Bittersweet memories
I did either a really stupid thing or a good thing yesterday. I took my
grandson to the local animal shelter, and met a new dog. I went with the
intention of meeting a little terrier, but wound up taking home a
little red dog, with a plumed tail, and expressive ears. She's tiny,
only 12 pounds, and although she knows several commands such as "sit"
and 'stay", she isn't housebroken. Today she was outside on the patio
for over six hours, and as soon as I came home, she came inside, peed in
the kitchen, then went upstairs and pooped in the bedroom, and peed on
the stairs. I don't know if I have the energy and time to housebreak a
dog. I'm not sure I have the energy and spirit to bond and love another
dog.
I thought I was getting used to not having Buster around.
Except he was. When I came into the house at night, I could feel his
spirit coming to meet me, tail wagging. I could imagine his nose under
the garage door, sniffing to see who was there. I imagine him laying on
the rug, stretched out sleeping, with his big eyes closed. I wish there
was some way to transfer my mental images into video or even still
pictures so I would never forget the look on his face as he walked away
with the vet tech and how he let me hold him as he died. I never want to
forget wrapping him up in his blanket, or how his fur felt between my
fingers.
There are fourteen years of memories to catalog. The
way he used to tear around my bed on his little baby legs, and fall
asleep almost instantly. The night when he was 14 months, and got hit by
a car, and we were terrified he would die, and how hard it was to get
him to the vet, because he was in such pain. The ugly scar down his leg,
and how, ever after, his right leg toed in just a bit, and how he had
that little bump under his skin where the head of the steel pin
protruded from his shoulder.
He loved living in Las Vegas. He
loved going over to the school a couple of blocks away, and when I let
him off the leash, he would run and run. But he would come back when I
called, no matter how far away he was. We walked all over our
neighborhood, in summer heat and winter cold. He never seemed to mind
any of it.
I hugged him and sobbed the night my dad died. The
day I came home from work so sick I literally passed out for 10 hours,
he climbed up on the bed and lay across my body, keeping me warm and
protecting me. I remember when Sarah would visit, and how she laughed at
how he would back up to a bush, and poop, so that the poop fell into
the bushes. And the time we let him eat our leftover mexican food, and
how he pleaded with Sarah to get up and take him out, then promptly
puked and pooped like there was no tomorrow.
Buster spent so
much of his time alone in those early years. Moving in with Mom must
have seemed like heaven to him, even though he had to learn to spend the
day outside, instead of inside. He escaped over and over again, through
the hedge, through carelessly opened gates, under the garage door. One
weekend, Mom and I left him in the garage while we went to Reno. We
secured the door with a six inch long, 1/2 thick bolt. He managed to
jump up against the door until the bolt worked itself up in it's ring,
and let the door open just enough to let a skinny but determined dog
out. We came home late Sunday night, and realized immediately he was
gone. Just as I started to get back in the car and look for him he came
trotting up the sidewalk. We found out later from the mailman that he
was out almost the entire time we were gone, because he would not let
the mailman near the house for two days. Obviously he stayed around the
house, probably sleeping on the porch or by the lemon tree.
He
made Mom crazy with his peeing. She covered things with plastic, put
potted plants on stools and crates to raise them up above his pee level.
She protected the tires of her car with cardboard, and put boards up
against the plants she couldn't move. She swore at him many times, and
yet on the nights I had to work late she would take him a treat, to make
up for me being late. She came down to Target one night when I was
working because she had inadvertently let him out, and she has spent an
hour looking for him before coming for me. I took off from work, and
followed her home. By the time I was driving up the hill to our house, I
could see him in my headlights. He was trotting up the shoulder of the
road, heading for home, happy as a clam.
I'll never forget the
sight of him, laying on the patio in the sun, eyes blinking closed as he
enjoyed the sun and fresh air. Or the possums he killed, and was so
proud of. The summer evenings Mom and I would sit on the step of the
little trailer with a glass of wine, admiring the fresh mown lawn, and
Buster would bring a ball to Mom and try to get her to throw it for him.
