Dog. · 2:12am Oct 3rd, 2021
Nine years ago the Professor and I rescued a beagle from a shelter. Considering that the day we went to meet him was in the middle of Hurricane Sandy, you could almost tell right from the get-go what a disaster it was going to be. He had just come inside from a walk, so we were greeted by the smell of wet dog and this half starved thing that was naught but skin and bones... he had only been rescued by the shelter mere days earlier.
We had pretty much everything that the experts told us we needed. "Crate train him," they insisted, so we bought a crate with the intention of it being his home/safe space while we were upstairs asleep for the night or at work during the day. There was a power failure on his first night, so he was tucked away in his crate when we made our way to bed via candlelight. The lonely baying was heartbreaking, but eventually stopped...
It probably took about a month before he broke out of the crate while we were at work.... and by broke out, I mean bent the metal to the point where he ensured that it would not longer function as intended. He also destroyed any paper products he could find and gnawed on two dining room chairs, turning one of them into kindling. The shade for the big bay window in the living room was also shredded. Apparently he needed to see what was outside.
Without a crate, we needed a safe space in which to put him while we were at work, as we did not trust him with the run of the house yet, especially with his destructive tendencies. He was placed on anxiety medication for these, which was the beginning of his 12 hour feeding schedule, as they had to be taken with food.
We fenced in our yard after one too many accusations from neighbors that he was pooping on their lawns. I was the one who took him for walks, and I knew exactly where he pooped every day, and it was never on someone's lawn. Usually he preferred piles of leaves for whatever reason, and I had special perfumed poo bags to clean up after him in the event that he did decide to go on the lawn, which he never did.
That was all while we were renting a place from the Professor's father... by the time we moved into our own house, he was off of the anxiety medication. We had discovered that having a companion dog in the house was beneficial. He got along with other dogs very well and they curbed his destructive tendencies almost enough to let him roam the house freely when we weren't home. We tried Norman, a puggle who was raised with pit bulls and had a Napoleon complex that compelled him to incessantly hump Odie as a form of domination. We tried Guapo, whose own status as a rescue dog came with a fear of anything that sounded or smelled like it had a Y chromosome. They were not good fits... Norman would eventually attack Odie over a squeak toy and the certified Kennel Club trainer said that Guapo lived in constant fear and should probably have never been rescued in the first place.
After the two failed rescue attempts, we just decided that we'd risk giving Odie the run of the house, and just took some extra steps to "dog proof" it when we were at work. Then came the day when we were about to go on vacation, woke up ready to bring him to the in-laws for a week, and instead found him in the kitchen having an epileptic seizure in a puddle of his own mess. Back to medicating him twice per day with Phenobarbitol this time.
A temporary companion came when one of the professor's students came to us with a need to board her dog while she attended school. Her parents refused to do so, and the school didn't allow dogs, so for four years Bambi, another beagle, was Odie's partner in crime. Seriously, his bad destructive habits resurfaced in spite of dog proofing... it never seemed to be proof enough, and no boxes or paper products were safe once he discovered them. We actually had the nerve to blame poor Bambi at first, but we discovered that it was Odie the whole time. Four years of school came and went pretty quickly, and Bambi would leave to be reunited with her mistress. We were bad to a one dog house again.
Odie continued to live a dog's life. Snapped a plumeria that we had gotten during our honeymoon right in half during one of his destructive fits... the top half survived. Swallowed a cell phone charger during another and almost had to get his stomach pumped. He passed it.
Destructive days were Bad Days... but not as bad as the day he went on Phenobarbitol. About six months ago he had a Bad Day of that magnitude. He just had no energy and was having issues making it down the stairs to the yard to do his business. Five days of vet visits and diagnoses later determined that he was "full of lymphoma," with a prognosis of up to six months if little to no action was taken or up to a year if he received chemotherapy. Chemo was not the best fit as far as options went. There was risk that it would not mesh well with his Phenobarbitol, as well as other quality of life issues. We went with a middle option, and were impressed by how quickly he bounced back to being his old self. The specialist was amazed after the second follow-up appointment. "You'd never know by looking at this dog that he had terminal cancer," he said, matter of factly. "Just a warning... when the time comes, he's just going to crash. It will happen very fast."
The signs were there last week. He went to the Appleseed festival, and folks loved him. "Can we pet your dog?" was the popular question. But he was having difficulty jumping up on the couch again, and ascending or descending the stairs was slowing down.
Friday morning I woke up to a Bad Day. The dog that regularly ate his dinner with the gusto of a starving wild animal didn't finish his breakfast. In nine years, this dog had never failed to finish his breakfast (or any other dog's breakfast if it were left unattended). Red flag number one. He went outside, but I had to help him back up the stairs to get in. Red flag number two. Before leaving for work, we would leave him treats that we hoped would curb any destructive behavior. Having scheduled a vet appointment at noon, the Professor returned home from work early to find that he had ignored the treats completely. The dog that had a bottomless stomach (he ate paper and a phone charger for crying out loud) no longer wanted to eat.
We had been warned. We knew that we would be making the Difficult Decision, likely before the end of the year. So we did what we had to do. It would have been unfair to subject him to any more additional poking and prodding... for what? Another six months with no guarantee that he'd bounce back this time? Anyone who has ever seen an animal look at you with those eyes... the "it's time" eyes knows what I'm talking about. They know better than we do. So after nine years, I had to say goodbye to an epileptic dog with anxiety issues that often led to destructive situations ad cost us boatloads in vet bills and medications. Probably the neediest, greediest dog I've ever had the misfortune of calling mine.
Damn, I miss him so much already...
I'm a little slow on the roll here, but I'm very sorry about your dog. Our pets can be such pains and terrors but we always miss them when they're gone. And they pass much sooner than we do, usually, so that's an inevitable part of it.
I hope you find another pet or other way of balancing those needs when you're able.