Goodbye, My Old Buddy

Abu in his older years

This is the day after the most horrible day.

Yesterday was the most horrible day. Or, maybe it was the two days before yesterday. It’s hard to tell.

Yesterday was the day we had my 16-year-old Barkie Boy, Abu Dhoggi, euthanized. Our wonderful vet, Mona, came to the house with one of her vet techs to do it, to save Abu what would have been an uncomfortable ride to the clinic, and the fear he would have felt once there. Here at the house, he spent a comfortable morning sleeping until almost 10, then had an hour of me massaging him while he ate almost an entire bag of lamb-meal treats. Then he decided to get up, and out we went to pee, and stagger around; then had breakfast with added cat food; then out again for a walk around the garden, to sniff all the deer and other critter scents; then back in, with a biscuit, a Greenie, a rolled jerky dog treat, and a rest. 

When Mona arrived just after noon, I took him to his bed and kissed his three soft, sweet-smelling kiss spots: between his eyes, next to each ear, over and over, as we do every night before bed, me telling him how good he is and how sweet smelling and warm. Mona gave him a sedative, and when his breathing was slowed and his eyes shut, she gave him the stuff that stopped his heart. 

Abu, who had been abused as a puppy and then spent too many months at a Humane Society in a cage before we adopted him, was never very comfortable with people who weren’t his people, and this sweet way of letting him go gave him only a moment of alarm, when Mona and her tech bent over him on his bed; but he had his Daddy and me to look at and distract him, his own house and bed and smells around him, and even one of his cats who came over to see what was up and get some admiration from the ladies. I feel blessed that we could give him the release this way, rather than in a rushed trip to the clinic on a day when his body gave out completely and there was no question but that it had to be done immediately.

And that’s why I’m not sure if yesterday was the most horrible day, or the two days before were, while I tried to decide – is it time? How awful is it for him that he can no longer stand for long without falling over, that he can’t take the long walks he was able to take only two weeks before but still wanted to take? How likely is it that his increasing weakness will result in a serious injury that would remove the option of choosing his time and subject him to acute pain? How do I balance his obvious enjoyment of food and rubs and naps and short games, with his ever-shrinking world? What’s the math about his deteriorating body, which is stronger in the morning but weakens over the daytime hours until he needs help to stand up and someone nearby to keep him from drifting into the bushes when he went out to pee, and help climbing the outside stairs in the evening? How likely is it that he’d fall down those stairs again, as he had twice in the last two weeks, and seriously damage himself? And yet; and yet; he enjoyed standing outside and sniffing the night air, looking at the stars, anticipating his treats. Who was I to decide to put an end to that?

The risk of serious injury – the likelihood of serious injury – and a couple of days when he was restless all night convinced me to call and schedule his euthanasia. As soon as I did, I had doubts. I hoped for an extra day. I considered calling and rescheduling for the next week. I cried. I tried to comfort myself. I asked Abu over and over whether he was weary of his age-damaged body, did he feel it was time to move on? I didn’t get a clear answer. You don’t, sometimes – sometimes our beloved critters will manage, even when they can barely stand up, because of us – they love us, and they know we aren’t ready. They go on; and we miss the small disintegrations that affect their daily comfort.

What finally made me comfortable with my decision – sort of – was when the Husband told me that Abu was more and more agitated at night until I got home, which is usually very late. As he grew ever older, after Roo died last fall, Abu was more and more unhappy to be alone, except for a few hours during the daytime when he was used to us being out. Some of his agitation, I’m sure, was because he’d become nearly deaf, but he could still hear Roo bark; when that disappeared, a big thing went out of his life. And for whatever reason, my absence at night made him very anxious, even though the Husband was there.

Several months ago, when I realized that going downstairs was too scary for Abu, we began taking him outdoors via the ramp the Husband had built for aging dogs, and I moved downstairs to the room we call the chapel, to sleep on the futon there so he could still be with me at night. I tried, a few times, to put him to bed downstairs then sneak upstairs to my own bed, but he’d wake sooner or later and pace, and try to get upstairs – which he could do, unfortunately, and climbing stairs was not yet a problem. But then we’d have to face that long steep descent  in the morning, and he came very close to falling downstairs and taking me with him more than once. Abu was a big dog, a 75-pound dog, and neither the Husband nor I are able to carry 75 squirming pounds anymore, if we ever could.

Once I was downstairs with him, Abu was content to sleep downstairs. He’d slept on my bed for years, but within a few days he gave up the futon and moved himself to the nearby dog bed – no more struggling to get up onto, and then down off, the bed. We drifted along like this for what was a long time, in a dog’s life.

