Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Trixie has wanted to play endlessly since Ellie died but as we played the other morning she got distracted first by a tiger whiptail then by a Gambel’s quail feeding and calling out just below the windowsill. I can’t say I blame her, a week ago I had my route planned out but spent so much time watching this Gambel’s quail singing as the sun was about to rise that I changed my plans and hiked closer trails to take advantage of the early morning light.
Sam in early 2012 enjoying the heated cat bed in my office. He was our youngest pet at the time but is now our oldest. He’s been the least affected by Ellie’s death but that’s a relief, the deaths of Scout and Emma hit him hard so I’m thankful he’s taking the absence of the pup in stride.
While age had slowly been taking its toll on our 15 year old pup, it was the last six weeks or so she declined the most, which unfortunately meant she only got to spend a month with us in the new house. The first week here was difficult due to her getting confused, especially at night, due to her senility and not understanding where she was. She figured it out after we paced the hallways back and forth many times, going inside and outside, until it became familiar to her and she settled down. We got a patch of artificial turf for her since there was no grass at the house, it gave her a comfortable place to go the bathroom (when she could make it there in time) or even just lay down and relax.
One of Ellie’s back legs (the one she didn’t have surgery on when she tore a ligament in her younger days) had been bothering her for a while, she compensated with the other until the end when putting any weight on her back legs was difficult. The tile in particular was slippery for her, both in the rental house and the new house, so my wife bought a variety of washable rugs and yoga mats to line the hallways for traction and make messes easier to clean in the rooms.
She started having accidents in the house that last month, at first she’d poop from the effort of having to get up, but that wasn’t hard to clean up. Her stomach started getting upset at the end though and she’d have diarrhea, and at the very end started peeing when she couldn’t walk at all, where the washable part of the rugs came in very handy. It was exhausting for my wife and I but after Scout and Emma died young it was an honor to nurse her through the end of her life while she was still enjoying her days.
Her last full day with us was one of my Friday’s off so I was able to spend the day with her. She didn’t want to walk at all that evening so I carried her out to the turf. She enjoyed that little spot and lay down and rubbed her face on it as she used to in the grass. She was panting as she often did at this stage, which I knew made her look happy in pictures, so I went in and got my camera for what I worried were going to be my last photos of her. The biggest problem we were facing was that her appetite had been off and despite my wife trying a variety of foods, she wasn’t eating enough to survive. She could eat more if I hand fed her, in the first picture you can see a few light colored bits of food on the turf in front of her from pieces that fell off my hands, but it still wasn’t enough. Her spirit was still strong and I wanted to capture that in the pictures, to remember that even though her health was failing, we had some good times during her month in the new house.
The next morning we talked with her vet who had been so helpful in her care and all agreed it was time to say goodbye. She had been able to walk a bit that morning, when I went to take a shower since she always wanted to know where I was my wife helped her up and supported her as she walked across the house to the bathroom. Mostly though, as the night before, she wasn’t able to walk even if we helped her, so I carried her where she needed to go. My wife said she didn’t even try to get some uneaten cat food in one of the bowls, a sure indication of how much her appetite had fallen. She was pretty worn out but would raise her head like this and watch us as we moved about the room, she was such a sweetheart to the very end.
This is the last picture of my sweet pup, I hadn’t really wanted to take these pictures but I knew they would bring me comfort later on. I could barely even think about camera settings but after verifying the pictures came out OK, I put the camera away. I had half an hour left with her before it was time to carry her to the car and spent that time stroking her fur and kissing her forehead and letting her know how much I loved her. I did the same after carrying her to the room they had prepared for us at the vet’s office, I’m so thankful we were both there as we said our final goodbyes, as being with us was all she ever really wanted. She ate a few charcoal treats (one of the few things she never lost an appetite for, even at her most senile the pup always remembered when she was due a treat), then died peacefully after getting the sedative and injection that stopped her heart.
