Burt’s death has lead me into a six month period of disinterest in writing or taking photos, which I’m only just now coming out of. At the time I refused to accept the possibility of his mortality, but as his hips locked up more frequently, as his troubles holding his bladder moved beyond being an occasional mishap, my wife knew he wouldn’t live through the winter. At the risk of becoming one of those poor saps finding meaning in anthropomorphism, I’m going to believe Burt stayed around as long as he did so as to love our two year old son, as he very quietly and unassumingly became the first irreplaceable dog in our son’s life.
Having worked with sick animals on and off for some time, I’ve grown accustomed to the occasional need for euthanasia. I’ve come across people who were holding on for dear life to the life of their pet, flippantly muttering to myself of their selfishness in allowing their animal to experience dreadful suffering in an effort to avoid letting go themselves.
Yet as I talked with the vet about Burt’s cancer that afternoon in February and requested we take him home for just one more evening before we carried out the inevitable, I found myself in just that position. Expecting him to hobble over to me after getting checked out as he had done the prior few days, and nuzzle himself into my arms while I situated him back in the car for the short ride home, my stomach bottomed out when three techs accompanied the vet in carrying out a stretcher containing our dying family dog. He was barely able to lift his head. He looked up at me a few times, panting the slightly more intense pant he developed the day before, while I fumbled him into the back seat of the car next to our son’s car seat. I struggled in positioning his mostly limp body, and questioned down to my bones whether leaving the vet for one last night with him was even remotely within the realm of the appropriate.
Burton, a lanky, shiny coated Golden Retriever, was deep red in color, with a narrow head and long snout, and a set of ears he’d perch up on his head when he sensed cookies. My wife, originally looking for a traditional stocky, blockheaded Golden, stumbled upon Burt at a retriever rescue. Having undergone hip surgery after being hit by a car, he was nicknamed “Chance” by the employees (short for “Second Chance”, or really “Last Chance”). He strolled into the front office of the rescue, and on seeing him my wife instantly knew she was going to lose her self control and be suckered into taking this wonky scrap of a dog, despite her desires to the contrary.
That was over 14 years ago.
Residences and addresses have changed, boyfriends and friends have come and gone, other dogs and random cats have arrived and left or been put down. But always, there was Burt. When we knew I would become a lot more than just a passing mile marker in my wife’s timeline, Burt began to regularly walk over and nuzzle his nose in my lap, completely uncharacteristic of him in his behavior with other males of any species. Many a night I would look at him while I rubbed his head, and he’d look back with those eyes, those endless black pools of experience. A poor sap prone to anthropomorphism, I fancied him an old soul wise beyond his years, perhaps incarnated to eventually protect our growing little family.
These memories welled up in me as I lay next to Burt by the fireplace that evening, flanked on either side by my wife and son, all of us stroking his fur while he looked around, panting. Having long lost the ability to hold his bladder, he lay on frequently-changed extra bath towels we put on top of a large set of couch cushions.
My wife fell asleep on Burt and held that position deep into the next morning, her head still laying on his chest when I came into the living room to wake her.
We left our son home with our friend, and took Burt in the very back of the station wagon to the vet’s office. I lay my hand on the side of his chest. After two vials of strong sedatives and a syringe of pentobarbital, his heart stopped beating under my fingertips. I moved my forehead away from the bridge of his snout where it had been resting, his eyes glazed over amidst one last long, sighing exhalation. His body exhibited slight postmortem twitches, and now relaxed, his bowels emptied some of their contents onto the cool stainless steel veterinary table. Death surely be not proud.
I’m not sure I could quantify how long we stayed in the vet office sitting next to him. My wife asked to save a lock of his fur, which she has since kept next to his ashes on the shelf above her computer desk in the family room. I sat petting his lifeless body, most likely more for my own comfort than for his.
The severity of my grief reaction surprised even me. At several points over the next few days, I was suddenly but privately emotional to the point of nearly vomiting. That level of loss has occurred only one other time in my life, connected with the unexpected and tragic death of my father. It was the only other time in my life I was slammed with the consciousness that never seeing someone again really meant never again, and that really, truly meant never again. It overwhelmed me to an unfathomable depth.
But that feeling faded, as has the vividness of that experience, as has the gut-wrenching quality to the grief over Burt’s death. At some point during that trip to the vet we snapped back into our space-time position, realized our son is home with our friend, dinner must be cooked, the other dogs must be fed, jobs required our presence.
Last I noticed, his food and water bowls are still on the floor next to the cabinet in the kitchen where the dog food is kept. His collar is still in the bathroom next to our son’s bucket of bath toys. I suppose it’s telling we haven’t boxed them up yet, but I’m sure that time will come.
