Do You Realize?

Of Dogs and Death

It's 4:35 a.m., and I'm sitting in my living room, listening to our dog struggle mightily to take in enough oxygen to keep her little body alive. My husband & I were in bed, with Poogan at our feet making the same brave attempts to breathe, taking turns lying down beside her and in our regular positions in bed. As we lay there with our heads next to hers, petting on her, my husband posed an interesting idea, one that some might find painful. The idea was simply this: Might Poogan be more comfortable downstairs, instead of on the bed? We made the decision to go downstairs. We put Poogan in the floor, in the spot where she loves to lie, and we went to the sofa to camp. She's moved about downstairs as she wishes, and, not surprisingly, she's not stayed with us for more than a couple of minutes.

This was so hard for us to do. As human pet owners, with human emotions and attachments, we want to be there with our pets for every one of their last moments. But do they want us there? We like to think that, yes, they are put at ease by having us there, but I actually think the opposite might be true. I think having us there, hovering, doting, worrying, only adds to any anxiety they may be feeling. They are dogs, and dogs are not humans. We share some of the same emotions, yes, but not our attitudes of death.

Think of how dogs choose to die, if given the choice. Alone. Away from their pack. Even domestic dogs do this. I grew up with animals, and I could never understand my parent's gentle but mysterious explanations when a dog "went off to die." But I've always known that they do. And yet, in a dog's final moments, we still want to "be there for her (or him)." In times of grief, rational thought need not apply.

When I die, I do, indeed, want my "pack" around me. I don't think I want to be alone. But, then, I'm only human.

Tripawed Tuesday

As you may recall, Poogan was officially tripawed on Monday of last week, because of a soft tissue sarcoma. I am officially in awe of this dog's (and every animal's really, as they are so much tougher than we humans) resiliency. Day One post-returning-home saw her able to go upstairs on her own; by Day Three she could also go downstairs, a much tougher task when the paw missing is a front paw. By Day Five, she could jump up onto and down from the sofa and eat from her bowl in the floor (another tricky one, requiring more balance than one would imagine). On Day Six, two days ago, I can officially say she made my heart swell with joy and pride.

Every evening, around 7 or 8 o'clock, we walk the dogs. They all seem to know what time it is, and the indoor dogs all get excited when they see us head for the back door to gather the leashes. Lorcan starts sneezing uncontrollably, Nibbles starts tap-dancing in circles, and Poogan winds up her Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shining-smile (you know, when you can see her last molars and her eyes take on a slight smidge of madness).

Every day up until Sunday, Poogan didn't show much interest at walk time, but Sunday, she lined up with everyone else, channeling Jack in full force. She's still not wearing a collar, so I couldn't leash her up, but I figured, "Hey, she's missing a leg. We can catch her if she decides to run off." We also fully expected to carry her most of the way. Not a chance. She was very good to stay with the pack, but when her feet hit grass she was bounding like a puppy. She made it almost all the way around the block before I made hubby pick her up & carry her; she likely would have kept going but she was panting pretty hard, and I didn't want to risk her overdoing it.

Watching her return to her former self and abilities has been an inspiring lesson in sticktoitiveness. It's amazing to see her nonchalant response to a slip of the paw and resulting face-plant. A human's reaction would include self-consciousness and embarrassment, but all she thinks about is trying again to get it right. We all could learn something from our courageous canine counterparts. Here's to you, Poogan!

(This photo was taken on Sunday morning, when Poogan decided we should just lie in the driveway for fifteen minutes or so and enjoy the breeze and the quiet at 7:00 a.m. She's so wise; it was lovely.)

P.S. On a totally unrelated note, Middle, his girlfriend, and I rented Cloverfield last night. While I liked the movie, it was no better for sensitive stomachs on a television than the big screen. I missed a half hour or so while I regurgitated my dinner, my lunch, and my breakfast, and possibly even dinner from the night before. Dramamine, people, Dramamine. They weren't lying.

