I know that some people here have used these diaries to express their love for their pet who has just died. I hope you will forgive me for sharing my loss with you.
I'm just back from the vet. I brought my 12 year old husky/shepherd mix Spirit there, not really thinking I'd be bringing her home again but I always have hope. We've been going back and forth to vets a lot in the last few months. Blood tests showed nothing which worried me immensely as tumors wouldn't show up on blood tests. Spirit has had fatty tumors since puppy hood but as she has gotten old, more have shown up and the ones she has have grown. I spoke to the first vet we saw about tumors and cancer but the vet didn't think that was her problem. We didn't have x-rays done as the vet knew that money was hard for me to come by and that extreme and costly measures weren't going to be done for an old dog.
When the vet saw Spirit today, we knew there was no hope.
The vet's opinion was that something had ruptured inside. I had taken her because she clearly was suffering. Her temperature was elevated, her gums were pale, and she had a big swelling in her side that the vet felt was internal bleeding. Her ribs heaved in and out in pain.
From what the vet saw, she was going to die soon anyway but I asked the vet to help ease her death and he did. She will suffer no more.
Maybe I should have paid for a full postmortem and found out exactly what killed her but I didn't. I certainly am still wondering. We did tap her abdomen after she was gone and there was indeed bloody fluid, enough to reassure me that I had done the right thing in sending her on.
She has been sick for at least six months. Always she started the night with her head on the pillow next to me but it has been so long since she has been unable to jump on the bed that I can't remember now when she last was there. I think maybe January or so was the last time.
I'm glad that I have the two year old sheltie, Cait, to keep Bear company. Spirit was Bear's mother and mothered him all these years. It will make things easier for us both that he has Cait to love.
Spirit was such a bad dog but such a love too. Always she was a sweetie to me. Six years ago she was sentenced to death by a judge who thought she had bitten a child although there was no evidence of her actually having bitten. The proof of rabies vaccination had satisfied the policeman who had investigated the complaint of the bite and they hadn't taken Spirit that evening. They never got another chance to take her. I hid the dog away and filed an appeal acting as my own lawyer with the Court of Appeals. Finally, after a year of hiding Spirit, my house in NY sold and Spirit and Bear and I left the state to live on a farm in New Hampshire.
Spirit did think that chasing people who ran and hearing them scream was fun. There were all too many who were willing to do that in the area on Long Island where we had lived. She had learned to chase people when she was a six month old puppy. New neighbors with their nine year old twin girls had moved in across the street. Spirit and I went out to introduce ourselves. The girls saw the dog and ran away screeching. Spirit thought it was a great game. She was more Siberian Husky than shepherd. She looked like a Siberian, with beautiful black and white markings. There was also, as in so many huskies, no confining her. I built a fence and they went under it. I put fence along the ground so they couldn't go under it and they went through the chain link. I put heavy, small opening fence inside the chain link so they couldn't go through it and they went over it. Both dogs were traffic wise and both just wanted to go play with other dogs mostly but always they were threatened with arrest and death. Until we moved to NH and there life became peaceful and Spirit stayed out of trouble. The dogs could wander and never leave my property. I even made sure that a pond was dug on the property where they could wade to cool off as often they had left my property on Long Island just to go for a swim.
After the time of hiding her, Spirit would be in huge distress whenever we were separated. The vet asked if I wanted to leave the room while he ended her life. I would never have done that to her. I stayed with her long after her heart peacefully stopped beating.
I think her quality of life was all right up until the last few days. She'd wag her tail and show interest and pleasure in her surroundings and food. I think I knew it was over early this morning when Bear was howling at a dog or coyote outside and Spirit showed no interest. Such events have always enthralled her. Even last week, when she was so ill, she would get up and participate in the barking at anything outside.
I wish I'd had the money to have had her x-rayed. I wish I'd had the money to have sent her to surgery if the x-rays had shown anything operable or given her chemo if it had been cancer -- maybe as early as last year if tumors had been shown because I knew she wasn't right. I didn't. I didn't have the money to buy heat for the house or keep the telephone working. I didn't have money to get medical treatment for myself. In NH, if you take Medicaid, they put a lien against your house. I had a five year balloon mortgage and the five years were up in April of this year. I had to refinance the house and you can't refinance a house with a lien on it. So I didn't even have Medicaid for myself despite the fact that as a disabled person receiving SSI, I am automatically eligible for Medicaid.
I saved my house from foreclosure by getting a reverse mortgage. The moment the money from that mortgage cleared the bank in the end of May, I took Spirit to the vet. When that vet couldn't find anything wrong, I took Spirit to another vet -- a holistic one this time. I do think she got a few more weeks of decent quality of life and that her deterioration slowed a bit. But the tumor probably grew until it ruptured something inside of her.
Today's vet was the holistic one. He was so positive we could make Spirit better. I knew that the regular vet would recommend euthenasia. I felt that this vet would try to save Spirit if anything could be done for her at all.
Bear and Cait are doing fine. I am doing less well but I am so glad that she didn't have to suffer until later today or tomorrow when whatever this was killed her. It wasn't going to be much longer but she didn't need to go through that. I didn't need to go through that either.
She had six years that the judge wouldn't have let her have. And they were good years. I miss her so.