The vet came at quarter ’til 11am…my heart skipped when he knocked. The morning had been an uneasy affair but a good one, nonetheless. Sasha took her pills, ate her breakfast, drank, went to the bathroom…all the things she needed to do on her last day. We sat with her on the rug watching the Olympics, petting her.
Once the vet was here, he gave her an anesthetic which took some time to kick in. The doc had tried to inject her on her left side but she yelped so he did her right. He also had trouble finding her vein. She was getting disoriented as she started looking around and sniffing a lot, as if trying to get her bearings. We waited a while…I think he didn’t administer the fatal dose until around 11:15am. Once he did though, she was gone in a heartbeat.
The mortuary guy arrived 30 minutes later, which was just right. Not too early and not too late. We had a chance to say our final goodbyes after the fact and within a few minutes, he showed up. I asked him to put some final biscuits she’d been working on this morning in with her when she was cremated. I always worry about these pet mortuaries…I hope he’s solid and not like those others that don’t give a shit.
Now, I’m trying to work to get my mind off of her for now. I know tonight will be hard as will the rest of the week but the worst part is over. She had so much life in her last hours it only makes it more sad.
I moved some images off the camera to my computer but the best are those photos from this beach next to Zuma in Malibu…we went for one day (she didn’t like car trips) but it was a nice day. I can’t seem to get them posted up right…wait, here we go:
Goodbye Sasha. You will be missed more than you know.
…at least I think so. We watched TV, hung out on the rug with her, played with her, pet her. Did everything we could. If it weren’t for the cancer and her arthritis she’d be just like a puppy. People always thought she was a puppy when we walked her, maybe because she wasn’t very big. Still, she always had a sort of exuberance that masked her age.
I decided I want to keep her cow toy (which my wife corrected me on…her friend brought her a duck which she promptly destroyed and we got her the cow since we learned from that duck that she liked those sorts of toys–other toys never worked with her) and her leash. My wife’s getting something to remind her of Sasha…black onyx.
She was very content here...
Just a couple hours left in the night and not a whole lot left in the morning. Tonight’s going to be hard because I won’t want to sleep since I know it will bring the morning even faster.
Tomorrow’s going to be even worse but I’m sure it’ll be here and there until the next day. I’m sure by Tuesday we’ll be numb and we’ll start to heal. The hard part is getting back into the routine and getting work done. I think I’ve got the harder job since I work at home. I’ve gotten used to keeping an eye on her and saying hello and goodbye every time I came in and left.
Plus, I’ll miss her in the evenings…she used to always be there, sleeping in her bed. I’m sure my wife will want to throw everything out but I think it’s better to keep what you can. As she’d told me (and I know this), it’s always best to think about the good times. This is advice I give others but it’s hard to take your own advice.
Good night, Sasha. Sweet dreams of many more good days wherever you’ll be.
kn
I’ve done what I could to get most of my work done so I can spend the day keeping Sasha company along with my wife. T-minus 24 hours. Today is the day of “last times”.
She managed to live long enough to witness three Olympics. Not that she has any idea what they’re about but still…we measure everything by what we know and see.
Tonight will be really hard…you go to bed knowing that in the morning, you’ve got to wake up to put your dog…your friend…your daughter…to sleep.
She’s had a decent life. We weren’t home all the time so it was filled with long periods of boredom and loneliness. But, we’ve had fun together. The next 24-48 hours will be difficult but I know, as with all difficult things, the low point will pass and we will continue on. We won’t forget Sasha but it’ll hurt less.
kn
There are few times when I really pay attention to the passage of time and want to do something to stop it. Right now, I find myself realizing it’s Friday night…my wife’s going to bed at her usual time and I’m thinking…shit. Two days left for Sasha. Then I get this feeling in my gut…a sort of anxiety that makes me want to grab the Earth and stop it from moving just for a little while.
I started playing with Sasha in her bed and she started acting like her old self, playing with her decapitated and beat up cow toy. It was this great toy that a friend of my wife’s gave her for Sasha. She loved it from day one and over time destroyed it so that it’s really just a piece of cloth with a little bit of stuffing in the legs. Even so, she used to love playing with it…no other toy did it for her. I’ll miss those times when she was leaping around tossing the thing in the air as we’re trying to maneuver the remote control for the TV around her.
How do you reconcile this sort of thing?
