It’s one more journey with a dog who’s a breed apart

LIFE is a journey we take through time, measured by the distance we cover on the way to the end. It’s not truly a physical measurement but a standard by which we are judged, or judge ourselves, as our destination comes into view.

I think about this as we near the completion of a 2,700-mile driving trip through Northern California and Oregon, because there’s mortality on my mind. The journey, you see, was in part for the good dog Barkley because, as I said earlier, he’s not well and he needed a break.

He’s loving every mile of it.

He sniffs the aromas of changing climes as we roll through small towns and over mountain passes. He barks at the forests and the rivers and the starry nights and puts his face to the winds that blow through sunny days and rainy afternoons. The morning chill is his friend and so are blustery evenings.

Nothing goes unnoticed in Barkley’s journey through biomes of such beauty that they imprint in full glory on the memory. No color will ever fade, no river’s rush will ever be silenced as, in future times, we pause to consider that portion of life we have just passed through.

Barkley is dying. I don’t know of a good way to say that. It’s why this trip is his. We want to repay him in some small way for the eight years of loyalty and companionship he has given us. He absorbs nature in such a way as nature will someday absorb him.

His illness was discovered last May when Cinelli and I were in Europe. Our son called to say that Barkley wasn’t well. One can argue, as my wife does, that the illness, although not caused by our absence, revealed itself because Barkley missed us. What impact emotions play on the conduct of our physical health is a subject beyond my ability to even discuss.

Our son, who was caring for Bark, took him to a veterinarian. Alerted by his symptoms, she ordered a battery of tests. The results ended up in the office of an animal oncologist, who diagnosed Barkley’s illness as a virulent form of leukemia. She gave him no more than a year to live. That was six months ago.

I run the events through my mind as I walk him through a forested glen. His energy level is almost beyond my ability to keep up as he pulls at the leash to see what’s behind the next tree, or over the trail’s next rise. I let him run free and he leaps and spins in excitement, doing a dog’s dance in the shaded woods.

A springer spaniel, he was bursting with vigor the day he was given to us as a puppy, racing into my writing room when the bell of the fax machine rang, tearing the emerging paper to shreds, and running to the door when that bell rang, almost leaping into the arms of whoever was there. His tail still wags with dynamic energy, thumping against the floor where he lies or against any wall he’s standing near.

It wasn’t so when the disease was first surging through him. His tail didn’t thump and his eyes didn’t glow. When chemo drove the cancer into remission, his energy returned briefly, but subsequent mixtures of chemicals left him in pain, crying all night as he lay on a couch in our bedroom where he sleeps. At one point, unable to bear the pain he was in, I was ready to tell the vet to help Barkley slip gently into his dreams.

I couldn’t do it. He deserved to end life on his own terms, not euthanized into darkness because we could not, or would not, care for him. We ordered an end to the chemicals being administered daily. While they may have offered temporary relief, they would not in the long run allow him more than just a few days or weeks of additional time. And there would be no quality of life to the endowment, only days of emptiness and nights of misery.

That was about three months ago. Since then, the leukemia has been in remission,

Barkley has gained back the weight he had lost and his energy level exceeds mine. His tail wags at supersonic speed as he greets Cinelli, his special friend, whom he follows wherever she goes, and waits for her on a mat by the door when she leaves the house.

She feeds him special meals prepared twice a day, mixtures designed to fuel his strength and settle his stomach.

Despite Barkley’s signs of good health, the oncologist tells us there is no mistaking her diagnosis. He will not overcome this particular illness, she says. He will die.

The road winds out of the mountains, past the flora of the high desert, through the great central valleys of California, over the Grapevine and down into the sprawling megalopolis that is L.A., with all of its fury and bustle, its traffic and its noise, its vistas and its confusion.

As we roll into our oak-shaded driveway, Barkley smells the familiarity and can hardly wait to leap from the car and loudly announce his presence. His journey through distance is over. One can only wonder where the journey through time will take him, and when it will end.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.