Benno

Have you ever loved a dog so much it broke your heart?

That was the diagnosis my doctor gave me in January, a little more than a week after our dog Benno left us. I made an appointment because I was anxious, couldn’t sleep and felt like my heart was bouncing around in my chest. Even though I am only 50 and healthy, I worried that I might have a heart problem, or even have had a series of small heart attacks.

After listening to my heart, my doctor asked me if I had been under any particular stress in recent weeks. My eyes started to well up and I told him about Benno. He nodded sympathetically and told me he thought I had broken-heart syndrome. 

I had heard of it, but I thought it was just a saying, a way for people to describe the pain they feel at a time of immense grief. But it’s actually a real physical condition, a “temporary disruption of your heart’s normal pumping function” brought on by stressful or sad situations, according to the Mayo Clinic. 

My doctor said he had only ever seen it in three other patients my age, and that it would get better with time. But Benno was a special dog. It would take a while.

I grew up with dogs and I wanted my son Mattis to have the same experience. Like many young boys, he had been lobbying for a puppy from a young age. When he was six, I felt like the time was right.

I found a farm that had a litter of Labrador retriever mix puppies ready to be adopted. My husband Lars and I kept our destination a secret as we headed there with Mattis, but I had a basket lined with blankets and a stuffed lion toy hidden in the back of the car.

“Where are we going?” Mattis asked. We couldn’t resist teasing him. “We are going to pick up a sibling for you, a little brother or sister.” Predictably, that didn’t go over so well. “No, I don’t want a sibling, I want a puppy!” 

Once we had told him our real destination and Mattis got over his initial excitement, we had the impossible task of picking one of the seven puppies in the litter. Mattis came up with the solution — whichever pup picked up the stuffy toy we brought was the one we would take home. That was Benno.  

Mattis and Benno grew up together and even celebrated their birthdays together, since they were a day apart. For Mattis’s eighth birthday and Benno’s second, we celebrated in the forest, my son’s choice because he knew they would both have fun.

It was late November and it started snowing. The kids and the dog didn’t care. They had a blast playing hide and seek (Benno’s favourite game) and capture the flag. We brought a two-burner stove and cooked some hot dogs, which Benno enjoyed as much as the kids did. 

Benno would sleep right beside his best friend every night. While Mattis was brushing his teeth before bedtime, Benno would wait outside the bathroom for him, but sometimes he was just too tired from playing and he headed to the bedroom on his own. By the time Mattis climbed into bed, Benno would already be snoring. 

You wouldn’t expect a big, strong dog like Benno to be afraid of the dark, but he was. After getting sprayed by a skunk one night, he repeatedly balked at going out the front door for his last walk of the day. We finally managed to convince him there were no skunks in the back yard so he could do his business there, but the front yard remained a no-go zone for him after the sun set.

Benno was part of the family — wherever we travelled by car, he came along. If we went overseas, he would stay with grandma near the ocean, where he could swim all day long. His favourite trick was to push his ball off the dock with his nose and then jump in after it, doing the job retrievers are born to do.

He loved parties because the house was full of people. He would greet everyone who rang the doorbell with a stuffy in his mouth. At Easter, he was as enthusiastic as the kids running around looking for hidden eggs. But Benno thought any time someone in the family came home from school or work was cause for celebration. His tail couldn’t wag fast enough to express his joy.

Last fall, we took Benno to the vet for a checkup and some shots. He’d had a small lump on his back for a while, but the veterinarian told us it was probably benign and to just keep an eye on it.

This time, the lump felt a bit different, so the vet took some blood for tests. Benno was his usual self, tolerant of the vet’s poking and prodding but eager to get the heck out of there.    

The last joint birthday celebration, a few days later, was different. Mattis was turning 16 and Benno was 10. I had a surprise party planned for both of them on Benno’s birthday, but the night before, we went out for a family dinner. Just as we were getting ready to leave, the phone rang. It was the vet with the test results.

I told Lars that I didn’t want to find out about the tests until after the surprise party. Friends greeted Mattis and Benno at the door with noisemakers and both my boys had a fun time.

Later that night, I could feel my heart fluttering in my chest. It was odd and a bit frightening.

We talked to the vet the next day. It was the worst possible news. Benno had lymphoma, a type of cancer, and we were told he had only a month or two to live. 

We tried our best to do all his favourite things one last time — last swim in his favourite creek, last snowy mountain hike, last New Year’s Day plunge in the ocean with all the crazy people for whom it’s a yearly ritual. Then as before, Benno led the charge into the frigid water. We also made sure he was able to say goodbye to his friends and ours.

On the first Friday in January, Benno was playful and happy, running around like his normal self. But by Saturday, we could tell that it was almost time. Benno didn’t have the energy for anything more than a slow walk around the block. Sunday was his last Sunday.

The palpitations have passed, but my broken heart is still a long way from being mended. Love you forever, Benno.