If Only

 

She won’t eat, won’t drink, can barely stand let alone walk and breathing is a struggle. I gather her up and take her to the emergency clinic but in my heart, I know it’s a lost cause. She’s too sick to be saved and I think Michael knows it but can’t bring himself to face it yet. After a night in intensive care, she’s no better and it’s clear that the only kind thing is to end her suffering and let her go.

As dogs go, she was never much of a prize. She was anti-social, defiant, violently unpredictable, moody, and would snarl and bite without the slightest provocation. She despised the other dogs and would curl her lip and bare her teeth if they even passed by her. I’ve never known a more ill tempered or nasty little animal and yet, we loved her sorry, little ornery ass dearly. It doesn’t make much sense but it happens that way sometimes, just like with our own kind. I wonder if we are not, by nature, fixers - of junkies and broken people and recalcitrant, bad tempered little dogs. Love is never, ever enough but we don’t seem to be able to let go of the hope.

And so on a chilly, gray skied Sunday afternoon in October, Michael and I meet at the emergency clinic. He signs the euthanasia release, pays the balance of the bill, and we are escorted into an exam room. The little dog is brought in on a mobile stretcher for a final goodbye. And then, the moment she sees us, she struggles a little bit, raises herself to a sitting position, wags her tail and looks directly at Michael with those huge brown eyes and he immediately craters, comes apart at the seams and begins choking and sobbing and saying he can’t do it.

“We’re taking her home,” he manages to tell the vet tech, “I need to see the doctor.”

“She’s been in intensive care for the last 24 hours,” I tell him quietly, “If you take her home, she isn’t…..”

He picks her up, cradles her against his chest and shakes his head. “We’re taking her home,” he repeats shakily, “I’m not going to kill her.”

“Michael,” I say gently, “She’s suffering and she isn’t going to get better.”

“I’m not going to kill her,” he says again and there’s an edge of defiance through the tears.

I’ve known the man for a very long time and I recognize when to give up. I disagree with his decision but it’s his to make and as painful as it is, I understand. The young vet comes in and talks to us about multi-organ failure and how treating her kidneys hurts her heart and treating her heart compromises her kidneys and everything damages her liver. He stresses, as kindly as I’ve even seen it put, that she won’t recover but he also openly admits that she could take a turn for the worse in intensive care as easily as she could at home.

“It’s a question of trying to treat her the best we can without making one thing or another worse,” he says, “She’s a tough cookie but this is a very tough balancing act. We are all so sorry we couldn’t send her home healthy and happy.”

They remove her IV, wrap her up in a towel and we carry her to the car. Once back at the house, we make her a bed of pillows and cover her with a fleece blanket. When the other dogs approach her, she manages a weak but very clear growl then closes her eyes and goes to sleep without so much as a whimper.

“If only she hadn’t sat up and looked right at me….” Michael says helplessly, “Maybe I could have…..”

If only.

That was on Sunday. On Monday, we took her back to her regular vet and heard the same things, that there was no magic cure, that we were doing everything that could be done. We brought her home and about an hour later, she stretched out on her side, took one last breath and peacefully died. Rest in peace, little girl.

Not My Dog

 

She’s not my dog.

She lays on the exam table quiet as a mouse and submitting to the poking and prodding hands of the vet. Granted, based on prior behavior, she’s muzzled but watching her, I can tell that she doesn’t feel good enough to act out. The exam is over quickly and the vet tech whisks her away for x rays and blood work. I don’t expect the news to be good.

Ten minutes later the vet is showing me the x rays and I can clearly see the degeneration of the discs in her spine as well as her hugely enlarged heart. The blood panels reveal her liver and kidneys are damaged and her white count is elevated. She’s given an anti inflammatory shot, a new supply of Lasix and an antibiotic and all the while, even after the muzzle is removed, she doesn’t make the first protest, doesn’t growl or show her teeth or even struggle. She’s not my dog but it’s difficult to see her like this.

Back at home, she finds a narrow space between my chair and the wall and curls up to go to sleep. The other dogs seem to sense that she needs to be left alone and they watch her from a distance but don’t try to bother her. Before I leave, I check that she has water, try tempting her with a hot dog, and carry her outside and back in. She finds the same space and goes back to sleep.

The following morning, she’s the first thing I check on and I’m relieved to see her up and walking more normally and although she doesn’t bark her usual welcome, she is wagging her tail and appears perkier. She’s not interested in eating but she does stop at the water bowl before I carry her outside. Michael tells me she did eat a little hamburger and a spoonful or two of milkshake the night before. It’s not much but it’s a start. Later he’ll get her chicken nuggets, he tells me. Sounds like a plan, I tell him, be sure she takes her pill with them.

Awful lot of trouble and worry for a dog that isn’t mine.

Disorder in the Air

 

I don’t need a calendar to tell me it’s October. There’s a stillness, a softness really, to the days and a gentle magic in the hazy, late afternoon light. There’s melancholy in the air and it wraps itself around everything like a cloud of chiffon. I’ve been expecting it. The trees are beginning to lose their leaves, stretching their soon-to-be bare branches like skeleton fingers across the skies.

Witches and ghosts and goblins and black cats are showing up on front porches and doorsteps all through the neighborhood. Halloween is just two weeks away and in the pre-virus world, every school parking lot and churchyard would soon have a Pumpkin Patch with scarecrows and hay bales and wheelbarrows and little ones trying out colorful trick or treat costumes. This year, though, Halloween is likely to be just one more casualty of the virus. Trick or treat, indeed.

Meanwhile there’s this melancholy. It settles in my bones and makes me feel weepy. It’s sorrow and sadness and regret and the only comfort I can find is knowing that it will pass with November or a sudden cold front, whichever comes first. I’ve never understood it, never been able to figure out why it’s so reliable and precise, like a fifth season. I’ve never had an October without it, not even as a child when I was too young to see it clearly and couldn’t find the words to tell my daddy why I felt so unhappy. I’d thought that this autumn season might be different with the country so uncertain and upside down and – from all I can see – parts of it so determined to self destruct but no. The very first afternoon of October, I glanced out the window and saw how the light was changed and suddenly felt a wave of resignation wash over me. Not even a global pandemic can stand in the way of a determined siege of melancholy.

The oddest thing is that there’s nothing particularly wrong or different or more threatening than there was on the last day of September. It’s annoying to feel so inarticulate and helpless about what is, essentially, a mood, so I trudge on, trusting that time will take care of it and reminding myself that nothing troubles us so much as our own thoughts, disordered and wrong as they may be.