I've spent
over a week convincing myself not to write about Lady, one of my childhood dogs
who I had to put down a week and a half ago. I felt like it was a silly thing
to share with the internet and honestly, I’ve been paralyzed by the thought of
people I know (who probably don’t even read this blog) judging me for being sad
about my domesticated animal of choice dying. I mean, I get it. Maybe I don’t
deserve much sympathy. Maybe she was just a dog and it shouldn’t affect me so
much since humans die every day from conflict and disease and famine. But damn it just does. The reality nags at me as I drive past the clinic where she died
on my way to and from work. The finality hits me every time I go over my parents’
house and am not greeted by high pitched barks of excitement and an instant
drop-and-roll that’s code for pleeeeeease
rub my belly. The memory of her curly fur rushes back to me as I pet any
other dog.
I’m getting
dramatic. I should have made a disclaimer about this earlier. It’ll probably
happen again. #notevensorryaboutnotbeingsorry
I’ll
backtrack a bit. Lady had a weird episode while we were camping over Memorial
Day weekend. She was asleep on my youngest sister’s lap when all of a sudden
she went limp and lost control of her bladder. None of us had any idea what had
happened. She had walked a decent
distance in warm weather, so we figured she was experiencing dehydration or
heat exhaustion or the effects of a spider bite. She lay down for a long while,
but by the end of the night she made her way back into our laps and had even
found some of her appetite. She spent a lot of the next two days sleeping, but
that wasn’t out-of-the-ordinary behavior for her, especially while camping. She
always burrowed under a chair and slept the whole day, maybe once venturing
down to the lake to lap up some water or to beg for some human food.
So we were
all shocked when she got worse two days after returning from the trip. At that
point we knew we’d been wrong; she wasn’t tired or hot or thirsty, something
else was going on. The vet at the clinic told us she had developed diabetes a
while ago and that it had gotten to a point where her body couldn’t keep up
anymore. She either needed immediate, intensive treatment and hospitalization
or she probably wouldn’t make it through the end of the week.
I’m gonna
pause right here to tell you that our dogs didn’t see the vet when they slept
longer than usual or when they decided to randomly hide under a bed for a few
hours. These were the first pets we’d had since puppyhood, so we naively
dismissed some behaviors as personality quirks. They weren’t anything to worry
about, and the vet (in our teenage heads) was there to address things we were
worried about.
 |
| The pup's first night with us. Photo taken on my EnV. Remember those? |
My parents
brought Lady back home Wednesday evening and I took Thursday morning off to say
goodbye. I originally didn’t plan on being at the clinic for the euthanization,
but I couldn’t imagine leaving that burden to my younger siblings. That and I couldn’t
help but feel like I had a responsibility to my dog to be there. I was there
when we picked her from the litter and it felt only right that I be there when
she left us. We always joked she loved me best, and I really did have a special
connection to her. She was unofficially mine.
None -- and
I really mean none of us siblings have had to face a death this close to our
hearts before. We dealt with it in different ways: my sister Andrea by cracking
jokes to Lady and me by crying, a very true depiction of how we deal with
basically any issue in our lives. We carried Lady in on a pillow like the queen
she always wanted to be and thankfully had to wait for a room to open up.
A room
opened up sooner than any of us wanted it to, but we handed her off to the vet
to prep her for the procedure. They brought her swaddled in a fluffy pink
blanket and gave us another last chance to hang out with her. The veterinarian explained
what would happen before he put my sweet girl at peace.
Obviously,
we cried…a lot. All four of our hearts broke simultaneously that Thursday. I
know we did the right thing and honestly, one of the worst parts of the whole
thing was seeing her get so frail so quickly. She went from yapping to immobile
within a week, it was shocking. The silver lining is I have so many more memories
of her as herself than as Sick Lady.
I wish I
knew when I’ll be able to think about Lady without having to pretend like it
doesn’t bother me that she’s gone. Or when I’ll be able to hear Skinny Love without tearing up as I flash
to how thin she was that last week of her life. Until then, I’ll keep these photos
on my phone and go through them whenever I miss Lady my baby.
