Weekly Update, part 2. With pictures.

[outsdr]

Writing the column was tough. When I finally got these two lines into their final shape, I couldn't read them without breaking down. Every. Single. Time.

See, when you chose to have a dog, you’ll choose what food they eat; where they sleep; what color bandana they wear.

And sometimes, you choose when they have to die.



And I probably overworked the ending. For a very long time, it ended with 'And you’ll say goodbye.' before I finally added 'And his special day will end.' and it all fell into place. I'm not really sure when the column's point of view split like it does between me talking about myself in the beginning, and then in the second half talking to someone who is obviously me. It wasn't a conscious decision.

So. The column is finished. I compose myself and finish my night at the hotel. I wasn't sure when i actually wanted to post the column, because if I posted it too long before 6 pm, then I was afraid there would be a lot of questions about what was happening, and I didn't want to ruin Ike's special day.

I had this plan of spending the 'night' after I got off work on the floor with Ike, so we could sleep together like we used to. I put down couch cushions beside his bed, put a blanket on top and then laid down to sleep. Ike really wasn't able to curl up beside me, but he stretched his head out to where I could reach it, and we fell asleep like that, me with one hand on his head and the other holding his paw, like I used to.

An hour later .... oh lord.

I still gave him his medicine that morning when I got home, and I gave him two cans of dog food instead of one, and topped it off with some hamburger fat I had saved from last night's dinner. He loved it, but I can't blame it for what happened next.

I was woken by the foulest of odors coming from my sleeping dog. I woke up, coaxed him to his feet, and tried to assess the damage. He had had a butt explosion all over the wall of the closet; and since his butt was pushed up against the wall while it was exploding, it had been caught in the backlash.

He was a mess. The wall was a mess. It had run down behind his mattress, which was a mess. He was .... I dunno. Upsetish.

I herded him outside, and started cleaning up the mess. The more I cleaned, the more I found. It was horrible.

He had been scratching feebly at the door while I finished up as quickly as I could; I didn't want him falling backwards off the porch again. I got him inside and started cleaning him up. That took awhile; he was covered. And fur doesn't always come clean easily.

Finally, I got him presentable, and smelling nice again, thanks to the floral shampoo i kept on hand for just these emergencies. I had taken up the couch cushions and the blanket (thankfully, no blowback there!) and as we went back into the room and I settled him down on his clean and freshly covered mattress, I told him we were done for the night, and I crawled into my own bed. We both went to sleep quickly.

I woke up at 1; I'd wanted to wake up at noon, but oh well. First thing I wanted to do was buy a new digital camera; mine had broken while I was crawling around underneath the hotel looking at cables. I figured something cheap would be fine, and one of the local stores had a cheap one on sale for $40. We also stopped and got some 'clambeer' as Andy calls it, or Chelada as it's usually known.

Andy wanted to know if I wanted to grab something to eat, but I wasn't hungry. Back home, I wandered around the yard with Ike a little, taking pictures with my Canon AE-1 SLR 35m film camera, and then we settled on the couch to watch TV for the day. That was my plan- to spend the next four hours on the couch with my dog. I took some pictures with the new digital camera, which turned out to be utter crap.



Trust me- it's Ike.

Frustrated, I managed to get my broken camera to work for a little bit, and got a few pics with it.

We watched "Harsh Realm" one of Chris Carter's unsuccessful shows. It's very 90s, but it stars DB Sweeney, who is awesome. And I drank Clambeer. Andy fed me something at some point. Ike snuggled.

I took Ike outside to pee, and he went three times. He squats, but his back legs are in such bad shape that he just slowly falls into a sitting position, and gets it all over his front paws. He doesn't like this at all, so he usually stops at that point, painfully hauls himself back up, and then walks to a new spot where he does it all over again. By the time he was done, he was really hurting. I was at the top of the ramp, on the porch. Ike shambled over to the ramp, tried to get his front paws on it, sat down heavily, panted, looked pained, and tried to get up. But couldn't. I went down and picked him up and gently carried him inside.

That was when I knew I'd made the right decision.



The ONE good picture the cheap digicam took.

We were on the last episode on the disc when I heard the neighbors dogs barking. It was 6 p.m. I asked Andy to check outside to see if the vet had arrived.

She had. He let her in.



It was time.

Comments

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

That's a great photo. Even the blurry one captures something of Ike's mixture of weariness and happiness.

The bit where you carried the old man back inside broke my heart. As I write this, Frank the Miracle Cat, now into his fourth month of surviving his NDE and approaching two years down the line from his cancer diagnosis, is curled up on his blankie on his office chair next to me. (He likes to supervise my work.) I want to say something profound here about about love and compassion and sorrow, and gratitude, and even pride, but you already know the jumble of feelings I'm describing.

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

I do know; no worries.