Me, Me, Me, Meme

I was tagged for this meme by Byrning Bunny, one of my favorite bloggers. She has a blog where she participates in many memes, from Green Thumb Sunday to Unconscious Mutterings. She is intelligent, an animal-lover and gardenre like me, and she has the cutest little boy ever. Go see for yourself. Anyway, here are the rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning of the post.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves in their post.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

The Questions:

1. What was I doing ten years ago?
   I was filling in for Youngest's Pre-K teacher, who was on maternity leave.
2. What are five things on my to do list for today?
   Just five? Grocery shopping, mopping, mowing the lawn, planning a menu for fifteen for the next almost-a-week, picking Poogan up from the veterinary hospital.
3. Snacks I enjoy?
   Devil's food cupcakes with Duncan Hines fluffy white frosting.... mmmm.... Lucky Layla drinkable yogurts (especially pina colada, with its chunks of coconut and pineapple), peanut butter and apples.
   
4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire?
   Oh, geez. Let's see. First, we would pay off our debts and the debts of our parents and siblings. We would set aside enough money for all the kids' college educations.  I would go back to college myself. We would finish the repairs on our house, sell it, and move to a little plot of land large enough for my animals to run around on, preferably in Vermont. I would open at least one non-profit, no-kill animal shelter. I would travel to New Guinea to study their indigenous birds. I would go back to Italy. I would travel around the world volunteering and photographing natural disasters to raise awareness and support for relief. It's too early to really think about this one yet. Show me the money first, bitches!
5. Three of my bad habits?
   Are you kidding? I don't have any bad habits! LOL! Okay, maybe a couple... Let's see... I can be an incredible pig; my husband hates to ride in my car. I curse like a sailor. I sometimes hold grudges.
6. Five places I have lived?
   I'm quite boring. I've only lived in two cities my entire life. How about houses? The houses in which I've lived were never boring. They all have stories.
   
   1. I've lived in the place where I grew up, Booger Hollow, on 200+ acres of beautiful forested land in the middle of nowhere.
   2. The first house where hubby, the kids & I lived was a little gingerbread house on a corner of a neighborhood called Saddle Mountain. We loved that house, but we never took the option to buy it, mainly because of needed updating and plans to widen the highway in front of it. Eight years later, that highway is exactly the same as it was when we lived there. Damn.
   3. The first house we owned had some great features, like floor-to-12-foot-ceiling windows, which I adored. The walls of the living room were buttery yellow, which is my favorite color. But it took us over a year to sell it because it was synthetic stucco, and people had heard horror stories of real stucco houses in the south rotting from the inside when termites got behind it. That house, by the way, is still standing; no termites have eaten it to the foundation.
   4. When we moved out to Texas, we moved into a house we'd never seen before. The weekend hubby & I were supposed to have found a house, he had a terrible car accident on his way to work the day before leaving.
   5. This is our third house in eight years. We hate it. More specifically, we hate the people from whom we bought it. I guess the guy was a friend of an inspector, because we've since found so many fucking problems an inspector should have found. We currently only use one shower, as water drips liberally through to the downstairs when we use it. I just took down some of our plantation shutters only to discover that the door had once had double-paned glass, one of which had been broken out, with shards left around the edges. To make matters worse, they had painted the trim since breaking the glass and just left the glass shards there, painting over them. Un-freaking-believable.
7. Five jobs I have had?
   My first job was opening a Dress Barn; I worked as a cashier at Kroger; I worked as an assistant to the marketing director of our mall; I worked as a server in many restaurants; and as a dining room manager in two of them; and I managed and taught classes at a scrapbook supply store.
8. How did you name your blog? I adore the premise of this Flaming Lips song about life and death and the impermanence of it all, and that's where I got it. If you haven't heard it, I'd highly suggest listening to it.

Okay. Tagging. Does it say how many we have to tag? Here goes: Blue Like the Sky, RedMolly, Tenuous at Best, and while I totally don't expect anything to come of it, I'd love to see Crystal's answers, over at Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper. I occasionally stalk her blog for hours at a time. She makes me laugh. A lot. I'll go tell them I tagged them when I get back from my 100-mile-round-trip to Youngest's school & Whole Foods. Or, if you make it here before then, don't make me do all the work... get posting! Heh.