Over and over, she would hand it to me, and I would throw it, and he
would run across the lawn, skid to a stop under the apple tree or rose
bushes, and bring it back...to Mom. During the days when I was gone to
work, Mom would let him off his chain while she was outside, and he
would follow her around the yard, "guarding" her. He loved to go out to
the very end of the sidewalk in the back, and lay there, sleeping in the
sun.
I don't think he understood when Mom died. Or maybe he did,
since she died at home. Maybe he could smell the death, or maybe he
just realized she wasn't there anymore. But he let me cry and cry night
after night, occasionally licking my face with a gentle tongue. When we
had to move, he accepted the trailer, and the confinement, without
complaint. We even got to the point where we enjoyed the walks along the
perimeter, with the pine trees and grasses and the chance to run off
leash in the dog run. How many times did I cuss him out as he dragged me
up the stairs as he bounded up to the gate? How many times did I cuss
at him for his incessant back and forth, back and forth from the bedroom
to the living room and back, nails clicking on the linoleum, as you
waited for me to take you for a walk. I'll never forget how I would come
driving down the access road to the trailer, and his sweet face would
pop between the slats of the patio door cover, as if he had some
internal alarm (or really good hearing) that told him I was almost
home.I'd just as soon forget the days that awful summer when I would
come home and find a nasty, stinking mess in the living room, courtesy
of his IBS. I never could get mad at him, but boy, the awfulness of
cleaning and cleaning that carpet in the horrid hot tin box. I was so so
happy when I bought the condo, and I could give him a place to live out
his last years in comfort. How ironic that we only had 11 months, and
the summer wasn't even very hot after all. But we made some wonderful
memories in our little house. Walks in the morning past the school, up
to the corner, then back down along the sidewalk where he would sniff
and pee on every little bush. He loved that carpet of ivy in the yard of
that house on the corner. Sometimes we would walk the other way, past
office building. In the dark of a winter morning or late summer night,
the street lights made the street glow orange, and reminded me vaguely
of Las Vegas.
We discovered the hidden path that runs behind the
second set of condos, but not until almost his last months. Our usual
evening walk was up the sidewalks to the back gate, out and around to
the school, along the fence line, peeing on every weed he found. He made
friends with stray kids, set the neighborhood dogs to barking, and just
enjoyed life.
It took him a while to figure out how not to slip
at the foot of the stairs, when he would come bounding down the
carpeted steps and hit the slick wood floor. I worried that with his
age, he would hurt a hip, but he seemed to learn. Either that, or he was
just quickly getting old and tired, and going up and down stairs
quickly wasn't an option.
I laughed and I cried when I got my
new bed. It was so high he had trouble getting up on it. Several times,
he misjudged his leap, and wound up sliding back down to the floor. I
considered getting him stairs or a bench, but he learned, and still
slept on my bed until he was simply too sick and frail.
I used to
cuss and swear at him, and to my eternal regret, smack him on the
snout, for barking like a lunatic when I got home. How could I know that
with months, he would stop barking altogether, one of the side effects
of his cancer I presume. I would have given anything to hear his big
deep bark one more time.
All this past summer, we battled his
incessant licking and chewing. He had big raw spots on his forelegs, and
licked the hair off his hind legs. I used ointments and sprays and
bandages and tape, trying to get him to stop. Oddly enough, it was the
licking that led me to discover his cancer. He had a patch of ugly,
crusty skin at the base of his tail, so I bought some oatmeal shampoo
and one evening gave him a bath on the patio. I sprayed him over and
over with the hose, and he ran around the patio, shaking off the water. I
finally got a couple of old towels and rubbed him dry and that's when I
noticed the lump in his cheek. It was small, and hard. I thought it
might be an abscessed tooth. I think that moment on the patio was the
defining moment of the last few months. I think I knew then it wasn't a
tooth, because he let me rub it without pain. My conscious mind didn't
know it, but the rest of me did. Even through three trips to the doctor,
I knew. When the doctor called to tell me it was cancer, I knew.
