Goodbye Buddy
The Standard Poodle Who Was Anything But:
We Call Them The Best Dog Ever
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| May 5, 2005 - December 6, 2017 |
Nobody in the family woke up this morning knowing that today would be the very last time my Mom would prepare Buddy's breakfast, the last time my Dad would carry him to the car and the very last time we would ever hug or pet him. Today was also his very last vet visit. Ever. It was supposed to be just a regular senior three month check up. It was supposed to end with instructions for his continued care and maybe some medication here or there. But instead we got some very, very bad news.
"His heart is beating far too fast, " our vet said. She was very serious. This was going quickly from bad to worse. "He's at rest and it's too fast."
She explained she wanted a set of chest x-rays and blood work. "I'm afraid that it's cancer, but there's no blood test for cancer so I need to see if there are any other indicators to help me with the process of elimination."
"I think I know what the problem is," our vet returned far too quickly after what was supposed to be just a few chest x-rays and blood work to try to work out the culprit behind Buddy's sudden weight loss. "Let me show you."
She turned off the lights and we crowded around her screen. She showed us two images.
"This is Buddy's heart one month ago," she said using colorful arrows that she secured end points for at the edge of Buddy's heart, to indicate the width and length. When she completed the final arrow, each arrow at each respective end point read the number of centimeters. "And here is his heart now." She repeated the task again on his new x-ray. The results were in fact a death sentence.
In less than a month his heart had grown a centimeter larger in all directions. It is cruel that such a loveable, loving dog's heart could possibly be too large for his own good.
"The reason he has been panting heavily is because his heart is working overtime. You see here," she pointed to the this blurry section right at the top of the heart. "The heart is covered in a sac with fluid that helps to lubricate the heart so it can pump blood. His heart is enlarged which is keeping his heart from being able to expand and be lubricated as it should so it is beating as rapidly as it can."
Perhaps we are all naive and did not catch the signs or maybe worse yet we didn't want to acknowledge the unspoken message that Doctor was saying without being explicit.
"What is causing the enlargement?" Dad asked.
She flicked on the lights gravely and looked at us directly. "A tumor."
I got the message right away. Buddy's heart was a ticking time bomb. It was going to explode any second. I looked Doctor right in the eye. Thankfully there was a tissue box on the examination table and Buddy was still being attended to outside of our room. I had read once that pets can sense when their people are under extreme duress and it can make them uneasy. No family member likes to see another loved one in trouble. Thank god he wasn't there although I was eased by the Doctor's observation that Buddy had developed what can be described as mild dementia. Perhaps he did not even know what was transpiring.
My mom was catching on faster than my dad. She asked, maybe hopefully, "If..there was treatment..what would it be?"
Doctor humored us. God bless her soul, she probably had seen it all when delivering final news or rites to bewildered deniers.
"Well...we would have a radiologist confirm and then the only thing we could propose is surgery-"
"So," I said very slowly cutting her off. "You would recommend euthanasia at this time?"
She nodded very seriously. "I am so sorry. This is just a case where he unfortunately isn't going to get any better."
It had been once proposed to me, "When did you first feel like an adult? When did you know you were an adult?"
Today was the day that I was the head of the Chinny household, that I was the adult and I was the guardian until Buddy drew his last breath. He was our dog, he was the family dog, and we all had each our own bond with him, but he was my boy. I was his girl. Buddy was a bud. He was everyone's bud, he was everyone's friend. He was of course part of our family, but he was my dog. And while we were all responsible for him, both of my parents struggling with the news looked to me and asked, "Well...what do you think?"
I looked at each of them, my dad was really struggling to accept that Buddy was dying. He tried to bargain with the vet. Maybe recheck the x-rays (no offense). Maybe get a second opinion. Are you sure? ARE YOU SURE? My mom was faster to accept that the best thing is not always the easy thing and in this case it was-
"Buddy has had a long life and the last thing I want to do is have him suffer. We have to do it," I was talking to all of them and gave the Doctor my opinion.
She left us to discuss the finality of our decision.
My dad pleaded for "just a few more hours" "maybe the rest of the day" but as much as I hated myself, I was the adult. I was the level headed, reasonable one. I was the one who had to be objective. I was the one who had to think with both the heart and the head. I had to the logical one. So despite me pulling tissue after tissue, dabbing organic mascara dripping down my face and watching the pile of used tissues grow higher and higher on the examination table, together with my mom we said, "Buddy is going to suffer. He could go any second. If we wait any longer it will only traumatize us all and it won't do him any good."
"It's the least selfish thing we can do for him, we don't want him to suffer at all."
I envisioned Buddy succumbing to a heart attack, writhing in agony and meeting a very violent end. I had seen him seize when his bouts of epilepsy had been particularly bad one summer when he was changing medications. The sight was horrifying. I thought about all of us. How we would be affected by such a tragic untimely death and how it would haunt us forever. I thought about Jennifer, she had not died surrounded by loving family and while I hope she did not suffer, she died alone. I did not like thinking about Buddy's death even when I wasn't faced with it like I was. Seeing him grow old, one malady after another: blindness, arthritis, thyroid issues and dementia, was heartbreaking when juxtaposed memories of a much stronger, lively Buddy who was boundless in energy and spirit, slobbering over my black work pants before interviews or stealing Christmas cakes off unguarded coffee tables. The reality was Buddy was in more pain than we realized and worse yet, he was dying. He was never going to get younger, to get healthier or recover from his heart condition. And he was not going to survive surgery.
"I will not subject him to more pain and suffering," I told my parents. "It would be selfish."
