WASHINGTON – My wife called me at the office Wednesday afternoon to say we had to euthanize our dog of 14 years. Cancer in the liver and spleen. Did I want to come to the pet hospital to be present for the injections?

At first I said no. I was too busy. I’d just sent over my column for Thursday, and my editor hadn’t had a chance to look at it. She was just an animal, after all.

Then my Jiminy Cricket voice spoke up. You know, “Let your conscience be your guide.”

The voice said: I know I’d rather skip this, but I really ought to say goodbye in person. I should stroke her pumpkin-colored fur (now mixed with white) one last time.

Also, though I’m not proud to admit it, I was motivated partly by a twinge of egotistical self-protection. I didn’t want to have to tell anybody in the future that I made my wife witness the sad event on her own.

So I went. It was the right choice, and for some reasons I hadn’t anticipated. Our pet’s death reminded me of something she’d taught me about how families bond. Her demise also offered a lesson about the value of acquiescing to strong emotions, even painful ones.

If it’s not already clear to my regular readers, let me say explicitly that my topic today differs from what you usually see in my column. I could have written about some regional policy issue or social trend, as I normally do.

But the feelings I experienced and tears I shed at the veterinary clinic were powerful. They led me to break with habit and write a more personal, introspective piece.

I didn’t want the dog in the first place. I thought she’d be too much work.

That’s a typical response for me. Practical. Utilitarian. What’s the cost-benefit ratio?

My wife and son, then in second grade, persisted. They outvoted me.

My wife chose her at the shelter. Judging on appearance, we guessed she was a mix of golden retriever, terrier and other, unknown, breeds. My son named her “Brooks,” in honor of his school, Westbrook Elementary in Bethesda, Md.

We were amused at the extensive background checks required by the pound. Fenced yard? Check. Someone at home all day? Check.

Are they going to ask us our SAT scores?

It only took a year or so before I realized I’d been wrong to resist.

I had expected dog care would be only a bother, like making beds or taking out garbage. Instead, the responsibility was often satisfying, even enriching. I think that’s because a dog is a living being and has a personality. Limitless affection repays one’s labors.

The chores also helped bring the family together by giving us a focus. Has Brooks been fed? Who’s going to walk her? Later, when she developed arthritis: Has the dog had her aspirin?

She gave us an excuse to be silly, to talk baby talk. She truly became a member of the family, a phenomenon I hadn’t fully appreciated beforehand.

Despite that, I wasn’t psychologically ready for the end even as Brooks became deaf and increasingly feeble in her old age.

Oh, I was prepared for it intellectually. When my wife told me of the vet’s diagnosis, I tried to minimize it by saying something like, “Well, we’ve known it was coming.”

But my actual state of mind – acute denial – was evident in that initial desire to avoid being present when the light in Brooks’s eyes was extinguished.

That also was typical of me. I’ve gradually realized in my 50s that I tend to avoid funerals. I’m adept at finding reasons why it’s too inconvenient to go. Looking back, I can think of several relatives and friends’ parents whose funerals I now wish I’d attended.

That awareness was nagging at me when I reversed course during the phone call and told my wife I’d come to the clinic after all. I didn’t want to regret having shied away again.

In the last hour or so I spent with Brooks, I came to recognize what I’d been avoiding: powerful feelings of sorrow and loss.

I got choked up as I arrived and saw her limping down the street with my wife on her final outdoor walk. I wept softly as I petted her and tried to soothe her as she lay on the floor and wheezed before her end. Tears were on my cheeks for a dozen people to see in the waiting room as I paid the bill afterward.

This was unfamiliar. I don’t cry much, and virtually never in public. I can still remember an evening in my teens when I tried to hide tears from my father as we left the movie theater after I broke down over the end of “West Side Story.”

I’m ashamed to show such emotions even though I’m hardly a macho type. I like to consider myself more of a SNAG, or “sensitive New Age guy.”

In our culture, though, even for SNAGs, masculinity often translates as stoicism. Impassiveness. Suppressing feelings. And that’s what I’ve been doing when it comes to death. I’ve avoided funerals because I’d rather feel nothing than feel bad.

So I felt a tangle of emotions in the small, antiseptic treatment room where the vet put Brooks down. On one hand, I was embarrassed to be crying. On the other, I was conscious that I was experiencing and displaying sentiment much more than normal.

The latter awareness was a new one, and I was satisfied about it. I even took some pride in it. It was evidence I had grown emotionally. Instead of staying safely in my head as usual, I’d ventured into the heart.

So, though “only” an animal, she helped me be more fully human. Thanks, Brooks.

Robert McCartney is a Metro columnist for The Washington Post.