It’s the worst part of death, really, the idea of moving on. There is the temptation to hold onto every shred of denial we can afford ourselves. In the end, we are only left with our memories and a few physical belongings, none of which can reverse what happened.
It’s apparently a bad year for animals here at the house.
Ten months have passed since we lost Bella, and the reality that she’s no longer sitting in the dog room throwing everyone her creepy side-glances hits me on and off.
Only a few months after that, I found myself wide awake at five in the morning during one of my rampant stretches of insomnia. While I thought about how Cheerios undoubtedly taste better in the middle of the night, I heard wild commotion outside our bedroom window followed by a bone-chilling shriek I doubted could have come from a living creature. By the time I landed at the porch door, our 18 year old anger-ball of a cat Zoet was dead on the floor.
I had affectionately nicknamed her “Church” when E and I first met, after the buried and reincarnated cat from Pet Cemetary . My first introduction to this little furball came in the dead dark of E’s apartment kitchen, where I was jolted by a wraith-like drawn out guttural attempt at a meow. I turned to find this cat standing motionless on the kitchen table boring holes in me with her completely deadpan, unflinching stare. Since she died during the winter when the soil was frozen, she was retired to a black Hefty bag in our second freezer to wait out the cold months next to a few boxes of fried rice.
Just as we dug her hole on the side of the house, our sixteen year old cat Sebastian found himself about to give up the ghost. His hopelessly obvious nickname “Fatty” came from a giant gut he swung beneath his body when he waddled anywhere and that, along with his black and white sectioned fur, led to even more obvious cow-resemblance comments.
He was also an amazingly sweet cat, so the decision to put him down when he became constantly lethargic, half immobile, and completely incontinent was expected but unbelievably sad. He’s been more “one of the dogs” than anything, and spent the evenings head-butting our golden retriever and grooming him as best he could with such a height difference. We’re thankfully a maximum one-cat-per-freezer household, so Fatty is taking up Church’s vacancy while we clear room to bury him outside next to her.
In the end there’s a bit of poetic justice, as instead of butting up against some fried rice, Fatty is surrounded by stacks of frozen Angus burgers and some gorgeously marbled strip steaks. I honestly can’t think of anything he’d want more.
The first words I heard from E on her way past the dogs’ part of the house were, “Uh, B? What has Tre gotten into?” I walked over unsuspectingly and saw the whole front of the dog’s body covered in blood.
My immediate thought was that she killed something in the backyard and did a little munching (my second thought was that she just finished teleporting through a wormhole in the space time continuum which, based on what an oddball she is, was less of a stretch). As it was pitch dark outside, I scoured the house for our Mag-Lite, which has seemingly disappeared somewhere into the void.
The next best solution was the 50 foot extension cord and our super-bright halogen utility lantern, which we dragged around the yard combing for patches of blood. Coming up empty, we went over her whole mouth and body with a fine toothed comb looking for any sort of injury, and found nothing.
The next step is to check for some sort of salivary gland cyst or something else in the region underneath her tongue, to see if something possibly ruptured. The verdict is unfortunately that we still have no idea what happened. We do, however, know two things now. One, Tre hates baths worse than any of our dogs and two, we need to buy more flashlights.
It’s been great messing with the new camera since it’s arrived in the post. With help and recommendations from friends, I was able to start shooting all manually, and have been pleased with the results. I scored a manual focus non-metering 50mm f/1.8 prime lens from the 1970s on eBay for $26, and shooting photos with that has been a lot of fun. With everything set manually, it’s been a hell of a lot easier to get non-blurry photos of L and the animals.
I had another few posts queued up to write, but this popped up out of nowhere. We woke up this morning and our Rottweiler, Bella, was drooling and had a horribly distended stomach. She would not get up off the bed. Two hours later, she was put to sleep at the vet’s office.
She had what’s called “bloat”, or GDV (Gastric Dilation). According to this link, the condition can become fatal within six to twelve hours. She lasted longer, but was in pain. She was put down immediately after an x-ray confirmed the diagnosis. Surgery is available for roughly $2,000, but the risk of recurrence after surgery is so high that it wasn’t feasible.
I got the phone call and got to the vet office to pick up E and L, and she was already put down. L isn’t old enough to understand, so he alternated between being tired and whiny to dancing happily around the floor while we looked on at Bella’s body.
I’m always amazed at how, when something bad happens to a dog (or even a human), the other dogs instinctively know. The pups were visibly sad and whimpering when we came home without Bella, and the dog room looks profoundly empty without our 90 pound Rottie lazing around the beds.
Everything happened so quickly, I don’t think the full extent of the situation has hit me. It’s hard to believe she’s really gone.
