I typically don’t write about personal things, or personal occurrences. Today is different. Depressing and morbid material ahead.
Today I had my dogs put down. One of them was epileptic; one of them had extreme arthritis in her back hips. Molly, the epileptic dog had had so many seizures that she was no longer able to recognize her own name some days. Rusty was so arthritic she could barely walk, making it hard for her to get to her food or go outside to go to the bathroom. Molly was unable to control herself, and went to the bathroom on the floor a lot. Today they both died.
I chose to stay with them. Leaving them, dropping them off seemed selfish. They trusted me, they wagged their tails as they got in the car, the sniffed excitedly at the air, as they didn't go for rides very often any more.
We got to the vet and as I coaxed them up the stairs, Rusty had trouble. She tried a few times before hopping awkwardly up the stairs. An elderly woman was passing and said, "It doesn't look like Rusty wants to go". "It's not that she doesn't want to," I replied as snidely as I could. Entering, a healthy basset hound was sniffing around and barking, a little boy pointed and said to his parents "Look at those dogs!" I wanted to tell him to shut up, not to look, that these dogs were walking dead. I didn't though.
The vet took us into a room, explained the procedure, and said it would be better for the dogs to be separated, done one at a time. We did Rusty first. In saying it, "did" seems like such an awful verb to use. Killed would be more appropriate, but harder to say. The bottom line is that there's no good way to talk about it.
The vet shaved a small patch of fur on her paw. Rusty started to act stressed. She knew something was wrong, tried to stand up, but I told her to stay, asked her to stay, to not make this more difficult than it had to be. The vet inserted the needle, pulled back on the plunger causing the needle to fill with blood, and then injected the anesthesia. An overdose of anesthesia. Rusty looked up at the vet, wouldn't look at me, and then her head slumped forward. The vet caught it and rested it on the floor. She went quickly.
The vet and her assistant lifted the corpse, the body, what used to be my dog off of the floor, calling her sweetie, acting like she was still alive. They carried her out of the room; I rushed out, trying to block Molly from seeing, as if it made a difference. I lead Molly into the room.
The procedure was repeated, although Molly didn't go as quickly. The vet kept listening to her heart, telling us it was still beating. How's that? Your dog dying on the floor, the vet telling you her heart is beating, and that's a bad thing.
I kept both of their collars, but I don't know why. Both dogs had an awful quality of life. Rusty couldn’t walk, Molly had frequent seizures. They couldn't get up the stairs into the house, so they lived in the cellar where we would visit them, feed them, take them out, but they were too old to play. That meant for most of the day they stayed there and slept, waking when we went to use the washing machine and coming over to sniff and slobber like good dogs should.
The cellar still smells like my dogs. The fur they shed still drifts across the floor. I've put their blankets and food dishes in a bag, but it's still hurts to come down the stairs to go to my room and get no greeting. To get no welcoming sniff or tail wag.
I know they're just pets, that other people have much worse problems. Rusty in particular, though, was my dog. She and I grew up together. I have fond memories of her, her litter of puppies, teaching her to catch a Frisbee, a tennis ball, teaching her to bark in three bursts that sounded like "I love you". She used to sleep at the bottom of my bed, follow me around the house, watch TV on the couch with me. Watching her limp body get carried from the sterile veterinary office was heart-wrenching.
In high school, one of my two best friends had her dog get hit by a car. She took it really hard. I went to her house, got a pick ax, and helped her dig through the frozen winter earth so we could lay her dog to rest in her backyard. It was one of those moments that brings friends closer together, as close as they can be.
That friend and I have lost each other. My dogs and I have lost each other in some sense as well.
Pets are a strange thing. You know your lifespan out-distances theirs, yet they completely steal your heart. And they don't ever give it back to you.
I don't know what else to say without being increasingly morbid and depressing. It's been a long day.
Rusty and Molly, RIP.
Sorry to hear about your dogs. It was hard when I lost my alaskan malamute too.
I know how you feel. One of my cats had to be put to sleep when I was away from home. She was so sick that my parents couldn't wait the two or three days for me to come back. She'd been my cat since I was 7 years old and slept on my bed almost every night, and I didn't even get to say goodbye when she died. Be grateful that at least they had you there with you when they died, that they didn't have to go through it alone.
In some ways I'm grateful that I was ther with them, but in some ways I wish I hadn't been. The last memories I'll have of my dogs will be of them sprawled limply across the floor of the vet's office. They trusted me, though, willing followed me in there, I couldn't just leave them. I felt like such a monster petting them, telling them it would be ok as they breathed their last breath.
My room is in the basement, right near where the dogs spent most of their time later in their lives. I keep coming down the stairs looking for them, expecting to hear their feet on the concrete, their wagging tails when I go to do laundry.
I dread the day that my two labs have to be put down...they are my only family. I dunno if I will be able to do it. Which is more humane? Living, but suffering, or dying because someone thinks it's for the best? A tough decision made tougher by the fact that a pet will lick your hand with it's dying breath.