This weekend I’m going to post nothing but upbeat happy inconsequential links. No gloom ‘n doom. No sturm und drang.
Yesterday, here at the remote fortified compound known as Tildebunkport, we had to say goodbye to the Venerable Pup.
I’d been dreading yesterday for a long time. We had a dog who was 13 1/2 years old. We have children who are 16 and 18 years old. The boys can only barely remember a time when we didn’t have the VP.
The Venerable Pup
The VP was a border collie/Bernese mountain dog mix. At 75-80 lbs., he was bigger than either of those breeds, so we always figured he had some other things mixed in. At one time the hub put up a web page consisting of just a photo of the VP with the caption: “What’s My Dog?” Speculation about the ‘other’ portion of the mix most often ran to: labrador, golden retriever, Australian shepherd, samoyed, and German shepherd.
The white-socks-’n-sandals fashionplate is my older son, age 11
![[The school bus arrives.] Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Kids!](http://tildology.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/Bandit3.jpg)
[The school bus has just arrived] Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy! Kids!
He was a powerful dog; deep-chested and strong and could run all day. When the boys were little and roamed the neighborhood in a pack of about a dozen kids, the VP would herd them; running circles around the kids and occasionally bodychecking the stray child to bump him/her back in line with the rest of the flock.
When I saw him running like that, I sometimes thought to myself: “There goes the living embodiment of vitality.” [Really. That's what I actually thought. Like it or not, that's really the way I think.] Sometimes I thought “There goes the living embodiment of beauty”, but most often I thought “There goes the living embodiment of joy.”
We’re all having a tough time of it right now. So – - let the happy upbeat weekend link-o-rama begin!
oh – I am sorry to hear that. The past few days I have been contemplating the same dilemma. Tulip is 14 and her legs are going – and I keep saying things to myself like – “Well she’s still eating” and “She doesn’t seem to be in pain.” I think we will have a discussion on Sunday about the options and timing and how long is too long to wait.
There really is nothing like a dog.
Thanks, Kari.
All I can say about the timing issue is: Don\’t worry; I think that YOU WILL KNOW when the time has come.
We had the same discussions and worries over the past several months, but somehow knew that the VP was not ready to go yet. He too kept eating and could walk around and seemed happy — and he didn\’t seem like he was in any pain at all.
Then when we came home after going out to dinner Thursday night, it was obvious that some kind of neurological event had happened:
When we got home we saw that he had suddenly started holding his head and neck turned upwards as if he were sniffing the breeze, but he could not move his head in any other position. He was also suddenly staggering and stumbling — far more pronounced than he ever did before. It seemed like he could only control one side of his body — as if he\’d had a stroke.
That was it: we all knew that the time had come. There was no doubt in our minds at all.
We could not tell if he was in any pain at all, but just the way he suddenly was only able to stagger, and with control over only one side of his body, it must have been terribly disorienting and confusing for him at the very least. It was just time.
That night, my husband slept on the floor next to him, and at 7 am Friday morning we called our vet and arranged to bring him to the vet\’s office at 9 am. The VP ate his morning meal like he always did, and was calm and quiet as we brought him to the vets.
The kids said they could not bear the thought of being there to see him put to sleep, but my husband and I both were there with him. Again, it was very calm and quiet. I know the VP was happy to be surrounded by members of his \”pack\” (us) and the vet and his nurses, all old friends who have known the VP since we got him when he was a not-so-venerable puppy only 4 months old.
We requested cremation and that the ashes be returned to us. We know it was the right time, and absolutely the right thing to do.
I\’m just sayin — Please don\’t worry about the decision you need to make. There\’s a very good chance that something will change or happen to make your decision clear, and you will also know it absolutely when the time comes for your dog.
Good luck and warm wishes to you all.
We had our oldest dog, Cammie, pts a few weeks ago. She was pretty much incontinent and getting very weak in her back, and was pretty much in kidney failure. She also occasionally had really bad episodes where she couldn’t catch her breath. I just really didn’t want her to die like that, not being able to breathe. I think it was the right thing to do, but I’m not quite sure she was 100% ready to go. I dreamed about her last night. She came back and just hung out in her usual places, being her sweet old undemanding self. She was 13 or 14. We sat with her while they administered the injection, and the last thing she heard was “Good dog, Cammie. Cammie is a good girl.” Her ashes sit up beside our Sasha’s ashes.
I have one other old dog, Ivan, who’s 11 or 12 and fading fast.
But I stil sit patiently and feed him by hand if that’s what it takes to get him to eat, and clean up after him till it’s time to let him go.
We do have 2 other dogs. Bouncer is 7, Jasper 2, so with any luck, we’ll have them around for a while. But it’s so hard to let any of them go.
So sorry about the VP. I lost an 18-year-old cat early in this summer. It’s hard to say good bye. Take care of yourself.
I’m sorry to read about your dog.
VP had lived a nice long life with people who adored him and you can’t get much better than that.
Our last dog died 7 years ago. We’d had an Irish Setter before her who had become very ill at a relatively young age and we’d done all we could to save her…and she pulled through, then became ill with another disease and had to be put down. That was a tough tough death.
But Tuesday, she was an old dog and it was just time for her to go. She had always loved young things. Even tried to mother a baby bird we came across on the ground. So she was ecstatic over our son H.o.p. She spent her last few months following the baby around, always smiling and happy despite her arthritis and hip dysplasia. She died suddenly but we had a chance to say goodbye. And it was OK.
Over the next several years we lost our animal family to, essentially, old age.
We didn’t feel like going through this again for a long while so instead we got fish.
Last weekend our first goldfish, who was about 10 inches, who we’d raised from the size of a fingernail and was only three years old, who we’d come to think of as being Big Mighty God Fish, died. He was hard to lose. He had personality. But no it’s not the same as losing a dog or a cat.
Hope your kids are doing all right. This has got to be hard on them.
I was a bookseller at a Barnes & Noble for several years. There were always customers coming in who were looking for books about certain life situations. All of the booksellers knew what to do when we got these customers — we\’d take them to the back of the store to what we called \”The Shelf\”.
The Shelf was the go-to place for books about various emotion-laden subjects including potty training, puberty, divorce, and grief.
People would often come in looking for a book to give to someone who\’d just lost a dog. The book from The Shelf that I always recommended was
\”Dog Heaven\” by Cynthia Rylant.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&isbn=0590417010&itm=1
It\’s really funny and gentle and not too saccharine-sweet or sentimental. In Dog Heaven dogs spend all day running around through green fields chasing ducks and squirrels. Angels pet them and call them \”good dog\”, and God is a kindly old coot with an orange scarf around his neck who makes cat- and ice cream cone-shaped dog biscuits for his beloved dogs all day long.
Over the years I\’ve given that book to several people I know when they\’ve lost their pets, and I really do think they all liked it as much as I do.
Now I think it\’s time for me to finally pick up that book for my family and me..