Pet Owner Responsibilities: Some of Them Truly Suck

Bogey was a found dog -- someone dropped him off at a local golf course during a tournament in which I was participating (if you can call hitting the ball at most thirty feet and spending an inordinate amount of time in the sand traps participating). It was December 1993 and it was windy and cold.

One of the other foursomes picked him up (he was just a little thing then, six weeks old, covered with fleas, ticks and sores) and carted him around until the tournament was over. I ended up taking him home (we'd lost one of our dogs a few months earlier, in August) and he ended up weighing about 100 pounds at his heaviest.

 

A few years ago, our vet told us he had a deteriorating spine condition. Like arthritis, only worse. There was nothing to be done but try to slow the process down and give him pain medication. Which we've been doing since. A couple years ago he got sick and he was diagnosed with Cushing's Disease, for which he's been on medication that we have to order from England and which costs us about $81 a month.

Our previous vet, the one who told us about the spine problem, told us one day he'd lie down and wouldn't be able to get back up. If we could get him to the vet's office he'd be able to give him a steroid injection but it would only postpone the inevitable. One day we'd just have to make the decision to stop his suffering.

Well, I think we're there. I really really don't want to be here again, I've been here before and it's a miserable Goddamned choice to have to make.

This morning Bogey was obviously in a great deal of pain. He's been on a downward slide for, oh, probably the past three or four months. Hubby and I have been rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic for so long it just seems normal -- we take him in, get the antibiotics and anti-inflammatory meds, and bring him back home.

I got him into the vet's office this morning and the vet started talking about specialists and MRIs and X-rays.

There is no money. We can't possibly afford to pay for any of that. There is no money. And even if there were, we know what's happening and there's nothing to be done. I'm not sure spending thousands just to find out what we already know is even sane. It won't make him feel any better. It won't make the problem go away. There is no cure except that final needle.

Oh, God I don't want to be here again. But you know when you take them in that in ten or twelve years it's very likely that that's where you'll be.

Hubby is at work, blissfully oblivious. I'm supposed to be at work too, and I suppose I need to go make an appearance. I've got Bogey bedded down in the laundry room (with the washer and dryer running -- I think it was probably him who threw up and had the incontinence problem this morning) and I've tried to get him to take a little water by wiping some on his lips and put a little Nutrical inside his lip so he'd get something with a little nutrition in it. The vet gave him a shot of painkiller because I couldn't get him to take his Deramaxx this morning, although he did get the Tramadol and Trilostane (I had to stuff it down his throat inside dog food).

When I got home from the vet's office he wouldn't get out of the car. Couldn't, maybe. Ever carried a 60-pound dog up a flight of stairs? It's not easy, but I had to. And I guess I can if I have to.

Like the decision we have to make now, I think. The vet seemed to think it might just be an episode.

I don't think so. I think it's the conclusion.

Damn, damn, damn.

Update: It's over. He's gone. He died while I was sitting beside him, just two minutes before Hubby got home.