Thanks are owed to Dr. Lopez and her team at Scottsdale Hill Animal Hospital, she was instrumental in making Ellie’s last year a great one. It isn’t easy managing the aches and ailments of such an elderly dog but she worked with us to map out a strategy of care that gave Ellie such a good quality of life for so long. I hadn’t actually met Dr. Lopez until I brought Ellie in that last time, we had talked on the phone but she and my wife had worked closely together to manage her care.
And a special thank you to my wife for doing so much for Ellie during that year, especially the last months when taking care of her became a full-time job, it’s a tremendous strain both physically and emotionally. We loved Ellie with all our hearts but that doesn’t make it easier, rather it makes the sacrifice worthwhile.
After she died I found an expected connection to the pup. After we got home, especially the first couple of days but even the first couple of weeks, I endlessly paced about the house. I wanted to do something but I didn’t want to do anything. It helped me sort through my feelings as I walked about but I had to laugh as I thought about how I was now pacing as she had her first week here. She because she didn’t know where she was, I because I knew she wasn’t here.
She was the best dog ever, my sweet pup, the best.
In July 2011, Emma beats the summer heat during her supervised backyard time by sleeping on the glass table on our patio. While the heat in Oregon was nothing compared to what we get in Arizona, we didn’t have air conditioning, so there wasn’t much you could do on the hottest days to cool down, especially when you had a lovely coat of fur.
It has been a sad day but not a day without beauty. In between talking to the vet in the morning and taking Ellie in to be euthanized, I walked into my office and saw Boo and Trixie transfixed in the window. I walked over assuming they were looking at a bird and was delighted to instead see a western whiptail in the bushes next to the window, a favorite lizard on the trails but a new yard species for me. When we got home with heavy hearts after saying goodbye to Ellie, I saw a cactus wren in the backyard, a first for the new house although I had seem them at the rental house and of course on the trails. This one was perching on a saguaro fruit last summer in McDowell Sonoran Preserve.
I see her everywhere.
In the dog beds, usually occupied by cats. In the treats she loved, in the end the only thing she would readily eat. In the medications she took and the pill pockets she took them in before she decided they weren’t quite tasty enough. In the fur she constantly shed, a piece of which I hope follows me around until my time too is at an end. In the water bowls scattered around to encourage her to drink. In the gate leading into the litter box room, to let the cats in and keep her out.
In the ramp to help her in the car when she got too old to jump. In the shoes so she could walk on the slippery tile as her legs weakened but which she didn’t like so you’d find them scattered around the house. In the network of rugs and yoga mats we instead spread out and which she quickly learned gave her traction. In the patch of artificial turf we put in the backyard to give her a comfortable place to go the bathroom since the new house doesn’t have grass. In the smorgasbord of dog foods my wife purchased hoping we could find one she’d be able to eat when her appetite waned and we knew if we couldn’t get her to eat, we were going to have to say goodbye.
In the pile of tissues after crying my eyes out, because I see her everywhere but she’s not here.
I know where she is. She’s with Templeton and Scout and Emma, always in my heart and never far from my thoughts, and I will take her everywhere I go.
We said goodbye to our sweet pup this afternoon after old age finally took too much of a toll, she died peacefully at the vet’s office as we stroked her soft fur for the last time. How do you say goodbye to the Best Dog Ever? With a broken heart and endless tears, and the deepest gratitude for every moment we spent together.
I took this picture of Ellie in our rental house in August and thought it captured her sweet nature so well that I decided to hold onto it for just this occasion, so I wouldn’t have to scramble around in my grief to find a good picture of her, never dreaming I’d get eight more wonderful months before the time came to post it.
I hope there are things in your life that bring you even a fraction of the joy that this most wonderful of dogs brought to ours.
Trixie is the smallest cat we’ve ever had, our recalcitrant eater clocked in at 8 pounds today. We once got her as high as 8.7 pounds but that required more than the normal feedings, she’d prefer to graze throughout the day but we can’t leave food out as other members of the household don’t need so much convincing to eat.
It’s been a rough month for Ellie.
