Pudgie the Shih Tzu was loved, and he was worth every penny

The little dog was with us for 16 years, and since we had him put down on a cold, rainy morning a few days ago, the house feels too empty and quiet for all of us.

This was the great Pudgie, whose exploits were occasionally chronicled in this space, especially to illustrate the absurd lengths to which most of us go to keep our pets happy.

In recent months, I wrote that he was hanging on just to run up staggering vet bills and eat gourmet dog food and drive me to the poorhouse, but that was just shtick for the column.

The truth was, everyone in the family loved the little guy, and I would have happily pulled out the VISA card every time he sneezed or eyed a can of top-shelf chow if it gave him more time on this Earth.

Sixteen years is a pretty good run for a dog, but the last couple of months had been rough on Pudgie.

He started having seizures, most of them characterized by violent head-shaking.

Phenobarbital was prescribed, but the medicine made him groggy. He had trouble walking and climbing stairs.

Then the seizures worsened, and the vet said the cause could be a brain tumor. Treatment options were limited - and painful for the dog.

Eventually, my wife and I made the decision to put the dog down.

This, of course, essentially involves a pet owner playing God, and I am about the furthest thing from God you will ever see. But even a mope like me can see when a dog is suffering and has lost the spark of life.

If you've never had to put a dog to sleep, you're lucky, because it's a surreal and heartbreaking experience.

Right up until the procedure, you walk the dog and feed him and talk to him like it's just another day.

Then you put him in the car and drive to the animal hospital with tears in your eyes as the rest of the world goes off to work, sipping their lattes, blasting their radios and shouting at the fools who cut them off in traffic.

Fortunately, the people who run Timonium Animal Hospital are total professionals and wonderfully caring, which helped when my wife and I showed up as emotional wrecks with an old, sick dog in tow.

The whole thing didn't take long.

In a small examining room, Dr. Christine Gernhart injected Pudgie with a sedative while my wife held him. Then I held him for a few minutes as he went limp and put his head down. Finally, it was time to say goodbye.

If you want, you can watch your dog get the final needle - essentially an overdose of anesthesia that will end his life - and people do it all the time.

But that was more than we could handle, and we left as a kindly woman named Carrie Clausman wrapped Pudgie in a blanket and took him back to Dr. Gernhart.

And that was it. Twenty minutes later, we were back home, and I was gathering up the dog's dish and his little bed and sticking them in the crawlspace.

Why was I in such a hurry to remove all traces of an old dog's life? I'm not sure. Somehow, I think I was trying to make it easier for our youngest son, Jamie, when he came home from school to a house without a dog for the first time in his life.

People get a dog for different reasons. We brought Pudgie home in 1992 for this one: Our oldest son, Sean, was afraid of animals.

A year earlier, when he was 8, he'd been bitten by a cat. I know, I know; who gets bitten by a cat?

But somehow my kid managed to do it, and he was fearful of all creatures. He wouldn't go to birthday parties or sleepovers if there was a dog or cat in the house.

"Get a pet," someone told us, "and your kid's fear will be gone in no time."

It was great advice. But what kind of pet?

We figured a cat would freak Sean out and he'd end up on a shrink's couch 20 years later, sobbing into a tissue and recounting how his parents tortured him by bringing home the very animal he feared most.

So we decided on a dog. A small dog, my wife insisted; one that isn't too yappy and won't trash the house and shed all over.

A few days later, we pulled up to the home of this crazy Shih Tzu breeder who lived in northern Baltimore County.

When we got to his house, he let the puppies out from behind a gate where they'd been sleeping with their mother.

Then this guy laid facedown on the floor, and all the puppies jumped on top of him, yipping and tumbling over each other.

Oh, this guy was nuts, all right. But it was a great sales tactic: puppies in action.

We chose the fattest puppy, who also happened to be the most energetic. Chubby and wired - that's a combination you don't see too often in dogs. But that was Pudgie. He was like the Jack Black of puppies.

Within weeks of Pudgie's arrival in our house, Sean's fear was gone. And the bonus was this: For the rest of his life, we had a great dog to love.

Sixteen years - that's a pretty good run. We were lucky to have him.

kevin.cowherd@baltsun.com