Our dog Basil is almost 119 in person years.
This means that if Basil were in fact human, he would have been born in 1885, the year that both Victor Hugo and Ulysses S. Grant died.
It's also the year that Vincent van Gogh painted "The Potato Eaters" and Gilbert and Sullivan staged "The Mikado" and George Eastman manufactured coated photographic paper.
It's also the year that John M. Fox of Philadelphia went to Scotland and learned how to golf and came back to the States, where he tried like crazy to get a tee time BUT COULDN'T because oops! There were no golf courses here! Golf hadn't been invented in America yet!
So John M. Fox got busy and invented golf in America, and my mother hasn't seen my father since.
If our dog were human, he'd be news on his birthday. They'd wheel him out from a care center somewhere in the south of France to meet the press, and he'd sit there with a jaunty little beret on his head and a gummy grin on his face as light bulbs flashed and a spokesperson told his life story. How he'd been born in a little French village famous for its cheese. How he'd been in the Resistance during the war, albeit he was an old hound even back then. How he still drank a cup of strong black coffee every morning and played "Alouette" on his street organ every afternoon, and how he attributed his longevity to chasing women and smoking three cigars a day. Then everyone would shout "LET'S DO THE CAN-CAN!" and light bulbs would flash again, and then Basil would disappear inside the care center.
Until his next birthday rolled around.
Our dog Basil is so old that he can't hear or see or even smell much anymore. He doesn't come when we call. He doesn't protect us from advancing mailmen. He leaves the cat alone, no doubt to pout and wonder why she can't get his attention these days (what's a girl to do!). He bumps into furniture and walls and the backs of our legs when we are standing in the kitchen talking to one another.
Lately he's taken to hurling himself down the front staircase like he's Scarlett O'Hara. Whenever this happens I rush to his side, but he always climbs to his feet and staggers away without limping. Then he finds himself a sunny spot to snooze —usually on the rug I'm trying to vacuum — and takes a ridiculously LONG nap.
When Basil used to nap, his upper lip and feet would twitch, and we would wonder what it is that dogs dream about. But now he is perfectly still when he sleeps — so still that occasionally we are certain he won't wake up.
"Is it time yet?" my husband sometimes asks tentatively while gazing down at our dog who is too old to even dream. He leaves certain life-and-death matters to me, because I'm the one who grew up with cats and dogs, so I'm the one who knows when it's time. Time to hold a pet and let him slip away while you soothe him in your arms.
I have made this call before, but it's never easy. Who wants to play God? Not me. Not even when I'm granting final blessings.
Meanwhile, I tell my husband no, it's not time yet. And I hope I'm not just being selfish because this dog was the dog our kids played with when they were babies, and when Basil goes, yet another piece of their childhood goes, too.
"How can you tell?" my husband asks.
I shrug. "Because he still likes to lie in the sun."
And when I sit outside in the morning and let the May sun touch my skin, I think maybe — for now at least — that's enough.
E-mail: acannon@desnews.com