My mom agreed. And reluctantly so did Dad. Surgery was absurd and cruel. Buddy was almost 13 years old. He had lost his muscle mass. His fragile, bony exterior and his never ending desire to not be separated from us just wretched my heart to think of him being cut open. We had rescued him and he had adopted us. The best we could for him now was to give him a humane, peaceful passing so he would never succumb to his bad heart and he would be surrounded by his beloved family in a safe place with a kind doctor.
I told my mom to get my sister, to tell her the news and to fetch her so she could be present to give her last goodbyes. I called the Mister.
"Do you want me to get off work? Do you want me to come? I don't want you to be alone," he was devastated as any of us.
"No," I told him. "I appreciate the offer, we all do, but we have each other and it's okay. Buddy is very old and he is not well, we have to do it."
My mom and sister appeared, the doctor had given us the room and Buddy was brought back, a red catheter in his front leg. We all were crying. I removed reluctantly his collar, the special one from Dublin Dog that I had especially picked out for Buddy. His only personal effects in the whole world: his customized dog tag, his city license from when he did time at the municipal shelter when he got lost (the first time) and the little Saint Francis medal from when he received a pet blessing before we had left for Japan. I thought to myself, I do not believe in God or spirits or anything like that, but I would like to think the blessing kept his heart good until we were all together, all of us. We took turn patting him and rubbing his ears and giving him hugs. We could have gone on for all eternity, the looming trepidation of calling the Doctor back into the room just made the tears flow faster.
"It will not hurt him. The first injection will be the anesthetic so he will fall asleep and the second injection will stop his heart. It will be over in only a minute."
To think Buddy would never get up again was a terrifying thought, but the thought of him suffering outweighed my reluctant to say goodbye.
We stayed with him until his eyes shut and he stopped breathing. He was warm, happy and blissfully unaware of how sad we were. I had once read when Jennifer was dying about whether or not to be present in the room when vets perform the final rites as it were. Some recommended not to be present as it was quite distressing for both the pet and the guardian if the pet sensed the guardian was disturbed and emotional, while others said that it was more soothing to the pet. We all made the brave decision to remain with Buddy.
As she had promised, he became woozy and within seconds was gently laid on his side and drifted immediately into a peaceful sleep. A few more seconds later, he was gone.
I never liked imagining being here again. A huge Standard shaped hole in our lives. My parents' home empty of a confounding, bumbling dog drooling over plush couch cushions; smashing my mother's flowerbeds; drinking from my parents' bird fountain; sleeping in the compost pile; dragging in leaves and muddy footprints all over the house; taking himself on tours of the town when the backyard gate was mistakenly left ajar (to our recurring horror); and other Buddyisms never to be enjoyed again. My parents' house must be seemingly more and more empty as us kids are one by one leaving the nest, but Buddy had been a permanent fixture in the house. He had assumed his duty of four legged family member with incredible ease and as we drove away in perfect silence, we were left with grim reality of a empty house.
As the hours pass on, we all experience waves of sadness. Buddy had been a part of our day to day lives for over 7 years. He had been a witness to the significant changes in our lives. Graduations. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Christmases. Halloweens. Thanksgivings. Loss of shitty boyfriends. Loss of shitty friends. Marriage.
No one should misunderstand, I am very sad. Even with dog 3 and dog 4, Waggles and Guy respectively, the sadness of Buddy's loss is very strong. Each dog that has come and is to come into my life will be different in their own unique way as they should, as every dog even bearing resemblance or sameness in breed, is an individual of their own. Buddy had a special, inexplicable bond with each of the Chinnies, me especially. I campaigned for him. I couldn't live without him. And it is just as well Waggles and Guy are here, because without them I couldn't have made it knowing Buddy was never coming back.
Buddy taught me many things. He taught me I could love again after losing Jennifer, the very first dog, my very first dog. He taught me I couldn't be without a dog. He taught me it is okay to break rules and no one should ever have any expectations for you, because he was no Standard to any breed rule. He taught me about patience and acceptance, he was an older dog at 5 and had special medical needs, but how grateful I am that my parents agreed to adopt him. I knew he was the one 7 years ago and he was unquestionably part of our family.
I am very sad and I will miss him undoubtedly as I miss Jennifer, a missing that will be with me for the rest of my life. The sadness of course does subside and you don't miss them as urgently or as prominently as the day it happened or the day after or the day after that, but you always miss them. I hope Buddy is a better place, my sister told my mom before she went to work. I hope he is too. I hope there is a special place somewhere out there where family members go to live without suffering or pain or sadness, their energy and health is restored permanently and they can congregate until the day you meet again. I hope Jennifer is there and I hope she went to receive Buddy. I know she is probably kicking his ass and I bet he is licking the insides of her ears and bounding around with exuberance and bliss. I know wherever he is I am sure he is also missing us. I am sure he is missing me.
I know he missed me when I was in college. I hated seeing his face every time my dad drove me to the BART station and he watched me leave. I know he knew I was coming back as he learned I would. I would like to think he knows I'm coming to him one day and in the meantime, I hope he is overeating and not seeing the squirrels he is meant to chase and hopefully not getting beat down by impatient dogs who could never put up with his incessant barking and licking. I'd like to think Gam Gam is waiting with Jennifer and now Buddy somewhere, in the sunshine, in a garden she is tending and she is overfeeding them both with pastries and ice cream.
He will always occupy a space in our lives as did Jennifer before him. A spot in the heart that will just keep getting bigger with the endless love for the dogs in our lives.
I whispered to Buddy as he fell asleep for the last time, "We will miss taking care of you."
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