Osteosarcoma

It even sounds insidious, doesn't it? We just got an initial diagnosis of it for Poogan yesterday afternoon. I'm headed to a specialist this morning for confirmation. Please send positive thoughts and even prayers, if prayers are more your thing. Thank you!

Update Friday 5/30/08:  Yesterday's visit to the surgeon brought good and bad news. The bad news is that this is, indeed, a cancer, and amputation will still be necessary, so Monday begins a new challenge of three-leggedness for Poogan. The good news is that he does not suspect osteosarcoma, which is very aggressive and invasive. Rather, because of its presentation, he suspects a rarer, but less aggressive, form of cancer, synovial cell cancer. Only pathology of the limb will tell us for sure, and that will take about a week post-surgery.

Woofday Wednesday--Lorcan

It's been awhile since I've served up a crazy cute puppy with a sob story for you to "ooh" and "aah" over.

Our sixth dog at the "V" household is Lorcan. He was Eldest's ex-boyfriend's dog. XBF's mother is, I think, certifiably batshit, and was (and still is, as far as I know) constantly doing impulsive, ridiculous things that made normal people's jaws drop in amazement at the level of batshittery.

XBF's mother decided they were moving into an apartment to save money. She told XBF to find a place for Lorcan or he would be shipped off to a shelter. Nevermind the fact that they had owned Lorcan since he was a puppy, and was now six years old. Nevermind the fact that he was AKC registered. Nevermind that he was perfectly housebroken, a good watch dog, and knew all sorts of "people-pleasing doggy tricks" (you know, "sit"; "shake"; "high five"; etc.). She was ready to drop him like a bad habit.

We offered to take Lorcan if the apartments refused to allow animals. We made the mistake of letting him come to our house before La Loony Bitch made such inquiries. We ended up with a permanent house guest. A BIG permanent house guest.

He's lovely, and he's not going anywhere, but he's really a pain in the rear sometimes. He's unnaturally attached to Eldest, he's skittish, he tries to eat doesn't like little kids a whole lot, sometimes he's a little too effective in the watch dog department, and if we leave him out back too long he makes an incredible non-stop barking nuisance of himself. Come to think of it... WHY are we keeping him?

Woofday Wednesday--Perkins

This is Perkins. He is our Prince Charming. He has the sweetest, most laid-back disposition of any dog we own. In fact, were it not for the fact that whatever Bozo dumped him out didn't have him neutered as a puppy, he would be an indoor dog; as it stands now, we couldn't de-activate his sprinkler system in time to avoid that nagging desire to piss on every immobile object.

He has one other terrible trait: his wanderlust. This boy was born to run. If he ever gets loose, he will lead you on a footchase to the ends of the earth (I've had to chase him a half mile before). One day a couple of years back, he took off, lost us in the footchase, and didn't come home. He always came home. We searched for days, we made reward posters, we got a few tips, but, ultimately, nothing came of it. We were heartbroken. Then, one day, more than two weeks after he went missing, a neighbor called & said she'd been hearing a dog bark near her house for a few days. She'd thought it was in a faraway yard, but it turns out Perkins was trapped in the crawl space of a house next door to hers that was vacant and for sale at the time. My husband had to crawl through a tiny hole to retrieve him. The vet said his body had started to break itself down from lack of food, and he was dehydrated, but blood tests showed no harm to his kidneys; Perkins dodged a bullet. We were so very lucky.

Love a stray; neuter & spay!

Meowy Monday--Taylor Mae

Before we get to Meowy Monday, I want to mention my Blogiversary Giveaways again. Today, for Meowy Monday, I'll be drawing a random name from my comments to give away a bag of Feline Greenies and a can of Pet Promise cat food. (My kitties love it. It has no rendered animals, no factory farmed animals, and no animal by-products, like fur or toenails, in it.) You have to comment to be included, though!