I posted awhile ago that we were getting serious about rehoming our last two found pups. After contacting several beagle rescues and striking out big time, I posted Bob on Craigslist.
Our first reply was a husband-wife team who swore that Bob was their recently lost dog (despite that we’ve had him two years, despite them living over 50 miles away). I pegged them immediately as typical craigslist freakshows/scammers, but after E called them to assure them Bob has been ours, I felt quite bad. Apparently they had a family friend take care of their beagle for a few days, and the friend dropped the beagle at the pound because their landlord complained. They never saw the pup again, and were hoping our Bob was their long lost buddy.
The next reply sounded promising, from a woman on the other side of the city who lived in a three story condo and had a cocker spaniel. We made plans to meet up at her place to see her digs and meet her son.
We should have turned around and driven away when we saw the broken window covered in cardboard with an air conditioner stuck in it. Instead, we went in. We were greeted by a slovenly woman whose boobs were hanging out of her inappropriate dress, the slovenly woman’s sister who was passed out on the couch and didn’t bother to acknowledge us after looking up, and the eighteen month old son who was dressed in apparently his Sunday best, a diaper with no clothes or shoes.
Bob sniffed around the place and met the cocker spaniel, who had bilateral conjunctivitis and an ear infection. She was confined to the yard round the clock because she “peed in the house a few times”. She had a dog crate to sleep in, covered from the elements by a piece of cardboard hanging off the side. Her food bowl was swimming with ants, and her water dish looked like one of those swimming pools that turns green from never being serviced.
The treatment a currently owned dog is receiving is obviously a great indicator of the treatment a new dog will receive, so we ran away screaming, and talked in the car about possibly calling the SPCA on her. The woman never once even pet Bob, he seemed like a potential new accessory for her eighteen month old, now that they are apparently bored of the cocker spaniel.
To top it off, we got in the car and had to pick fleas off Bob.
There are people who own dogs, and then there are “dog people”. This solidifies that Bob needs some dog people.
Our last rescue dog to be spayed has apparently gone into heat before we could get the procedure done. Though everyone else is neutered and spayed, one of our male dogs decided it would be prudent to mount this poor female and take her for a ride. The only problem? Not to be too graphic, but he got himself stuck up inside her.
As I was at work, E tried everything to get him unstuck, from hosing them down (a cool off period?) to trying to manually pry the poor guy’s manparts out of her. In between screams and cries by the male dog, E called the vet’s office and they recommended she just let them calm down and come unstuck naturally.
That seems to have worked, as you can see by the male licking his “wounds”.
Bob Barker the beagle is being evicted from Casa de Malshag, and he’s taking his girlfriend Cuppycakes with him. Though they haven’t worn out their welcome, six dogs and two cats are more than two parents and an eight month old can handle.
Both found on the side of the road, we took them on, “but we’re finding them homes right away”. Between nuptials, childbirth, and house renovations those homes were never found.
Sadly, the beginnings of a home hunt for the pups coincides with the declining health of the two cats, Church and Fatty. The frequent urination and overwhelming weight loss have us wondering how much longer these two eighteen year olds have.
They will all be missed, and Casa de Malshag will be a little less rambunctious.
Cuppycakes went to the vet today, she has a urinary tract infection. She’s been peeing all over the dog room which, with a seven week old baby, is a bit more than should be going on at the same time.
Since my wife was gone for the day, my son rode shotgun (actually backseat rear-facing carseat lockdown mode, but on the shotgun side of the car nonetheless). Getting everyone in the door, into the exam room, and back into the car, and back into our home, was quite a challenge.
Cuppycakes got some antibiotics, and we got to breathe easy. She rode in the trunk both ways, and would pop her head up every once in awhile to make sure she wasn’t missing anything.
While E and I were standing in our living room listening to the exterminator tell us bowhunting stories, the doorbell rang. It was our neighbor, holding a makeshift bungee cord leash, attached to which was our asshole dog, Bob.
At the end of last week, presumably when the garbage truck roared through the back alley, he broke planks off the fence, opened the gate, and got out with Mama Bear (aka Cuppycakes), the black shepherd mix.
This time, he apparently dug under the corner of the gate of the back fence, and ran around the neighborhood.
I honestly have no idea how we get our dogs back. They’ve only gotten out a handful of times, but somehow we maintain the full head count and no one goes missing. If I were to guess, I would say it’s some favored reciprocation the universe has granted us for all the good deeds we’ve done for the other dogs in our neighborhood. I’ve chased down anything with a collar, taken dogs in and called owners for pickup. It must be why ours show up back at our doorstep, unharmed and probably full of tales to tell the others.