But there was slow deterioration. Like many big dogs, Abu was strong, but the hind end became weak. If he was going straight ahead, he could walk comfortably for half a mile. Some days he could still lift a leg to pee, instead of squatting. If he was standing still, he started to fall over after a few seconds. He could usually get himself back up again; but not always. Not if his feet had slipped off the rug onto the slick floor; not if, in plopping down, his rear end had slipped under the corner of some piece of furniture. Not if, outside, he was on a slope or an uneven surface. And then, in the last week, his hind end started drifting to the side, so he was no longer walking straight, and falling over happened more often.

He could still climb the steps up to the kitchen deck, and preferred to do that than go up the ramp by which we took him outdoors. But a couple of times, in the past couple of weeks, a foot would slip, and he actually fell down a few steps – hard landings, from which we needed to disentangle him and help him up. At night, his weak time, we started going up behind him, hand under butt, just in case – and even that didn’t keep his feet from slipping a few times.  A claw got broken; arthritic joints surely were strained; there were a few slips even in the daytime. 

We developed a geriatric care routine, and we settled into it. I don’t know how much this bothered him. He was an amazing athlete most his life: I think it surprised and scared him when his body stopped responding, and suspect needing help bothered him a lot. He refused to learn to eat lying down. But was that reason enough to make the decision I made during the most horrible days? 

I don’t know. I’ll probably never know. I’ve had to make the decision too many times, and each time, my soul feels destroyed. Those of us with ancient or terribly injured humans who rely on us to make that decision for them, have often had the grace of being able to discuss it in advance; or if we have not, we can at least more clearly empathize with how another human feels in the condition they’re in. It’s not easy, it’s never easy, it’s almost always horrible. But unless we’re very unlucky, we have to make that decision for another human only once or twice in our lives. Those of us with beloved pets lose the advantage of being able to fully empathize with what a cat, or a dog, or a bird, or a rabbit might feel about  their deterioration from aging. And we have to make that decision for our beloved pets often. My grandfather, after his last dog died, in spite of being a great lover of critters, swore he’d never have another pet – it was just too, too hard when the decision had to be made. 

Abu, like all our pets, was a special being. He’d been abused as a puppy, and was afraid of tall people, especially men, and afraid of loud noises, unexpected or odd noises, of cardboard wrapping paper tubes, and the cellar. It took us a long time to convince him that loud or unusual noises could be fun – the start of a game, in fact, and he came to love being chased around the house. He learned that wrapping paper tubes weren’t dangerous, though he never learned to enjoy them. Toilet paper tubes, on the other hand, were a total joy, and he could smell, or hear, or somehow sense when one was becoming available, and be at the bathroom door waiting to chase it, toss it, stomp on it, and eat it. I’m happy to report that he chased (just a few wobbly pounces) and killed and ate his last toilet paper tube the night before he died.

Old friends: Abu Dhoggi and Catmandoo

He was never entirely comfortable around tall people, but he learned to enjoy a few special very tall male friends. The Tall Dude and the Sailor and a few others were on his OK list. For awhile, he had a girlfriend – a female Malamute who belonged to a colleague of the Husband, who was the butchest female dog I’ve ever encountered. They’d spend hours following each other around the field when she came to visit, lifting their legs on each other’s pee, and once on their owner’s legs. Abu loved to swim, and would go ‘round and ‘round out-back neighbor Eddie’s pond until I decided he was too deaf, and too visually compromised, to be able to find his way back to shore reliably. And he had a very large, very hard, very heavy red ball that he’d chase around the field for hours, engaged in a one-dog and sometimes one-dog/one-man soccer game. 

I’ll never know if I made the right decision at the right time. Maybe I should have waited another week; or another month; or maybe I should have made the decision a week earlier. Whenever I made the  decisions would still have been horrible. All we can do in such situations is let our heart do the thinking, as much as possible, and ignore what we want, what we wish, what we hope might happen. 

Abu’s passing was as calm and gentle as such a thing can be. I think he was ok with it. All I can say for sure is that later that day – after a lot of crying, a lot of cleaning to distract myself from crying, and some more crying – I opened the door to the kitchen wart, to see what the weather was like outside. While I stood there, door open, I swear Abu’s spirit ran out the door and down the stairs, lithe and vigorous as he was as a young dog, and took off across the field where he’d played so many games of big red ball. He took my eternal love with him.

For the blog alone: 9 August 2018.

Deb Marshall photos