Not long ago, I was sitting at the dining room table, writing an early morning note to a friend. I mentioned how the night before — in the kind of fierce and mindblowing storm that is a hallmark of this winter — I had taken our dog Bentley on a fast walk to a nearby field. It was cold. The w ind made a wailing sound. Bentley ran to the middle of the field, curious and elated, while the gusts created ribbons of snow that broke over him like waves on a beach. Everything about it had this wild, I-had-never-seen-anything-exactly-like-it beauty, the out-of-nowhere revelation you sometimes find only by making your way to a hard place. Bentley was always up for it. I told my friend — thinking of that scene with awe — how it was the kind of moment that, well, brings the dog out in the dog. As I finished that note, Bentley was sleeping on his bed, a few feet away – the place where he always went while I was writing. Something in my body language as I wrote about the walk, some motion or glance I didn’t know I made, was a signal. He shifted out of a deep sleep to stand up, stretching, before he sat down at my feet. He somehow understood: I was thinking about him, and about his walks.  If so, he was ready. Bentley, at one. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current In a manner bordering on sacred mystery, he could read every person in our family in that same way. Bentley died a few days ago, six weeks past the day when he turned 11. It was a shock. He had canine diabetes, and he did well for three years with insulin injections, but the vet gently warned us a long time ago of what would someday and inevitably happen — kidney failure and a swift descent that finally arrived with a jolt last weekend. Bentley was fine, and then he wasn’t. Fast. Before we had any real chance to sort it out he was suffering, and we were in a circle around him at the vet’s with a few minutes for goodbye. My daughter held up her phone so my older son in Brooklyn could say what he needed to say to this dog, sprawled out quiet on a blanket. The vet gently went to work, and we went home stunned, in disbelief. I contemplated all of it for a while before I decided to write about Bentley, because the world is full of such grief and our dog is our dog. But I think sometimes it matters to write the true thing, especially if that true thing involves places I know many others have gone, as well. Most of all, it’s occurred to me over the last few days — amid that weird broken rhythm in the house after a dog you love has vanished — just how much I owe him. He came to us in summer 2015. My wife and I happened to be at the CNY SPCA in Mattydale on another mission when someone brought him in. What he provided to us, then and now, us is a reminder — as the SPCA goes through so many self-inflicted hardships and spasms — of the transformative power of what that organization can potentially offer for both abandoned animals and countless families. Bentley was an older pup, already a pretty big guy. We could see him through a window, running around an intake room — those big ears up — as they did his papers. In appearance, he was clearly a whole lot of just about every breed imaginable, the classic “Mattydale Terrier” — a DNA test years later, for the fun of it, would show a particularly generous mixture of pit and shepherd — and the decision took us about 30 seconds. Yeah, we said. Sign us up. We brought him home in August. He joined our other dog, Luna, an Australian shepherd rescue who died three years ago, at 14. Bentley was what they called him in the shelter and the name that fit him best, and he was both incredibly loving and — for a while — an incredible handful. Accustomed to abandonment, he chewed everything in sight if we even so much as left the room — but in the intensity of that response was the greatness of the dog. We learned, educating ourselves on that behavior, how an anxious and traumatized dog will find a thing rich with your scent, and chewing it becomes a kind of relief, so to grow angry with him was to miss what he was trying to say. His life was hard. He’d been abandoned. We had to prove we would not leave him, too. It took time. The end result was treasure, a unique and intense bond between that dog and all five people in our family. My wife and I are in our mid-60s. At one time or another, all three of our grown kids, then in their 20s, lived at home while he was here — or gathered at our house for long hours, during the pandemic. In that sense, Bentley will always be our last true family dog. That is a giant part of why there is such absence in these rooms right now. Bentley, as a pup, hears my son’s voice from his kennel at the SPCA. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current Yet if I am being honest, his role went a long way beyond all of that. He wasn’t the only one finding his way during the time when he came to us. I remember — in that summer — how I would be alone in the car, driving across the city, and the things worrying me would descend with such sickening and solitary force that my hands would start to shake, as I held the wheel. I know now what I didn’t want to recognize then, at least not in that moment. I was suffering from depression. Severe depression. It was intertwined with other sorrows and real concerns in our lives, but it arrived with its own distinct and shattering feeling of emptiness — a gray room, with no way out — that was so bleak I don’t even like to think about how it felt to be inside. Every day, I would wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. and feel my way around those walls — those early morning hours maybe the worst time of them all. Sometimes I would go down in the basement and just lean against the washer, arms folded against my gut amid the tools and cans of paints, eyes shut and helpless to roll back this cascade. In October of that year, in a decision I made after going sleepless for a couple of days, I resigned after almost three decades of writing for The Post-Standard. I was 56. I had no job lined up. I had no plan. I still needed to work, and for the first time since I was 14 I had no job. The whole moment had the sensation of falling down the stairs, without really caring how I landed. The sudden absence of the calling at the center of my life only amplified, if that is the word, the whole sense of emptiness. I look back on it now, understanding what it was and where it could have led, and I know I am fortunate. Unbelievably. I got through it because of my wife and kids, and some extraordinary friends, and a warm and wise therapist, and eventually… after I found my feet doing contract work, on the SU hill… because some editors at The Buffalo News asked me to start writing columns again in an ancient newsroom that felt like home, which mattered more than I think they will ever fully understood. Bentley, as an elder, Cayuga Lake. Credit: Courtesy Sarah Kirst Through all of that, through love and faith, I found the way out of the room. Still, to get out of it meant, well, I had no choice but to go through it. When I think about the longest days during those times, I think of this: Almost every evening, I would call Bentley and Luna and we would walk to a nearby field, where I would meet this little group of people who showed up with their dogs. They know who they are. They had their own worries, profound worries, which helped me every day to stop thinking about mine. The dogs would run until they were exhausted and those gatherings — those conversations — became structure and purpose at a time when structure and purpose were exactly what I felt as if I had lost, maybe for good. Bentley’s take on it all was simpler. He decided he trusted me, and that was that. Forever. He quickly grew into this barrel-chested rescue with Holstein markings and these work-of-art spotted and velvet ears… as my daughter said, the most beautiful dog ears she’s ever seen. If I walked around the house, he followed. He was absolutely confident I knew where I was going, and knowing he believed it … that was no small thing. For years, until his age made it difficult, he jumped up every night to sleep at the foot of our mattress. In the living room, if friends were over or we were just sitting around, he would sprawl out and put one paw on your foot… Which is what he did at the absolute end the other day, in that circle at the vet’s. He was a vessel, in every way, of devotion. Every member of my family can tell you about their own distinct and intimate bonds, but what he did for me — through love, trust and allegiance — was to compel me to look outside myself when this river of nothing kept pulling me inward, where I knew all I’d find would be a hole. Bentley, as we parted. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current That seems, now, a long time ago. A different guy. Except it wasn’t, and the lessons I learned in that place — I hope — leave me wiser forever about the unseen struggles others around me are facing each day, as well as igniting lifetime appreciation for those who kept the faith I’d find the best path back. As embodied, always, by that big-eared spotted dog. If I could have one wish right now, as I sit at the keyboard near his empty bed: Bentley would be there one more time, sensing somehow that I’m thinking and writing about our walks. As always, he’d shake his head with those spotted ears, tags on his collar jangling as he roused himself from sleep, and then he’d wander over, yawning, before he settled by my legs – staring up with a gentle intensity that simply boils down to this: He would trust us to go anywhere, even the hardest place. The post Sean Kirst: The dog who knew the way out of the room appeared first on Central Current. ...read more read less