And now...

Since you've already met all four of my beautiful kitties, I now get to have guest ambassadors for Meowy Monday. This week's guest is Taylor Mae, one of my aunt's kitties.

Mimi has two kitties, and they look exactly alike. How, then, you may wonder, do I know that this is Taylor Mae (and not Pepper Ann)? Because she let me take this photo. Pepper Ann only tolerates men, for whatever jacked-up reason, and I don't qualify.

My cousin is a veterinary technician, and she is always bringing home injured, abandoned, or otherwise misfit critters (witness Woody the Woodchuck, who weighed at least 15 pounds and had not a single hair on his pink ass). She has the sad, unfortunate job of going to help with her county's euthanizations once a week; if I'm not mistaken, Taylor Mae was in the queue that day. How Beth chooses which animals she takes home to the Farm of Misfit Critters, I'll never know. I could never choose; I want to save them all, even though I know I can't.

Love a stray; neuter & spay!

Blogiversary Giveaway & Woofday Wednesday

Happy blogiversary to me! I've been at this for a year now, at a pretty steady pace. Amazing to me, really, considering how many times life takes a detour around here. There's lots of new stuff to take in. A new format (not permanent, just until Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 becomes available at the end of March & I can work on a new banner), a new blogroll, a new promise (the iReply movement... it's simple... if you comment, I will reply, either here or by email). Let me know what you think.

Anyway, here's how my blogiversary giveaways are working this week. Every day has a different cool thing to be given away. Each day that there are twenty comments, I will randomly choose from that day's commenters to give away that day's item(s). Today, to go with our Woofday Wednesday theme, I will be drawing to give away a package of Greenies and a sample of Pet Promise dog food. It's what we feed our dogs. It's all-natural, and it guarantees no pet byproducts in its ingredients (no hair, bone, toenails, or euthanized shelter animals in this food!).

For Woofday Wednesday, we have a guest: Sparky, my parents' dog. Sparky is the world's most loving dog. In fact,I have never met a more gentle-spirited dog, and I have met a LOT of dogs. I find it ironic that he looks as if he has a bully breed of some sort mixed into his DNA, but he is a lover, not a fighter.

Sparky wandered up to my parents' place, attached to a chain and bloody from some kind of attack. The vet said it looked like feline bite marks, so his best guess was that Sparky was attacked by a bobcat. His neck was also raw and scarred from that chain around his neck. He was pitiful. Wherever Sparky lived before he came to live with my folks was not a good place to live; he is terrified of storms and firecrackers and loud noise in general. 

Love a stray; neuter & spay!

Woofday Wednesday--Soot & Ash

This is Soot & Ash. They are my cross to bear as an individual who takes in the unwanted. They are the ones I couldn't save. They followed my husband home while he was out jogging one day. They were the sweetest dogs, but they were big dogs, the biggest we'd ever taken in, and the kids... well, the kids weren't so big. When it came time to walk dogs, Soot & Ash would be so excited they would knock the kids over like bowling pins. When the gate was opened to the backyard, one or both would streak out & take off for an adventure, which would cause us to have to follow them and haul them back home, usually wet & muddy.

It was too much to handle for us at the time. We'd had them spayed, we tried the obedience classes, but they never got any calmer. It was an agonizing decision, because we loved them (even though I admit I jokingly called them Shit and Ass when I was irritated). I cried and cried when we took them to the animal shelter. I keep telling myself that labs & lab mixes are one of the most popular dogs & that someone adopted them because they were so sweet. But the fact is that I don't know that for sure, and it still troubles me, even after four-and-a-half years.

I miss you, girls.

Love a stray; neuter & spay!

Meowy Monday--Tybee

You've already met all my beautiful kitties, but I'm far from finished introducing you to the fabulous felines my family has found over the years.

This is Tybee, my sister's cat. Middle calls her "Moonrock," because he says she looks like an alien. I don't remember much about her origins, but I believe she was born a barn kitty. I do remember that she was once small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

Love a stray; neuter & spay!