As always, music is a big part of my life and a lot of times certain pieces get tied to those events because those pieces just happen to be on my play list at the time. I know my professor at Anderson that went over all sorts of aspects of psychology and the brain with use would bring up the concept in that one lecture about associative memory.
Right now, it’s Gravity of Love by Enigma. I know, sappy and all but I can’t help that they used a piece of the only movement of Carmina Burana I really like (and that most people know). And, it actually works.
For Amanda, it was Mein Herz Brennt by Rammstein. It was the quietest song I had at the time in the car as I shuttled her back and forth to the vet.
T-minus 60 hours.
So, we’ve been dealing with our dog’s cancer and subsequent amputation for the last three or more months as best we could but we finally decided it was time to let her go. It’s a situation I’ve always hated. She’s perfectly alert and health mentally…her body just doesn’t want to give her a break.
She lost a leg (rear right) to cancer. Then, likely due to her arthritis in her hips, stopped trying to put much weight on her other back leg. This was still relatively managable since we could help her get over big obstacles and go to the backyard to answer that constant call of nature. We’d still find her in places we didn’t expect. She has this raised bed, about 6 inches off the ground, and despite that obstacle, she’d end up 30 feet away in one of her favorite spots by one of the doors to the living room.
In the last few weeks, she’d been starting to favor her left front paw. At first, we though it was arthritis but the way she’s been favoring it and her medical history made us feel otherwise. Instead of traumatizing her with another trip to the vet, my wife decided today that we should finally put her down.
She’d always been my wife’s dog more than mine (I’m allergic so I generally keep my distance from our animals except for the one cat I’m not allergic to…Max…he’s an amazing cat but that’s for another day). So, I just helped her with the decision. It was a decision that we both knew we were moving towards (she’d just been talking about getting the number for the vet who make housecalls who helped us with putting her mother’s dog down when she had cancer…same litter by the way).
It’s always tough. She’s so alive but she really doesn’t have much of a life any more. We work so hard to keep humans alive even when their lives are failing yet we’re often so quick to head off to the vet to put an animal down when they’re diagnosed with a major disease or an “expensive” disease. Every time I’ve put down a dog (all the cats I’ve known have died on their own), it’s always been the same. They have so much life in them still, despite the pain and discomfort. Watching that life fade away when the drugs take effect is mind-numbing. I have this thing about innocent lives being lost and it’s so much harder when you’re making the decision to do so.
It was surreal today as my wife and I made arrangements to have the vet come by at 11am on Monday to effectively kill our dog. And, to have the cremation company swing by around 11:30 to pick up the body. Meanwhile, you’re staring at the victim, panting away.
I know they’re sensitive to us and I’m sure somewhere deep in Sasha’s gullet, a little red light is flashing. This is likely going to be one of the best weekends she’s had in recent months since we’re going to be covering her with affection and attention. And, knowing her and how she’s reacted to times when she knows there’s something up with us, she’ll likely give us those puppy-dog eyes on Monday as the doctor comes in…as we talk to her, reassuring her everything’s already.
I’d already been saying good bye to her this week since the Syneflex we got (for arthritis) wasn’t having any effect and she seemed to be getting more and more stiff and unable to walk on her own. But, I’d remained optimistic (funny this coming from a realist). But today’s decision killed me.
Now, I keep thinking about “the last time”. Tomorrow’s going to be the last day I’ll be alone with her as I work from home. This weekend will be the last time she spends time with both my wife and I. Sunday annd Monday will be worse. Sunday night will be the last night I say good night to her. The last night I’ll take her out to pee. The last time we feed her, the finicky beast that she is. The last time we give her her meds. The last time she gets a biscuit. I didn’t know it but last night was the list time I’d open up a new box of biscuits (her favorite…she’d always perk up when she heard the crackle of the plastic bag they came in).
My wife mentioned thinking about the good times. How funny she’d be playing with her toy. The one time we got her out to the beach so she could run around (before the lifeguard kicked us out). The time we took her to a doggy park…she only got along with a great dane. The times we walked her around the block…with the same surprise attacks by dogs behind gates. I remember the time she was with me on a walk at 9pm or so and some guy walked up and started talking to me. He seemed drunk so I was on my guard and so was she…I realized she was standing perfectly still watching the guy intently.
I remember all the trouble we had to go through to get her to eat. Meanwhile we’d visit my wife’s mother’s house and her dog couldn’t get enough of anything he was fed. The best was getting her to react to stuff. We couldn’t mention the word “walk” or she’d get all excited at the prospect of getting out there…even when arthritis started attacking her hips, she still wanted to go…despite the pain later. She would always walk with us to the pantry to see if we’d “accidentally” reattach the leash to her for another walk.
