Today was a heartbreaking day. Nigel hasn’t been in the best of health lately. He had pneumonia in late February. It took him a while to get back to normal. However, he was soon stealing Candy’s food again, begging for treats, and looking forward to our regular car rides together.
Yesterday morning, he didn’t want to eat and started shaking, like he does when he gets sick. I called the vet and set an appointment for this morning at 11. He seemed to be going downhill rapidly. Sadly, he passed away as I was getting ready to leave for his appointment.
There’s more to the story, and I will share it someday. For now, though, Nigel, we love you and will miss you. Candy will miss you too. You enriched our lives since we met you on Sept. 29, 2011, and brought you home to foster. We were “foster failures,” since we couldn’t give you up after knowing you and had to adopt you.
Not a good way to start Colorado’s stay at home order. I had to take Dottie to the vet and put her to sleep this morning. I hope you’re running with Flower, Dottie, like you did when you were younger.
Dottie was 14 and a half years old. She was born on Sept. 17, 2005. We brought her home in June 2011.
When we decided to adopt a dog, and we went to Best Friends Forever, we were looking at half-sisters Candy and Flower, who were 2, and decided to adopt both of them. Delores, the shelter owner, convinced us to take their half-sister, Dottie, too. At 5, she was elderly and Delores thought she would be difficult to find a home for, so she said she’d throw her in for free. We joked over the years that she really wasn’t free. But because of that, we nicknamed her Extra.
A couple of years ago, Dottie developed some medical issues. She had constant problems with her ears and then, with her eyes. We were told last year that she had a tumor on her adrenaline gland and that it would be tricky to remove it. Basically, two years ago, we started saying she was in “hospice care.”
Dottie got frailer and frailer as the months went by, but each morning when we came downstairs, she’d get up out of her bed and follow me around, and each night when John got home from work, once he was resting on the couch, she’d go and rub her head against his legs as he petted her. On most mornings, she would follow me into the kitchen to see what goodies she would get as I made John lunch.
I won’t say that Dottie was always pleasant. In the past couple of years, she developed a habit where she would suddenly get possessive or jealous, and want to “eat Nigel’s head.” Sometimes when she was sitting by me on the couch, and Nigel walked up the doggie stairs, she would growl at him so fiercely that he would flee in terror. I would have to say, though, that her bark was worse than her bite.
All in all, she was our precious little Extra, and even when she was a terror, we would soon forgive her.
We don’t quite know what happened in the last week. Over the weekend, she started hunching up her back and when I would come near her, she would look way up at me, in a way that wasn’t normal. I thought maybe her eyesight was failing further and she couldn’t see me very well. Other than that, she seemed fine, although her normal frail self.
However, this morning, she woke me up very early, crying. When I came downstairs, I realized she couldn’t get out of her bed. She was trying to, but her back legs wouldn’t move. I picked her up and sat her next to me on the couch. For a while, she seemed comfortable, and then she would start crying again.
By the time John got up, I knew that I would have to take her to the vet. I didn’t know what to expect, with the new stay at home law and new rules at our vet office, Clear Creek Animal Hospital.
As soon as the office opened, I called and spoke to Debbie, the lead receptionist. I was crying, but I finally got out that I felt like I might need to put Dottie to sleep. She told me that when I got there, I should call and tell them I was there. They would make sure no one was in the lobby before ushering us in.
I had John tell Dottie goodbye, and I put her in the car. I kept her on my lap during the 20-minute drive. When I got to Clear Creek, I called them and Laurie, the other receptionist waved me in.
Debbie took me into an office. As we talked, I held Dottie, who was still hunched up from whatever was wrong with her. After we had talked bout Dottie for a while, she informed me that both of her shih tzus had recently died. I was shocked. Debbie had recently told me that one of her shih tzus had a tumor, and they were doing what they could for it. Then, a few weeks ago, her other shih tzu got sick, and within weeks, they both died. Debbie and I sat in the office, several feet apart, me crying and her trying not to. I knew we both wanted to comfort each other, but fear of coronavirus kept us from hugging, so we sympathized with each other from across the room.
When Dr. Lindsey came in, I explained to her how Dottie had been acting. She told me that Dottie’s condition could be caused by several things. The tumor on her adrenaline gland could have grown bigger, or maybe she had suffered an injury, causing something neurological. She said we could try steroids, but she didn’t know about the results.
