he would run and retrieve. Even as a two-month old pup, Maclean lived to run.

As time went on I began to train Maclean more seriously using the small pond located at the Air National Guard base ten minutes from our house. Before he was one year old, Maclean was retrieving dummies from land and water. He ran faster than any dog I’d ever seen short of a greyhound. And he swam so fast that he created a wake in the water. The colder the air or water the better he liked it. One frigid February day we went out to the pond to find it completely frozen. Maclean looked at me and whined like a baby until I finally broke a hole in the ice. He promptly plopped his butt in the frigid water and lay down on the ice. There was a dirt road that circled the open field nearby and I would let Maclean follow me as I drove my old pick up truck around the track. Before long he was effortlessly running over a mile non-stop. After several months of training I decided to see how fast Maclean could run for a short burst. When he finally started to fall behind the speedometer was at 28 mph. He was an amazing athlete.

Not long after that, American Airlines decided that it no longer had need of my services and furloughed me along with 450 other pilots. I was faced with earning a living for my family in whatever way I could. And that meant taking short-term military assignments in various places throughout the country and the world. Maclean’s serious training came to a halt but we replaced the training with frequent trips to the pond or field to retrieve for fun. But in the end, my dreams of Maclean earning ribbons and titles at field trials and hunt tests evaporated. But our friendship grew stronger.

There were many times that Maclean was the first to great me when I came home late at night after a longer than normal work day. He was always ready to go whenever I was – always ready to chase another dummy – always looking for an excuse to run fast. The first time I went hunting with Maclean - for pheasant in Missouri - he scented a bird in the brush that had grown up around a barbed wire fence and jumped in to chase. When I finally got him out of the brush he was cut in several places and bleeding profusely from his ear. He acted as if he hadn’t felt a thing. Obviously, Maclean’s tolerance for pain was off the scale. I finally got his ear to stop bleeding and patched him up with a butterfly bandage. When I cleaned the wound he never even flinched.

Which probably explains why we didn’t know he had a tumor growing in his belly until it was too late. One day a few weeks ago Maclean began to lay around the house all day. Now that’s not unusual for a 13 year old dog who isn’t supposed to live longer than 15 years anyway. But it was unusual for Maclean. We wondered if he was getting arthritis or just slowing down. Even so, he was always up and around whenever we called. But then one day he didn’t want to get up at all.

Maclean began to want to lay still. And then he lost his appetite. When we took him to our vet we discovered that Maclean had a large mass in his abdomen that would require surgery to remove. Our vet warned us that a dog as old as Maclean might not tolerate surgery well and that the mass would likely be cancer of the spleen. Our choice was difficult: put a 13-year-old dog through major abdominal surgery in hopes that the cancer had not spread and the tumor could be removed granting him another 2 to 3 years of life or.... I didn’t like the “or.”

In the end, we talked about it as a family and decided that Maclean was a truly exceptional dog and that he would probably be able to recover from the surgery. We also decided that it just would not be right to put Maclean to sleep – euthanize him – without knowing for sure that there was no way he could get well. So, last Wednesday, we put Maclean in the back of the pickup and took a ride to the vet’s office. Dr. Thames’ schedule was full that day so he graciously agreed to do the surgery after business hours later that evening. We waited in the open field adjacent to the animal clinic and let Maclean explore and sniff and do what dogs do in an open field knowing that this might be his last day with us. While we waited, a man pulled up in a pick up truck towing a duck hunting boat. In the bag of the pick up was a very old and frail Black Lab. The dog’s owner, a hulk of a man, picked the dog up out of the truck, set him gently on the ground and let him wander around the open field with Maclean. The two dogs sniffed each other briefly and went back to exploring other things. The Lab was terribly thin and couldn't walk well but his nose must have been working as well as ever because he found all the places Maclean had marked in the past few minutes. The man led his old friend back over to the duck boat just as Dr. Thames came out of his clinic. They put the dog into the boat. The man looked into the lab's eyes and took the dog’s head in his hands while the doctor did what had to be done. The hulk of a man started shaking, bent over the side of the boat. Dr. Thames and his assistant did the only thing they could do – they cried with the man and then walked back into the clinic to prepare for the surgery they would do on Maclean. After a few long minutes the man’s body stopped shaking and he lifted his head, wiped his face, and walked back to the truck. Just as he opened the door he stopped short, turned and walked back to the boat where he bent over and began shaking all over again. This time the shaking lasted a little longer but when he raised his head and wiped his eyes he walked back to the truck without hesitation, got in and drove away.

A few minutes later, the vet’s assistant came out of the clinic to tell us that Dr. Thames was ready to start the surgery. My youngest son took Maclean’s leash and walked him into the building and into the surgery room. Now came the hardest part. We had to tell Maclean goodbye before he was sedated because if he couldn’t get well we would not wake him up from the surgery. The last words Maclean heard were mine, “Good boy! Maclean is a good boy!” I said it loudly because he couldn’t hear so well anymore. I took Maclean’s head in my hands and held him as the doc sedated him.

The surgery started several minutes later. It wasn’t long before I saw for myself what had made Maclean want to lay still. He had a large tumor growing on his spleen. I asked the doctor if there was any point in continuing the surgery. He was optimistic because he did not see any immediate evidence that the cancer had spread. He carefully removed the tumor and began to examine the other organs in the body. It was then that he looked up and said, with tears in his eyes, “I’m so sorry.” The tumor had spread to Maclean’s liver and other internal organs. I left the room long enough to tell my waiting family the bad news – to hold them as they cried – and then returned to Maclean. I put my head on his and I after I stopped shaking I raised my head, wiped my eyes, asked the doc to stop Maclean’s heart. A few moments later, my buddy stopped breathing – and stopped hurting – and I was alone in a room with two people who just watched another man lose his best friend.

My youngest son, the one who loves to hunt and had a special connection wtih Maclean asked "the" question later that night. "Dad, will Maclean be in heaven when we get there?"

I was as honest as I knew how to be and told him that I really, really hoped so.

We both cried a while and told each other our favorite stories about the life we shared with a great friend named Maclean.