Her sister, Nikita, died suddenly when she was only 6 months old. We’d suspected it was related to the Valley Crest operation behind our house years ago. They sprayed diazanon. Killed numerous wildlife in our backyard: birds, lizards, you name it. Dept. of Agriculture came out…oh…three or four months later when no evidence of the spraying existed any more.
When we discovered Nikita, we’d actually thought it was Sasha because Sasha was the weaker, more meek one of the pair of them. Nikita didn’t look distressed, she was just on her back like she was sleeping. It was Inna who realized Sasha was the one sitting next to us all excited that we were there…I think it was because of her teeth or something that made her stand out. Bizarre experience.
I remember us taking both of them, then just Sasha to my mother-in-law’s house so she could “babysit” in their early years. Just like taking kids to daycare. Too funny.
Now, I sit here and can’t help but think about those “last times”. This is going to be a rough weekend. How do you kill a dog who’s cute little eyebrows (she’s a Rottweiler so she’s got those little brown dots above her eyes) still move around in quizzical expressions? What do you say to her as you walk by her sleeping in the living room in her favorite spot by the door?
I keep wishing she’d passed away quietly in her sleep. I know it’s selfish but I think it also would have been better for her. She’s going to wonder why she’s not getting fed or getting her meds Monday morning (she always dreads those meds). She’s going to wonder why we don’t bother with the details of the morning. Taking her out to pee that last time is going to be the most painful. It’ll be nice that she won’t be in such pain any more but no one wants to die. If she could spend her days lying around in diapers, I’m sure she’d still be content…except for the cancer. Logically, the decision is sound but it’s never that easy.
We’ve lost a number of animals but this one’s going to be one of the harder ones. I still miss my Amanda (she died in 2001 at only 5 years old…Max is still alive at 13 and going strong). No idea what killed her…she just disintegrated from a noisy little sports car as I called her into a cat lying quietly in an unknown amount of pain as her belly swelled. I’d never heard an animal die on his/her own until then. At least she got to sleep with us for a few days in the end…she’d be immobile nearly all day but when we let her in the bedroom, she lit up and almost jumped up on the bed herself. My shoulder still misses her weight.
I think about Muffie (I was a kid and watched Battlestar Galactica…no…the original campy 70′s one…give me a break). She was living with my parents (another long story I won’t be sharing anytime soon). I didn’t know it but she’d become emaciated and it turns out had kidney cancer or the like (I got this all second-hand). My mother wanted me to help out with putting her down. God, how that sucked. I hadn’t seen her in months if not longer (again, that story we won’t discuss). She was ecstatic. On her own, she wouldn’t sit because it hurt her and she trembled with the pain. At the vet, with me holding the leash, she was actually pulling as hard as she did when she was a pup (she was 13 I believe at the time of her death).
I remember the time when we were rescuing kittens in our yard (the neighborhood cats liked to have litters elsewhere then bring them to our yard since they got food and we kept the back locked up). One litter was devastating. Out of five kittens, one survived. Each night we’d brace ourselves in case another kitten had died.
Meanwhile, I have a cat in my office that we rescued (I don’t get how people seem to think it’s okay to just toss cats outside?). He’s got FIV and we’re convinced he was kicked out because he does NOTHING but talk all the time when he’s awake. Either he was an opera singer in a past life or he has this idea that he’s saying something we understand. I don’t know but because of his FIV (don’t let your cats out…they WILL get FIV), I’ve been waiting for the day when he’ll start to hide…stop eating…do something that’ll tell me he’s reaching that point when FIV will finally kill him. Outside of the chatter, he’s got to be one of the best behaved cats I’ve ever met. He doesn’t tear up the screens to get out. He doesn’t run around on my desk or shelves. He doesn’t try to get into every single box, drawer, etc. When we yell at him to get out of the bedroom, he listens. All he wants to do is look out his window, eat at 8am and 4pm on the dot, and run against our legs. He’s amazing. When he passes away, it’ll be ten times worse than this.
I’m much closer to him than Sasha but the way Sasha’s impending doom is affecting me, I don’t look forward to that day at all.
So, now, I’m off…I need to say good night to Sasha…I don’t have many opportunities left.
G’night.
kn