From
the day I brought him home from the vet, life changed. I started doing
research, and changed his diet, added fish oil to his food, stopped
being impatient with his frequent stops to sniff and pee and wander. Our
walks took longer, but I wanted him to have the best time he could. I
spent a lot of time (but not nearly enough) down on the floor, hugging
him and telling him how much I loved him and how glad I was to have
shared my life with him. I brushed him gently. I bought some air dry
clay and made an impression of his big paw. I started gathering pictures
together, and searched and searched until I found the one photo of him
with Joe, when he was just a little brown wolfish puppy.
The
blanket he was buried in used to belong to my son Joe. Buster inherited
it when Joe moved out, and I used to put it on the bed for him to sleep
on. At Mom's house, it topped a pile of pillows and pads in the garage.
In the trailer, it was on a corner of my bed. And in the new house, it
covered the new pillow I bought him to sleep on downstairs, to cushion
his old joints from the hard floor. He slept on it for about 9 months.
For some reason, after he got sick he stopped sleeping on his pillow. I
don't know if it was coincidental but I washed the blanket and the
pillow cover around the same time he went to the doctor. I felt bad,
because he took to sleeping on the rug in the living room and I tried to
entice him back onto his pillow by moving it to different spots. But I
only saw him sleep on it a couple more times, just before he died. He
seemed to like the cool floor, and once, when I was busy working on the
patio, he went into the garage and curled up on the cool cement floor.
On
the morning he died, knowing he wouldn't be coming home, I cut a piece
out of the blanket. I wanted to used it in a memory box. I'm glad I did.
The box has pictures of Buster, his paw print, his collar, and a tuft
of his fur. It hangs on my bedroom wall where I can see it first thing
in the morning and last thing at night.
The last week or so of
Buster's life, I had taken his collar off, because he was losing weight,
and it seemed too big and heavy for him, even though it was a
lightweight collar, originally meant for a much smaller dog. It was kind
of a sissy collar, black with white dog bones on it. When he was
younger, I would put a harness on him for our walks, since he would
literally choke himself pulling against the collar, and it was too easy
for him to just stop and back up, and pull right out of the collar. But
after we moved into the new house he seemed to slow down, and I gave up
the harness, and just hooked his leash to his collar. But as I said, in
the last week or so, it just seemed too heavy, so I took it off, and
just put it on him when we went out for walks.
He stopped waking
me up at 5am to go out, and often would still be asleep when I got up.
Some days I could shower and get dressed before he woke up. Other days,
he would wake up, and come lay in front of the shower door while I was
in it, then lay by the bathroom while I got ready to go. He never
refused a walk, and would wag his tail right up to the end, but I could
tell it was taking more of a toll on him. But he was always eager to go.
Even his last morning, when he was bleeding all over the place, he
wagged his tail as I put on his collar and leash, and trotted out to the
car, and let me lift him up into the back seat.
By the time we
got to the vet, he was noticeably weak and disoriented. I think he was
bleeding in his mouth, and was weak from blood loss. I think he knew
what was happening, and was relieved. On the drive up, my son petted
him, and Buster laid his big head on my son's arm, as if to say goodbye.
I'm so glad my son was able to be there with me, because he loved that
big dog, too.
There are so many memories I still haven't listed,
but I'll save them for another time. I love you, sweet doggie. I know
you're still here in my house, and in my heart forever.
Posted by
Nash's G'ma
at
5:23 PM
My sweet beautiful puppy died today. I say puppy, but he was actually
over 14 years old. He was diagnosed with bone cancer back in September,
and the vet said he might have as much as a year. Unfortunately, we
weren't that lucky. I've known for a week or so that I was going to have
to let him go, but it wasn't a decision I wanted to make. I
procrastinated, but finally called a local vet and set up an appointment.
She was going to come to the house tomorrow. Last night, it was
raining, and Buster and I took a long walk in the cool night air. We
came home, I rubbed him dry with a couple of towels, and his coat was so
soft and clean. He had a dinner of half a pound of raw hamburger, and
we went upstairs to bed. He slept by my bed all night.
