When he abstained from sex at breakfast, we knew something had gone horribly awry because every morning for the last 10 years he had been there, mounted and irrepressible. But there he lay, splayed beneath a juniper, his usually lascivious eyes vacant and his fleshy mouth drooping open, his blotchy tongue hanging off to one side. Not quite dead, he waited for several hours until we could rush him to the veterinarian and have several hundred dollars worth of tests done before lapsing into his final coma. And, despite an anxious vigil, Odie passed into oblivion.
Once the shock surrounding my dog's sudden death abated I couldn't help but wonder where he went and what he became, aside from a mangy mass tipped over on the linoleum, destined for incineration. Thoughts of a canine afterlife lingered in my mind, and I thought of him enjoying himself (or suffering) somewhere in one incarnation or another, be it paradise, hell or simply an ash heap. Fumbling through an array of religious materials I found an appropriate quote from Martin Luther, issued upon the death of his dog: "Be thou comforted, little dog. Thou too in resurrection shall have a little golden tail."
Imagining Odie with a golden tail proved difficult, indeed, because his tail was--in life--habitually smeared with excrement. But, with great strain, the thought experiment succeeded at last, and my heart surged with joy in visualizing my childhood companion at play in the fields of the Lord.
Shortly thereafter--on the heels of a brimming cup of coffee and guidance from my spiritual leader at the Perk coffee bar, Tenal Alston--I found another source in favor of pets having eternal life. Eight-year-old Anthony Gomez, when interviewed at a pet-blessing ceremony by the San Diego Union-Tribune, offered the following reason on why his turtle was going to heaven: "She never bit nobody." Well, Odie never bit nobody neither, unless he was hungry, angry, tired or excited, so I figured that was another thing in his favor for securing perpetual bliss with the Creator.
But as night set in, doubts crept in with it as unambiguous words from Leviticus materialized in my mind, along with anxiety about the ultimate resting place of Odie's eternal soul. "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their blood guiltiness is upon them," boomed the thought. And, indeed, Odie liked copulating with other male dogs, an obese Welsh Corgi, in particular. Would this inclination keep him from reaping his eternal reward?
Worse still were his other moments of perversity, including (but not limited to) trysts with my sailboat and the satellite receiver. Could they slam the gates of paradise across his snout?
I think not. It seems to me that God, if he had a hand in the making of dogs, would have addressed every detail precisely, making absolutely certain that any creature without the ability to distinguish between cat feces and Italian sausage could be guilty of no moral transgressions. Odie merely did what felt natural and pleasing to him; the ultimate aim of his life was thoroughly hedonistic, and it worked out well from start to finish. Never did he feel guilt for his behaviors, for his extensive philandering or frequent gluttonous overindulgences with the Thanksgiving leftovers, and it seems to me that he was much the better for it. Overwork never touched him, and neither did neurosis or the vindictive will to power; he was content to accept his own insignificance before the infinitude of the cosmos and seize whatever possibilities for happiness emerged before him.
And while a Chronicle columnist has argued on religious grounds that homosexuality is wrong I don't think he could look my little, dead and furry pup in the eyes and remain unshaken in his conviction. Sweet Odie had no national agenda, no designs to corrupt America's youth or subvert sacrosanct American values. Nay, he merely wanted to be happy, and for him that meant male-doggy posterior. It is patently sad that the case is not so simple for the majority of us who scurry endlessly from triviality to triviality, obsessed with obeying the rules and oblivious to the myriad opportunities for pleasure.
Odie grasped the secret to life that most will never find, doing the things that made him happy when most appropriate, recognizing that the greatest goods in life are not sacrifice and self-abnegation, but rather fulfillment and happiness. And, although he was a dog, we would be well advised to follow his general example (following his exact example would lead to incarceration), since, to paraphrase Kafka, life is but preparation for being dead for a really, really long time.
Matthew Gillum is a Triniy junior. His column appears every third Friday.
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