Old Dogs

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.

I slowed up during the run and Rainey turned back and looked at me.  It seemed almost accusatory.  “What the hell,” she seemed to say, “Are we going or not?”  Hey miss birddog you are the one who practically pulls my shoulder out of joint when you feel the need to stop to point at some bird in a bush, I would think.  She has a beautiful feathered tail that would flip back and forth like a metronome.  Her trot was graceful and effortless. After the run we sat outside Starbucks.  I drank coffee and she lounged like a princess as she took in the compliments, “Such a beautiful dog.”

We got up before sunrise.  When she got to middle age she went day blind.  Couldn’t see past her long nose in the daylight but in the twilight she could see perfectly and so we, as my dad would say, got up with the chickens.  We ran for up to an hour. Years passed and we ran for 40 minutes. A couple of years ago I pared the runs down to half an hour.  Last year I would take her out for about 15 minutes and then I dropped her off at the house and then finished my run. The runs ended some months ago and when I would get up she would get up as well, “Sorry girl, you can’t. Go back to bed.”

The past weeks have been a series of vet visits. She’s 12, and has an enlarged heart that beats irregularly.  But the most pressing problem is the front left paw that is either infected or has a cancer. Surgery on the foot and an amputation of a small portion of the afflicted digit will tell the story of whether there is cancer or not.   

Bedtime.  The wife goes to bed first and I follow after a bit of reading or TV.  Normally I would tell Rainey to go to bed while I’m turning off the lights and washing a few dishes in the sink.  But Rainey won’t go to bed.  Instead she waits for me at the top of the stairs.  She won’t enter the bedroom until I’m already in.  Normally she sleeps on a dog bed on my side of our bed.  Well that is until I put my reading pillow down and turn off the lights.  Then she gets up and curls, with a contented little groan, on to the reading pillow just beneath me.  She knows I’m still awake and she sticks her nose up so that I’ll rub her head a little before we go to sleep.

Things aren’t normal anymore.  It’s a challenge now for her to get up the stairs.  And so the sleeping arrangements have changed.  I sleep in my daughter’s old bed that’s in the downstairs room.  Rainey’s foot hurts and so she spends much of the day lying down on the lowest landing of the stairs; it’s been her perch for years.  So that she doesn’t have to walk to the kitchen for her meals my wife will hand feed Rainey while she lies on the landing.

 

Who said running shoes are only good for running? 

I suppose she’s seeing some upside to this.  She’s taking up to 4 pills twice a day.  At first I was trying to just open her mouth and put the pills on the back of her tongue.  She figured that shit out right away and after a couple days it was like trying to open up a gator’s mouth. She loves cherry tomatoes and so the wife stuffed pills in cherry tomatoes.  That worked for a while and then Rainey figured out how to winnow out the pills and spit them out like cherry pits.  Now I’m stuffing the pills in chunks of hotdog (Yeah, yeah I know, not good for dogs.  She eats poop for heavens sake).  Meanwhile my daughter’s Lab, Chloe is looking at Rainey getting hotdogs and probably thinking, “What the fuck is this?”

We keep the pills on top of the microwave in the kitchen.  Between my pill jars, the wife’s pill jars and vitamins and Rainey’s pills the kitchen looks like a fucking old folks home.  What the hell, why not?  We’re not spring chickens anymore.  Not me; not the wife; not the dog.

Sometimes Rainey lifts her foot up and waves it as if to show it to us.  Almost as if to ask, “when are we going to get this taken care of?”  I wish that she could understand that those vet visits are a good thing but all that she know about that place is that it’s where she gets poked, prodded and stuck.  She can’t see the building when we drive up but she knows we’re there and she starts to tremble.  As we sit in the waiting room she ignores that painful paw and tries to crawl onto my lap.

Her fear of that place has led me to one firm; I won’t give an inch on it decision. During a phone conversation one of the doctors broached the possibility that the foot might not be operable and the notion of euthanizing Rainey.  “Let’s cross that bridge if we get there,” she added.  But this presented me with the chance to ask the question that I’d had on my mind the past year or so.  “Rainey is terrified of your office.  If we ever get to where she does have to be put to sleep are there doctors who will do it at our home?”  She assured me that there are and could give us referrals.

