Both the End and the Beginning

Tonight I watched a dog wander off down the street, most likely to die. He was sitting in my friends' yard when we left for a movie, and I had watched him for a few moments before they came out to the car. He had the look of someone who had settled, perhaps for the last time. I circled him warily, because stray dogs, even in my neighborhood, generally keep on the move. Instead of coming to greet me, he watched me but made no effort to get up. He looked very sick.

We went to the movie and figured he'd be gone when we returned. When I pulled up next to the house, we could see through my headlights that he hadn't moved. One friend tried to approach, but this time the dog took off, trotting painfully down the street in the direction of my own house. I passed him as I drove by and tried not to think about my responsibility to this stray, sick dog, and what options I had at 9:30 at night. I felt in my stomach that knotted feeling, that need, almost, to vomit.

I tried to go about my business in the house - washing dishes, taking care of my own dog, folding laundry - but my thoughts kept returning to the dog I'd just seen. I couldn't help peeking out the front door to see where he had wandered. He was passing in front of my house just then, just wandering really, as if looking for something. I watched him make his way down the street and then, as if making a conscious decision, decide to settle in the neatest, most freshly mowed lawn. He was far enough down the street that he was just a dark tumor on the grass, lit by streetlight.

He's still there. I check on him every so often, but I can't bring myself to walk down there, to approach him myself. I still have the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and the very real urge to do something, maybe to help him. At the same time, I am telling myself that he's unsafe, that a sick dog is a dangerous dog, that he clearly didn't want to be helped - after all he ran away from Dewayne. (In another side of my mind is the voice that says I can't be bothered, that were I to try to help this dog my night and my resources would be spent, and I would suffer the very real emotional consequences of tying my fate to this animal.)

So is that it? Am I simply rationalizing away the call to help a sick animal? Or am I performing the more natural - though no more noble - functions of self-preservation?

Or, though this too may be rationalizing, am I respecting the right of an animal to die in whatever manner he or she may choose - be he dog, be he human?

Maybe all of the above. All I know is that right now I just feel sad.