My mother and I found Bo at a rest stop in Virginia when I was two. He was a German-Shepherd mix, more mutt than purebred. When we lived across from someone who had horses, he would love to run across the road and roll in ungodly amounts of horse poop. He would always stink like a sewer, but could not have looked more pleased with himself. He was deathly afraid of thunder, alternately barking like a dog possessed and cowering in a corner. He survived leukemia, something that we were told only five percent of dogs do. He died last year, on the last day before returning to school from Spring Break.
That day started out like any other that whole week. I was at my dad’s house (my parents are divorced), I woke up around eight, got out of bed around 10, poured myself a glass of orange juice, and returned to my room to watch The Office on Netflix. My father had gone out earlier to take pictures somewhere, and had left my sister and I alone. Bo had been having trouble for a long time at this point, having gone deaf several months before and his back legs no longer being strong enough to support his weight. He spent the entire day, just like every other day of Spring Break 2013, lying on the floor.
I took a break from Season 8 around 1 p.m. and went back out to the kitchen. From there, I could see that Bo was still lying on the ground, just as he had been when I had last emerged. I walked over to him and ran my hand across his stomach. It was then that I noticed a certain hot, heavy stench. Bo had pooped on the floor. I picked him up as best as I could (he was barely more than dead weight at this point), and cleaned up the mess, as well as what I could get out of his fur. In order to make him more comfortable, I picked him up again and laid him on top of a dog bed. He didn’t sound like he was breathing right at this point, so I called my dad and told him. He came home right away. It was soon after that my father decided to call Dr. Adriano Betton, the veterinarian who performed checkups on all of our pets, and have him put Bo down.
My father, sister and I all gathered in the living room, waiting for my mother and Dr. Betton to arrive. First my mother got there, tears springing to her eyes as she looked down on Bo, who couldn’t do more than move his eyes in her direction. When Dr. Betton arrived, he explained to us exactly what was going to happen to Bo: he would be given a shot or two, experience a small amount of pain, go to sleep, and then be taken to a place where Dr. Betton had the equipment to put him down. The ashes, because my father wanted him cremated, would arrive in a week or two. My father helped Dr. Betton pick Bo up once he was asleep, and carried him to Dr. Betton’s van. I picked up the dog bed, and moved it to a corner of the room. I found a puddle of urine underneath.
I was raised Lutheran by my mother and the pastors of Advent Lutheran Church and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. When I was seven, I accepted what they said without hesitation. Jesus performed miracles and died for my sins, God loved me, and the Devil was really bad. I did my duty as a good Christian kid and went to church nearly every Sunday, though quite a few times were under protest, and participated in the various youth group/Bible study programs. Still, I was never very invested in Christianity. It was always more of something that I did than something that I enjoyed. As I grew older, I asked more and more questions of what was in the Bible. How could someone live for 200 years? How could Jesus turn water into wine? How could Moses part the Red Sea? By 11th grade, I had pretty much made up my mind that I was agnostic, because I still assumed that there was a higher power out there. How could there not be?
That puddle made me an atheist, convincing me, beyond a doubt, that there was no God, Yahweh, Allah or Zeus. Bo rolled in poop as happy as could be, barked at thunder, survived leukemia and is in most of my earliest memories. And he died in a puddle of his own piss, his fur matted with his own feces, so weak that he could only move his eyes. What kind of omnipotent being, capable of knowing things about myself I could only guess at, would allow an injustice like that to happen? What sort of kind, loving god wouldn’t let Bo slip away quietly in his sleep? Not any kind of God I can bring myself to believe in.
— Jack Teague
