As I write/wrote this our dog Shiva is/was lying next to me. She's 17 and was diagnosed with kidney disease just under a year ago. The past few months she's been going down hill- she can't get up on her own very well, can't walk in a straight line, and, like Bandit, when we come home from work she's covered in feces and urine because she can't control her bladder.
I've tried coming home from work during my lunch hour to clean her up, changing the feeding schedule so that it's less likely she'll have to potty while we're not here, and bought more rugs and blankets so that we always have something clean to put under her when she's made a mess. I'd be happy to keep doing that for as long as I have to, but the fact of the matter is...it's time.
Rare moment of stillness
You can count her ribs now. The kidney disease has really taken a toll on her and she's weighs half of what she used to. She pants a lot, even lying on the cool floor. Shiva's favorite thing in the world was to chase after a ball- she would literally do it until you got tired and stopped. I once saw her jump over our couch starting from a sitting position. While we were at Disney World many years ago a friend of ours was watching the dogs- he called to let us know that when he'd come over to feed them he'd found her on top of the kitchen island, and she was stuck because getting up was no biggie but she couldn't figure out how to get down. I've never met a more active dog. And now all she does is lie on her bed looking tired, emaciated, and sad. She can't even wag her tail anymore. Or maybe she just doesn't want to.
Christmas a few years ago
I hate this.Not like, "Oh, I hate when that happens" or "I hate having to watch commercials"- I mean I hate this. It's heartbreaking to see her like this, but the thought that she won't be here tomorrow is one I hate even more. How can I make her keep going though? She's on pain medication twice a day, you can hear her joints creak and clack when she moves, and she's constantly barking to get up to get a drink, or eat, or pee, or just try to find a comfortable position. She can't even tell us what she'd like us to do so we have to guess, and that leaves me with the same kind of doubt that I still carry with me about Bandit.
I was listening to Billy Crystal's book Still Foolin' 'Em last week. (It's hilarious and touching and I recommend it if you haven't read it and don't mind stuff that's blue. If you don't know what that means, maybe don't get the audio book so you can skip over the colorful language...) In it he talks about saying good-bye to elderly family, and letting go, and it helped me decide that it is time to do that with Shiva. He goes over the whole, "Who's gonna make the decision for me when the time comes?" scenario, and was stuck in it with his uncle, but his uncle passed on on his own. He just had to make the choice to not resuscitate.
I don't want Shiva to suffer but it feels so wrong to me to say she's had enough when she can't tell me that herself. But that's what we have to live with, because from what I see, she's ready.
Look at that tail go. That's one happy pup. She went through two
of those octopus toys. It had squeakers for days.
So here we are in October again, having to make that same heartbreaking decision, and frankly October can go **** off. October is when my Grandmother died, when we lost Bandit, now we're losing Shiva. It's also Halloween, the holiday I dislike the most. (I don't care for horror and I'm a diabetic- it's not exactly designed for me.) I say we skip October and go straight to November this year, not that it will make the pain go away. For fans of this rotten month, well...to each his own, I guess.
If you didn't click the link on Bandit's name above, you should. I'm feeling everything I was last year- the weirdness of scheduling the appointment, the rottenness of knowing the day and time, being sorry for so many things. I knew this was coming last year when we said good-bye to Bandit. They were only a couple months apart and being so close in age I knew we'd have to say good-bye to her soon. I was just hoping it wasn't this soon.
I was just feeding her this morning. I was just getting puppy kisses. I was just giving her a treat. She can't be gone.