She’s getting rather senile but she knew the rental house well, inside and out, and that familiarity allowed her to better mask the times she got confused. The new house offered no such compensation in the early going and particularly in the evenings she got rather stressed by not knowing where to go, the most obvious example being when she fell in the pool on our first night here as she tried to take the route she would have at the old house. She’d relentlessly pace the house, into the backyard and through the house to the front, over and over again, trying to understand where she was.
She woke me out of bed, assuming she needed to go out to go to the bathroom I got up with her and took her out back, then to the front, then back inside, repeated a few times until I got her to lay down to try and calm her. I was the thing she could hold on to, so I held onto her, until we both fell asleep on the floor. I was continuously exhausted in those early days, initially I hoped to take some time off after the move but I got some good news at work that unfortunately meant I had to go in.
The vet recommended a sedative until Ellie got used to the house and that kept her relaxed at night but also kind of out of it so she had even more trouble walking. At her age the sedative also took a while to wear off so she was a bit groggy during the day, but as she got used to the house we were able to take her off the sedative and the spark in her eyes returned.
There is no relief from the ravages of time and she is having even more trouble walking now, often leading to accidents in the house, so sometimes when I’m hoping to head off to bed I’ll have a mess to clean up first. Thankfully my wife is home during the day, I honestly don’t know what we’d do if we were still in Portland and both working as taking care of Ellie has become a full-time job. She’s been able to look after Ellie during the day, including the arduous feeding of not just Ellie but the cats. It didn’t help that in the first week our cat Boo was also stressed about the move and not using the litter box but thankfully he’s been on the straight and narrow since.
One night as I got ready for bed I saw Ellie pacing up and down the hallway and assumed she needed to go out, and quickly, but as I approached I saw bright red drops of blood up and down the hallway. Thankfully it was just a nose bleed and the biggest consequence was that after scrubbing the hallway I was too awake to go to sleep. We’ve gotten shoes to help her on the non-carpeted parts of the house, though she doesn’t like wearing them, and have gotten washable rugs to cover large parts of the tile so she can walk more easily. To compensate for the lack of grass we laid out a small patch of artificial turf that she enjoys using on bathroom breaks if she can make it there in time.
One day Ellie was pretty out of it, fortunately our wonderful vet was coming by for a visit and helped my wife get her into the car and to a 24-hour care facility where she got antibiotics and fluids, she had gotten dehydrated after a bout with diarrhea. The next day she came home and was the normal Ellie again, trying to charm her way into treats. You try not to get too down with the lows as you anxiously wait to see how far she’s going to bounce back after a setback.
One of our biggest challenges is that she doesn’t want to eat the food she should be eating, it is kinder to her slowly failing kidneys, the food she will eat often leads to soft stools and more accidents. The other big issue is a couple of days ago she slipped getting out of the car after a vet visit and hurt one of her front legs a bit, so now sometimes she has trouble walking at all, last night I had to carry her outside so she could use the bathroom. She fell asleep inside the sliding glass door so I left her there and took her shoes off so she’d be more comfortable, but when I woke she had at some point not only gotten up on her own (a rare feat for her these days) but walked across the house to the bedroom. And just now as she relaxed me with me on the patio she walked unaided out to her patch of turf to go to the bathroom. If only she could always move so!
It has been an exhausting month for all of us, but whether her time with us is numbered in days or weeks (months seems too much to hope for) I’m thankful for the opportunity to care for her at the end of her life. I wish we could have done the same for Scout and Emma, if disease hadn’t cut their lives short we’d be nursing Scout through her elderly years while Emma would be early in her senior years, endlessly chirping at the quail moving about her yard and letting me know which birds where in the yard by the style of her purrpurrations.
At the moment Ellie is sleeping peacefully at the foot of my couch, she wanted to come inside and made a beeline for my office so quickly that as I was stabilizing her rear end as she walked I wasn’t able to close the sliding door onto the patio. Trixie and Boo were curled up together on the cat tree beside the door but neither woke up so I was able to double back and close the door before either was the wiser. These are the moments I wish could last forever.
Your young sister will discover her hero is in the deepest of sleeps and snuggle up face-to-face as she prefers, but you do not.
Boolie 