Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Thankfully I managed to get up at 4:30am on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and was on the trails before sunrise, as that is how I met this Gila woodpecker shortly before the sun crested the hills behind me. Most of the saguaros old enough to bloom don’t have flowers yet but are putting out buds that make handy perches. Some of those buds have bloomed, however, as evidenced by the pollen covering the front half of his head.
According to the signs along the trail, the Marcus Landslide occurred 500,000 years ago, which is before we moved to Arizona. The landslide itself was only discovered in 2002 by a couple of graduate students who named it after a geology professor who died while leading students on a field trip. The estimates are that the original height of the area was 4100 feet (taller than any of the other McDowells) and that 25.8 billion pounds of debris fell 1300 feet and spread out over an area 4000 feet long and 1650 feet wide. It’s a bit unusual in that the slide spread out over a much longer area than the height of the fall, making the resulting landslide less obvious. In addition to the scenery I love the trail because of the wildlife, it’s a fantastic spot for seeing phainopepla in the winter and with all the boulders I’m hoping an excellent spot for lizards now that they are out of hibernation.
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.
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.
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.
I first visited Brown’s Ranch a month after we moved to Arizona last year and fell in love immediately. One of the things I liked about our new house was its close proximity to some of my favorite local trailheads, Brown’s Ranch included. I haven’t been much since the fall, only visiting on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, at first because I was exploring another area (also near the house) and then because I was concentrating on trails near some of the other houses we were considering.
While I haven’t had much time and/or energy for hiking lately I was up for an easy hike last weekend so I begrudgingly got up before sunrise and made the short drive to Brown’s Ranch. A cardinal serenaded me before I stepped out of the car and I could hear the calls of Gambel’s quail and mourning doves and cactus wrens all around. I thought about how much I had learned in my year here, how much more these sights and sounds are familiar to me now, as I grabbed my camera and headed to the Jane Rau Trail, a short little loop trail near the trailhead and the first trail I hiked at Brown’s Ranch last year.
I then headed down the Latigo Trail, despite my low energy levels I was so happy to be back that I almost felt like running. I didn’t, however, feel much like taking pictures, a feeling I get sometimes where I almost put the camera away. I usually keep the camera out but there is a mental shift where I don’t worry so much about photography. Sometimes though the animals pull me back in, as they did on this morning. It started with a Gambel’s quail in the trees, silhouetted against the morning sky, I took a quick picture against the blue sky before moving further on and taking another against the orange sky.
As the sun rose I spotted an ash-throated flycatcher and couldn’t help but stop for some pictures. It didn’t stay long as a couple of mourning doves flew into the tree and scared it off, so I photographed one of them instead. They were out in abundance, I imagine the white-winged doves will be back in numbers soon and the smaller mourning doves will get moved a step down the pecking order. Beside the trail the banana yuccas were budding and blooming, a sight I hadn’t seen before, and I thought I could spend a lifetime photographing them in their various stages, each beautiful in its own way, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to photograph them on this morning.
But when I saw a familiar shape in the rocks, bathed in the lovely morning light, I eagerly setup my camera beside the trail to photograph what I initially assumed was an antelope squirrel but which I quickly realized was the larger rock squirrel. I had seen them before but usually from a distance, only once getting a close look up at Tom’s Thumb. This one though posed for me in its rock home and now in more of a photographic mood I photographed it with different focal lengths, including wide and medium shots and this full on close-up.
Further up the trail I stopped when I thought I saw a hawk on a distant saguaro, but when I lifted the telephoto lens to my eye to get a better look I realized it was a great horned owl, my first owl in Arizona. It flew a little closer as an American kestrel hassled it from above and landed in this foothill palo verde. It occasionally cast its eyes over towards where the rock squirrel was but it didn’t seem too interested in hunting.
I continued up the trail a bit but didn’t go too far, I was tired and while there are times it’s good to push yourself, this morning didn’t feel like one of them. As I headed back I did see a couple of genuine hawks on a large saguaro, a pair of Harris’s hawks that I suppose will be nesting soon. A grasshopper accidentally impaled itself on a buckhorn cholla and I thought my hike might end on a sad note but then I saw a mourning dove preening from a rock above as the breeze rustled its feathers.
Despite not seeing any reptiles it was a quick reminder of why I love this place as I saw so much beauty in so short a time. Soon enough I did get to see a reptile as when I got home a spiny lizard was doing pushups in a tree behind the house, it was too bright for pictures but hopefully he and I will meet again. And hopefully so too the rock squirrel, if it survives the owls and the hawks and the snakes and …
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.
A rock squirrel peeks out from the rocks it calls home. A great horned owl was nearby, itself being harassed by an American kestrel, perhaps it got too close to her nest. A little later I saw a grasshopper fly off and impale itself on a buckhorn cholla. Life isn’t easy in the desert, even in a lovely spring.
A red-tailed hawk peeks out from its large nest in the rocks high above the Sonoran Desert. When the eggs hatch and it is time for the young redtails to learn to fly, there will be no soft landings if they aren’t successful on their first attempt.
I am the desert,
endless sky and stone.
I am the desert,
flesh and blood and bone.
Boolie 