Because of Dottie’s continued and multiple issues, I asked if she thought I should put her to sleep. She hesitated and then said, “It’s not the wrong decision.”
I knew what she meant. She didn’t want to tell me it was the “right” decision, but she wanted to assure me it wasn’t wrong to do it. I said that was my decision. She asked if I wanted to be with Dottie when they gave her the injection. She also said that while they were putting in the catheter, if Dottie struggled (and she was known to struggle!), she would give her a sedative.
She left the room with Dottie and when she came back, Dottie was gently sleeping, no longer hunched up and in pain. Dr. Lindsey asked if I wanted to be alone with Dottie, but instead, I chose to reminisce with her, since she had been Dottie’s vet for nine years. I told her funny stories and we talked about Delores and when we first got Dottie, Candy, and Flower.
Then, she told me Dottie was gone. Thank you, Dr. Lindsey, and Clear Creek staff, for guiding me through this difficult process, euthanasia, that I had never gone through before.
We have so many memories of Extra that I hope to share someday soon. Our little baby, Extra, we loved you so much, and we will miss you and those bright little eyes.
One thing I definitely know is that when I read about the passing of someone’s pet, now more than ever, I will be more empathetic. For instance, I just read about a “fur death” in the family of one of my Twitter connections. My heart went out to her. It’s been 12 days since Flower left us, and there isn’t a day we don’t cry, want to kiss her, want to love her, want to just have more time with that precious little angel.
We are trying to give each other, the survivors, more love, and love Nigel, Dottie, and Candy more.
It’s difficult to deal with a pet’s death, no matter if you’ve had them for a month, a decade, or more. We had the pleasure of living with our adopted shih tzu, Flower, for almost eight years. Flower walked out of our arms and over the Rainbow Bridge eight days ago. The above is a picture taken three years ago of her walking over a bridge in our backyard.
Flower brought us so much joy. She was the firecracker of the bunch, our only dog who chased squirrels, our only dog who climbed the tiers in the backyard to escape into the yard behind us, the dog who huffed at me when I yelled at my computer, the dog who barked to signal the arrival of the mailman, the only dog who wiggled with joy when we reached for the drawer where we kept her harness, and the dog who sat between us in the front seat on the way to the park, barely able to contain her excitement about the upcoming walk.
She was our beautiful Flower, and there will never be another dog like her. Our four dogs all filled a unique spot in our home, and her spot will now remain empty, causing a hole in our house and in our hearts. I don’t know how we’ll manage to walk the other dogs without her, but I know we’ll get through this, and there will eventually be a new normal we will have to accept.
We were blindsided by her death on June 2, and we are valiantly trying to hold it together for ourselves and our other three dogs, Dottie, Nigel, and Candy. We have prayed, reached out to friends, talked and talked and talked about this beautiful little furbaby who energized us. We have cried and cried some more.
During the last week, I looked up and read as many articles as I could on coping with grief, and it’s ugly companion, guilt. I hope that some of these links might help others who are going through the same situation and facing the future without their beloved pet.
If you have anything that helped you cope with your precious pet’s death, please share with me and our readers. My heart goes out to anyone who has gone through, is going through, or will go through the sorrow we are feeling over our beloved Flower.
Flower investigates the blanket flowers (Gaillardia).
I had a dream about Flower last night. It was an immensely sad dream. Maybe it was sort of a “do-over” dream. As usual, I can’t remember it exactly as it happened. I wasn’t somewhere I’m familiar with. At some point, I looked down and Flower was having a problem breathing. There was a blue “light” shining out of her nose, and I knew I had to rush her to get help. I picked her up and got in a car. I think my mother was driving, which is also surreal since my mother passed away last year after suffering from Alzheimer’s. Also, my mother didn’t drive for the last few decades of her life. I woke up while we were still driving, my beloved Flower in my arms.
When I woke up, I felt the heaviness of her loss. All I could do was ask God to wrap me up like a warm sweater and comfort me. For all of you pet owners who have felt this same grief or who are going through it now, I feel your pain so deeply. Life goes on, but Flower, I wish you were walking through it with us still.
Here’s one more picture of her, from several years ago, most likely anxious to get to the nature center and start that walk! Dottie is in the background.