 

At Dog Beach in San Diego in the sighted years

We’ve progressed beyond the scope of our regular vet. Now we’re at a clinic called Sage, down Interstate 680 in Concord.  They’ve got the works down there, including the cardiologist who gave Rainey an echogram to be certain that her heart could take the anesthesia for the foot surgery.  That was the first hurdle.  If she couldn’t take the anesthesia we would have to either roll the dice and hope she would survive anesthesia, or simply put her to sleep.  Her heart passed muster but the doctor suggested some tests on Rainey’s spleen because of some possible abnormalities.  She got through that one too.  By now we were over $1000 in and we hadn’t even seen the surgeon who would work on the foot.  That happened today. During a consult he gave us a rundown of everything involved which included a possible biopsy of lymph nodes in case the foot has cancer.  Did we want to leave her overnight so we wouldn’t have to bring her in early in the AM?  “No.  No offense but she doesn’t like this place and I don’t want her trembling all night long.”

The price tag – another $5800. The wife and I haven’t blinked yet – but we have gulped some. 

“Look,” I told her, “that’s about what our vacation is going to run.  If we decide that we don’t want to be out all of the money then we can just cancel the vacation.  The hotels are all refundable and we’ll have a year to use up the plane tickets.” 

So now the vacation is on the chopping block.  Still not blinking. 

The surgery is tomorrow. I asked the surgeon what the worst case would be and he mentioned that it might be cancer which would possibly require some extra medications. I’m optimistic – cautiously. 

Old dogs bring us down to Earth. When they’re puppies and young adults we don’t think 10 years down the road.  We bring them into our homes and call them our best friends and gush about unconditional love.  Inevitably they get old.  They get sick or they get lame.  They can seem like a burden that we never thought of back when they were precocious pups, still cutting teeth and peeing on the carpet and then scampering into a corner.  Before Rainey went blind she would travel with us but after losing her sight it just wasn’t feasible any more.  We had to get our kids to take care of Rainey while we travelled.  There were a couple times when it looked like Raineycare was going to fall through and we looked at cancelling our trip.  

Ten years ago folks would put a dog down because there simply wasn’t the care that is available now.  Now the care is there and pet owners are faced with the price tag.  And then they're faced with the question about the love for they're pet.  Is it unconditional or is there a monetary condition? I'ts a heart wrenching cost analysis.  They're family but it's not like they're people family; there's the out - or not.  That's how some folks look at it - even if they can afford it.

The doctor handed the wife and I the estimate and we simply exchanged looks and knew we were of the same mind - take a gulp and pull out the checkbook. But it can be a real dilemma.  Hell there are people in poor America who often have to face a similar dilemma with their human family.  My wife and a I are lucky in that respect – in a lot of respects.

While at the clinic my wife struck up a conversation with a man whose Lab mix was in for treatment. Shortly after getting his pet, the dog developed hip dysplasia.  Surgery was going to be expensive.  He took out a second on his house. 

When Rainey was a puppy she tore an ACL in her knee. What the hell, I didn’t even know dogs had knees.  That one was $6000 to get it repaired. We gulped just like we did today but at no point then or since was there any regret.  I suppose that we could have just let it go.  It wasn’t a live or die issue.  But all of those many, many runs.  Had we not fixed that knee those years of running would never have happened.   

Now Rainey is old.  She might only have a year.  But she might have five.  I suppose we could do our own cost analysis – is a year or two worth 5 – 6 grand? Absolutely it is. We take that gulp and whip out the Visa. 

These days I run by myself.  On some mornings I say a rosary for my friend. Yeah I’ve memorized it so that I don’t have to carry around those bothersome beads.  

Today I was talking to a co-worker about this and when she heard the price tag the first words out of her mouth were; "You're going to put her to sleep."  She saw the look on my face and apologized. I get it that some folks are going to read this and say, "It's just a dog. Are you nuts?" Maybe we are. We don't look at Rainey as being disposable.  She's been our companion for 12 years so we do what we can. We figure that she would do the same for us.

Old dogs don't run around like they once did.  The don't spin around in circles when you come home but instead they tap their tails on the hardwood floor to say "Hi, welcome home friend." Old dogs don't generate excitement.  Instead they bring us a sense of tranquil, friendship that will stay with us long after they've left us. Rainey and I don't run together anymore. I'm looking for the day when the paw is healed and instead of running we can sit on the front porch in the late afternoon.  She'll stick her nose up to catch a scent of the birds that she can't see while I read and rub her head as the sun sets behind the western hills.  I could never look at my Rainey as a burden. I would rather compare her final time to the soothing quiet peace of the waning sun. 

Today Rainey hobbled out of the veterinary clinic; head down, unsure of where to go.  She stopped occasionally to take a break; nervous and panting, she would lift up the painful paw. The afternoon sun was bright and she was trying to get her bearings. Someone coming out of the clinic and seeing her struggle wouldn’t have recognized her for the princess of years ago – but I would.