He started to be quite ill mid-March. I took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with diabetes and some type of infection (high white blood cell count). I took him home with information about where to mail-order insulin and with a course of antibiotics to start immediately.His appetite was variable. I would mix up the antibiotic pill and (in the morning) a pill he took for his liver with peanut butter and embed pieces of Pill Pockets into the mix. His liver pill was supposed to be consumed an hour before eating breakfast. Sometimes he ate the medicinal mix and sometimes not. When I put out his food, sometimes he at a little, sometimes most of it, sometimes not at all.
When the insulin and syringes arrived, I took him back to the vet for instruction on how to give him his injections and how much. While we were in the exam room, he was very intrigued by a canister containing liver treats. Although he was picking at his food at home, he snapped those up. The vet used them to distract him while giving the injection, and he never noticed a thing.
I bought a couple cans of prescription dog food at the vet’s office, and, when I got home, I also went to the same website and set up a recurring order of the food and some treats that looked similar to what he enjoyed at the vet’s. He liked the prescription dog food and ate it more heartily than what I had been feeding him; however, it ran out very quickly.
By this time, coronavirus madness was raging. I received notification that order delivery would be delayed because of high volume. It took two weeks to receive the first order, and the second one came a couple days after. But by that time, I knew I would not need to keep receiving it.My dog kept getting weaker and weaker. Up until he started getting sick, he was able to jump up onto the couch or recliner whenever I sat there. No longer. He could just walk into dog beds on the floor, but eventually even that made him stumble. His legs often trembled. Sometimes his rear legs seemed to drag. His eyesight had been failing, but now it got worse. He would walk right into an object on the floor, or get tangled up in chair legs, or bump into the wall.
He was getting skinnier. When he didn’t eat his food, I was uncertain whether to give him the insulin he was supposed to have after eating. It was post-eating to reduce the risk of hypoglycaemia, which can be fatal. If he didn’t eat, I didn’t know what to do and ended up not giving it to him, or giving it to him, but hoping the food he liked better would arrive soon. I don’t know if my incompetent care aggravated his condition. I think, given his age, his prognosis was already poor. He had had chronic pancreatitis ever since I owned him and liver issues for a couple years. He was old.
I sat and tried to figure out how old he was. When I bought him, I was told he was a year and a half old. But I could never remember when I bought him. By thinking of major family events, my best guess was that I bought him in early 2006, which would mean he had been born in mid-2004. So he was probably approaching 16, which is pretty old for a dog. And he had been my dear companion for more than 14 years.
He was sweet and affectionate. Whenever I got up and moved around the house, he would be literally at my heels. He kept following me around the house even in these final weeks when he could hardly walk. I would wait for him to catch up.
He loved being with me. It was all he wanted. In a way, it’s a strange blessing that for his final weeks I was home with him all the time because of the coronavirus. Saturday, which was yesterday, I had a vet appointment scheduled to follow up on his diabetes. But I decided it was time. It was so distressing to watch his struggles. His normal mode of walking was always lively and with his tail curled up over his back, but now he staggered and he never lifted his tail—it always hung down. Once I decided that, every time I looked at him the rest of the day, I felt like a traitor. There he was, trusting me, and I was planning his death.
He no longer wanted to be picked up and held. I guess it didn’t feel good anymore. So I sat for a while on the floor next to his bed and petted him. Eventually it was time to go to the vet’s. In the car, he lay on the passenger seat. Back in the day, he would have put his paws on the dashboard and watched through the windshield for other dogs to bark at. Now he lay quietly. When we got to the vet, I communicated with the staff via my cell phone. A staffer came out and carried my dog inside for an exam. If it were not the day of his death, I would not have gone inside because of coronavirus.
But once they checked him out, confirmed his worsening condition, and discussed the options with me by phone, another staffer came out and let me into a room. They brought my dog in to me. He still was not comfortable being held close, so I put him on the exam table and petted him there. He again discovered a canister of liver treats, so I opened it and gave him some and he ate them with enjoyment. The vet came in to give him a sedation injection, and we agreed the pup could have all treats he wanted. I kept putting them in front of him and he kept eating them until suddenly he stopped. I thought he could not see the treat so I held it to his nose, but he did not respond. I realized he had lost consciousness. Then I did take him up in my arms and cuddle him and say all the loving phrases I was accustomed to say to him, until I was crying too hard to talk.
Then the vet and an assistant came in to give the final shot, which he had explained as an overdose of anaesthetic which would stop my dog’s heart. So I laid my dog down on the table and petted his head and ears and whispered to him and also cried and sniffed. I tried not to breathe in the direction of the vet and his helper. They were kind and gentle. When I apologized for the snuffy noises I was making with my nose, they assured me it was fine. The vet listened to my dog’s heart with a stethoscope until he said, “He’s gone.”
We had arranged over the phone that I would leave my dog’s body there and they would send it out to be cremated and call me with the ashes were returned to their office. So I gave my dog one final kiss and loving word, and then the vet showed me out.
I had taken off his collar and I had that with me when I got in the car, and there was his leash lying on the passenger seat. I started the car and drove out of the parking lot. I did not want to go straight home, so I drove out to Birch Bay. I parked in front of the water and watched it for a while. The tide was in but starting to go out. After a while, I emailed my family and texted some friends from my phone to tell them what happened. I started to get responses almost immediately.
I pulled out and turned to drive home. On the way, my phone rang twice, but I didn’t answer it, partly because I was driving, and partly because I didn’t want to talk yet. One call was from a friend and one was from my sister.
I knew I would not feel like making a meal, so I bought some food at a fast-food drive-through when I entered town. I went home. I ate the food. Then I turned off all the lights in my house and sat in my room and cried off and on until I fell asleep. Crying gives me a headache.
Today I have cried a few times again. I sometimes am expecting something without even knowing what, and then I realized I’m expecting to see him under my desk or somewhere in the room. I have a dog bed in each room for him. His water dish and supper dish are there. I will never fill them again.
He was a good dog.
