A dog's life lesson

Our dog Guinness died yesterday. After 14 years with us I no longer see her lying by the front door. My heart feels broken and then even more shattered when I watch the tears drip down my sons faces as they try to make sense of never seeing her again.
"I don't want her to be dead mom," my youngest tells me over and over again.
Oh how I wanted to make up stories to soften this blow.
I longed to say she was going to be fine. It seemed easiest for my husband to come home and whisk her to the vet and tell them later, so they didn't have to see.
But as I watched her breathing get heavy, her body mostly motionless save for an occasional wag of tail, I thought better of it.
Guinness was  family. For better or for worse we would be there for her until the end.  They had a right to know and say goodbye on their terms.
Guinness started out in a shelter at 4 months old. Abused by her owner, she looked out from her cage at us with a look that said "take me". We packed her in the car and she promptly peed on my seat. She liked to ride shot gun on the console between us, standing up and looking out the front window.
Mark and I were newly married and trying on the caregiver role. We had no idea what we were in for.
When my cousin Caitlin came to live with us Guinness didn't mind. We took trips to Maine in our Subaru Outback with a preteen Cait, one of her friends, and Guinness squishing herself in the middle like one of  the girls.
Later, when my first son was born, we stuffed the baby's blankets in her face so she could get his smell because the baby books told us to. I fed her dog food by hand out of her dish so she could be OK with little hands reaching in. We made noises with a rattle to get her used to the idea. Guinness must of thought we went nuts but she wagged her tail anyway.
The transition was seamless.
Every night she would walk into my son's room, her nails tapping on the hard wood floors. Like a night watchman she would check the surroundings and then go to bed herself.
As my oldest grew, we would play racing games in the front yard. As I close my eyes I can still hear the joyous squeal of a toddler thinking he bested his dog in a race to our Red Maple tree while I held onto her collar so he could get a head start.
When I miscarried what might have been twins early in my second pregnancy a few days before Christmas, it was Guinness who helped me cry. Ever stoic, I was locked in thoughts of mental flogging - "Should I be sad?...I wasn't that far along anyway."  Guinness jumped up on the couch where I was sitting, put her head on my belly and sighed like she knew.
I wept into her fluffy black fur.
When my youngest made his way into the world, Guinness pushed over again. But oh, how she loved him. When he began to walk at 10 months, she began to clean up in earnest. His little hands could only contain so many cheerios and rice puffs before spilling over. And there were always the french fries on the floor of the minivan. Much to both boys' dismay, she always snubbed the green beans handed to her under the table.
Like with anything or anyone in life, it was not all roses. Her hair would shed in clumps around the house in the spring so thick we had to buy a heavy duty vac to accommodate. Her breath, well that was not always the best. As she got older she liked to knock down the kitchen trash can and forage.
Still no one could be mad for long or resist a cuddle from her when back and shaved from the groomers like a sheared lamb.
Our neighbor would ask if we got a new dog.
Our vet would say she looked like a puppy with her new haircut.
She gave me puppy eyes the day she lay dying in our living room. Only this time the plea was to end her suffering.
I gave the boys an option. They did not have to come to the vets with us but I told them Guinness would not be able to come back home. Her body was shutting down.
Finn said: "I want to go. She needs me."
Dylan asked if he could hold her paw.
We patted her head and rubbed the tops her paws and told her we would help her.
When my oldest son began to cry, the little one rubbed his knee and gave him his bear.
"It's OK," he said. "It's OK."
Unlike all other trips to the vet Guinness didn't shake and go to the bathroom on the floor.
She knew that we were there.
The boys knelt down, their faces streaked with tears, and told her that they loved her.
They left the exam room while their father and I stayed behind for her final breaths.
In a second she was gone. I closed her eyes.
We rode home crying. My oldest clutching her collar. But through the haze we knew we helped our Guinness die with love.
It was our last giving act to not look away from her when she needed us most.
As a pet she grew with them their whole young lives and in her death, she taught them the heartbreak and necessity of letting go.