Surely it was just strangely coincidental, but then on the other hand, perhaps there exists a real reason why people view the conjunction of date and time with such dread when it comes to Friday the thirteenth.  For us, the thirteenth of Friday, in April of the year 2012 represented a very nasty occasion.  It was that evening when our little black miniature poodle experienced a series of dreadful seizures, the force of which twisted her body into impossible shapes, repeatedly thrusting her into the air with electrifying contortions under my husband's horrified eyes.

Later, when I held her trying to comfort her a strange, low-pitched sound of confused pain emanated from her.  She seemed dazed, as though she didn't know what had happened to her.  People undergoing epileptic or other neurological seizures have no memory afterward of what they had experienced.  We have no reason to believe that Button's mind held any memory of her body's explosive convulsions.  But she was clearly experiencing the aftershock, and there was fear there, too.  I held her, spoke quietly to her and eventually she calmed down and became slackly comfortable in my arms.

I did this while my husband was frantically calling around to the 24-hour-emergency medical centre downtown to explain what had occurred.  They, of course, invited us to bring her right over.  It was close to midnight.  At the emergency centre we sat restively concerned while the single veterinarian on duty administered to a cat whom the owner was not certain would ever emerge from the examination, preparing herself mentally to leave the premises with an empty cat box.  I sympathized wholly with her and gave her what little comfort one stranger can render to another.  Little realizing that we would ourselves be placed in the very same situation.

In the end, the cat emerged, and its happy owner was able to return home with her beloved pet.  Under instructions to monitor her condition carefully.

We were puzzled when the veterinarian sent word back with one of her assistants that she could administer some drug to prevent any further immediate convulsions, not fully understanding the purport of the message, and declined.  We waited there for an hour or so, and by that time it was the following day, April 14. 

And we left the premises, on April 14 with one little dog, not the two that we had arrived with.  The little companion that had been by our side for nineteen years and four months was left behind; that was the last day of her life.

It has been seven months since that time, and we continue to find it difficult to cope with her absence.  During our scheduled appointment with our own veterinarian for our toy poodle Riley's annual check-up my husband, who was finding it even more difficult than I did to manage that empty place in our lives, spoke to him about his guilt and sorrow.  He had done everything conceivably possible to extend her life, from administering monthly an oral antibiotic regimen to avoid the recurrence of a dreadfully painful infection that had threatened her life two years previously, to blind-proofing our house to accommodate the still-energetic rambles of a blind nineteen-year-old dog with most of her faculties intact.

The veterinarian knew and recognized the symptoms that he said were serious and needed to be dealt with; an unwillingness to let go of a situation that no power could prevent.  In his twenty years of practise, he could count on the fingers of one hand any dogs that had lived to Button's age.  It was time for her; her heart was giving out, and neurological symptoms of the body winding down its functions impossible to ignore.

His clinching argument was to describe the pain and fear that Button would be certain to experience with another attack such as the one my husband had witnessed, and the fear and anxiety that would assail us as we frantically tried to reach the emergency clinic again, unable this time to comfort a dog whose time had come. 

It helped.  Immeasurably.