With not even a whimper

WE SAID

goodbye to the best dog ever the other day. Of all things, his heart went. Then so did ours.

“Well, he’s not whimpering,” the vet said as Lucky lay struggling to breathe on the stainless-steel exam table.

“He never whimpered,” I said, “his whole life.”

And that’s where I sort of lost it.

He never whimpered, Lucky. Not when toddlers pulled his ears or French-kissed him without permission. Or sang “London Bridge Is Falling Down” over and over and over. Plus an encore.

He didn’t whimper when he had to urgently go out, or had to urgently come in, or wanted up on the bed to keep you warm. In August.

Nope, no whimpering for this selfless little dog. Lucky would just stand there, looking at you with his dark Pacino eyes. That was enough.

Lucky was a blond cocker spaniel of Asian decent, given to us 13 years ago by Korean neighbors who couldn’t keep him, for whatever reason. Guess we looked like suckers. Or the sort of people who can’t say no to a sweet dog, which I hope we’ll always be.

“The Kims want to know if we’d like their puppy,” my wife said one morning, I think a Saturday.

“No,” I said.

“Don’t you want to meet him?”

“No.”

So I met him.

Now, most cocker spaniels -- we had one once before -- have more moving parts than a French revue. They jitterbug as if there were ants in their pants, if they had pants, which most don’t. Cockers are always scratching that imaginary itch.

But when I met this 6-month-old cocker spaniel, he just sat there -- frozen, barely flinching, which goes against a puppy’s very nature. Expecting a spaniel puppy to sit still is like asking a frog to sing “La Boheme” or a politician to shut up and listen.

“Look how good I am,” he was saying with his stillness. “Seriously, you’ll barely know I’m here.”

When I nodded, “OK, what the heck,” he went into spasms of gratitude that never really stopped over the 13 years he was with us. It was as if an electric jolt worked its way from the tail forward. You know the line “the tail wagging the dog”? That was Lucky. Like the rest of us, he seemed at the mercy of something greater than himself.

To be sure, it was an eventful life. Children came and children went. He napped in the kitchen, sniffing at the fresh air coming in under the door, waiting for everyone to arrive home in the evening. When the house was finally full, and everyone safe and accounted for, he’d retire to his comfy chair in the den. “My work here is done,” he’d say. “Good night.”

The guy never missed a meal, not one. Cheerios and bits of microwave waffle. Peas and carrots. Supermarket sushi. Salami. He was the Zamboni of dropped food, Lucky was. He slip-glided across the oak floors, his frozen New England pond.

He especially liked holidays. He was there between your feet while you tried to wrestle in the Christmas tree. At Halloween, he helped with the pumpkins, licking up the seeds.

Birthdays were a specialty. Over the years, there’s no calculating how much gift wrap he actually consumed. He was fondest of tissue paper. In that sense, he was a pioneer at recycling.

Like all great dogs, Lucky seemed to have some sort of intangible trait found more in pets than in people. A combo of gratitude and contentedness. A certain nobility. Nice trait, nobility. It’s so seldom seen anymore -- not among statesmen, not among movie stars. Mostly, you find it in the common dog.

“You’re going with me,” my wife asked.

“Where?”

“When I take him to the vet,” she said, and I scooped him in my arms like a warm pile of clothes.

Lucky faded fast. In May, he developed a cough, which was traced to a heart condition. Pills silenced the cough, but slowly he withered away. First, the 5 extra pounds he always carried -- Fritos, Cheerios, cheese -- then the rest of him.

Eventually Lucky, smaller by the moment, would just go out in the yard and flop on the grass, barely moving, not even the tail, which was hard-wired to the heart. To all our hearts. He was confused. He was miserable. Lucky lay dying.

But, even in his worst moments, little Lucky never whimpered. Not once. He was just the best dog ever.

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Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com. For more columns, see latimes.com/erskine.