I woke up
this morning, and he wasn't there. I got up to go downstairs, thinking
he needed to go outside and go potty. When I got downstairs, there was
blood all over the floor. Buster was bleeding from his mouth. I grabbed a
paper towel and tried to wipe his mouth. I took time to put on a pot of
coffee, and then went to get the mop. It was very quickly evident that
this wasn't going to stop, and the end had come. After calling my son to
alert him, I dressed, covered the back seat of the car with blankets,
and put on Buster's collar and leash for the last time. He gave me no
fuss getting into the car. After picking up my son, we drove to the
nearest 24 hour emergency vet. Buster walked in, I handed him over to a
tech, and he walked down the hall. As he walked away, he looked back
over his shoulder at me, and I reassured him that I'd be right there. He
turned and went willingly.
A few minutes later, my son and I
were in the exam room when the tech brought him back, with a catheter in
his leg. We spread his blanket on the floor, and I sat on it, and
cradled him in my arms, with his head resting on my chest. He sat there
quietly, no struggling or anxiety. The vet injected something in the
catheter, and he almost immediately went limp. I held him for a minute
or two, and then my son and I wrapped him in his blanket and carried him
back out to the car.
We drove to my son's house and took Buster
out of the car and laid him in the back of an old pickup truck. My son
went to talk to his father in law about where to dig the grave, and I
stood there patting the blanket bundle. I unwrapped his head, and stood
there rubbing my fingers in the thick ruff around his neck. He was still
warm, incredibly. I tucked his favorite stuffed squirrel between his
front legs, then wrapped him back up.
My son and I walked up
into the orchard and selected a spot for him. I went inside to visit
with my grandkids and daughter in law while the two men dug the grave.
The soil was wet and heavy with clay, but eventually the hole was deep
enough, and my son laid Buster to rest, curled up as if asleep.
I
adopted Buster when he was an 8 week old puppy. He had been born in a
shed in a field, and had some kind of black, sticky substance coating
his flanks and head. Bathing didn't remove it, so I spent his first
night at home carefully cutting the tar from his hair with a pair of
embroidery scissors. He never fussed or tried to get away.
As a
puppy, he would play with my son, and run in circles chasing a towel or
sock until he was so exhausted he would collapse into sleep in the wink
of an eye. He loved to chase a red laser pointer, and never did figure
out it wasn't alive.
Buster traveled with me when I moved to Las
Vegas, and was my constant companion. The night my father died, I cried
into Buster's fur for hours, and he licked my face over and over again,
with a curiously human look of sympathy in his eyes.
When we
moved into Mom's house after Dad was gone, I thought he'd be thrilled to
have a huge yard to run around in. Instead, he took every chance he
could to escape. The tall hedge that bordered the property never deterred
him. He could climb four feet of chicken wire, wiggle through four feet
of hedge, drop three feet to the neighbor's yard, and be halfway down
the street the minute my back was turned. Sometimes, he escaped when I
was right there watching him, but too far away to get to him and catch
him before he got out. Eventually, we were forced to put him on a 30
foot tie-out during the day.
At night he would come in the house, trot down the hall to my room, and hop up on the bed as if it were his, not mine.
We
moved out of the house with the big yard after Mom died, and into a
rental trailer with no yard. Ten months later, we moved again, into a
house with a tiny yard and a big garage. We got to know every dog in the
neighborhood on our morning and evening walks.
Over the years,
he lost his hearing, and no longer barked at the mailman or fireworks.
Cold weather made his legs ache, especially the right leg, with the
steel pin, souvenir of a run-in with a car when he was 14 months old. He
developed stomach problems, and I began to cook his food for him,
instead of buying canned.
His last months were hard. He loved
the new diet of fresh meat, pasta, pumpkin and eggs. But he was getting
unsteady on his feet, and every once in a while when eating, he would
yelp, and run out of the room. But he never complained. When he could no
longer jump onto the bed to sleep with me, he started sleeping right
beside the bed, so close I could reach down and rub his head if I
wanted. On our walks, instead of pulling me down the sidewalk, he walked
sedately beside me, stopping often to turn his head and locate me again
since the tumor in his face had blinded him in one eye.
I'll
never forget how calm he was at the end, and how trusting he was,
letting me hold him and whisper "I love you, sweet dog" even as he died.
