Since Teddy is still wearing "the cone of shame"
to prevent the licking of where his testicles used to be, I have grown
accustomed to taking the dogs out into the backyard for one final bathroom
break before locking up the doggy doors for the night. Teddy cannot fit through
the doggy doors anyway because of his lampshade, but Jonesy (in his growing
impatience and senility) has become rather fond of tearing through his special
sized door to bark incessantly. There is a family of possums, which I have seen
myself, that like to crawl along our back wall. They know our dogs are too
small to reach them up there and must find it amusing to sit there, in the
dark, listening to my poor old dog going apeshit crazy defending his home.
But tonight, in particular, I put the dogs out back and went to brush my teeth in the bathroom, finished my skincare routine and got into my pajamas. I took my time so the dogs would be ready to come back inside when I was finished. Only this time, I forgot to latch up the doggy door that leads from our kitchen into the backyard. I lay in bed reading for about twenty minutes when Teddy started pestering me with his grunting that I assume he wants to sound like a bark. I asked him what he wanted and he crawled under the bed only to reemerge immediately. I took this to mean that he wanted something under the bed, but when I looked underneath I saw that Jonesy was missing. I quietly walked through my hallway, past the bathroom, past the living room, around the kitchen and looked out the kitchen door. In the moonlight I saw a figure about Jonesy's size lying on the bench in the backyard. I opened the door and Jonesy didn't even look at me. I sat down next to him and he looked at me once then continued to stare off toward the back wall where the possums like to make their midnight crossings. Jonesy was intent on the wall and hardly noticed me scratching his ears (normally his favorite area to be scratched). He usually collapses into soft sighs and nudges my other hand with his nose and rolls belly-up so I can rub his tummy and scratch his ears at the same time. This time he ignored me.
I noticed that his fur was cold and slightly wet. Jonesy had been sitting outside staring at the wall for what I can only guess to be the full 20 minutes I had been reading. I called his name quietly a couple of times and his ears twitched to signal that he heard me, but his eyes stayed on the wall. He was tired. His eyelids kept blinking and I know my own dog's "sleepy look." But for whatever reason, my old boy was laying outside in the middle of the cold night guarding his house from an unseen enemy. I gently picked him up and his hind legs were limp in my arms. I brought him inside with Teddy following closely. And as I placed Jonesy on the floor it took him awhile to walk again. His legs were stiff and awkward as he stretched out the kinks that had gathered from being in one position for too long. I said "let's go to sleep." And he looked at me then turned to go back out the doggy door, but I had closed it. He stared at it for a few seconds, then looked at me, and walked to my bedroom where he collapsed under my bed on his warm piles of fluffy blankets.
As I'm writing this, he's snoring under my bed. I occasionally hear him barking very softly as he dreams about chasing rabbits and running through tall fields of wet, muddy grass: the kind of dreams dogs love. But I can't help but think, or actually remember that Jonesy is thirteen years old now. He's an old dog. And I've been seeing signs of his decaying health for over a year now. He doesn't hear certain frequencies anymore. I used to call out "COOKIE!" and he would come running to the kitchen for a treat. But now.... I can say cookie up to ten times and if he doesn't want to move then he won't.
I have had friends who make fun of me for how much I love my dogs, but I never took it to heart. Love is not an ability only afforded to humans. If anything, I believe that animals know how to love more profoundly than we do. Our love dissipates over time, and changes over fickle matters. Our love can become a form of obsession and illness. But love is what kept Jonesy alive.
When he was ten, I chose to put Sadie (the female he grew up with) down. She was diagnosed with Diabetes. Don't ask me how a dog gets Diabetes, but I always suspected that only a tumor could cause that kind of spike in her blood-sugar and blood lab between a six month period. My mother was away for work in Indianapolis; my brother was in school, my father refused to make any decision. "She's your dog, so it's your choice." he said. He thought I would keep her alive. He thought I would be selfish and inject her with Insulin everyday for the measly extra year of her life that I could buy.
While we were waiting for her results the vet asked what I was in school for, I said "English, but I'm going to be a doctor." He smiled at me. When I had first heard that Sadie had Diabetes I told my mother I wanted a second opinion. Dr. Gerghis was our second opinion. The results came back the same. Even though my father was in the room with us, Dr. Gerghis spoke to me. He said that in cases like Sadie's that "The insulin buys them one extra year of life, at most." I told him thank you and said I needed to go outside to make a call. He nodded and said he would stay with Sadie while we went outside to think it over.
The second I heard my mom's voice I couldn't speak. My composure was gone. I sobbed the words out and asked her what I should do. She was in the middle of a conference so I heard her say "Hang on." She went outside and spoke softly to me. "Neni, you're the one that's there. You have all of the information in front of you. I trust you to make this choice for Sadie and for the family." I told her okay and handed the phone to my dad as he calmly explained everything to her. I sat on the curb outside the vet's office and stared off into space. I heard my parents' conversation, but didn't listen to the words. I knew what they were saying.
My father hung up the phone and put his hand on my shoulder. My tears had dried on my cheeks. He told me "I don't care what it costs; we can keep Sadie alive for you." My father wanted to comfort me, but I knew what my decision would be. I would not let Sadie live with a declining quality of life. She hated needles more than anything in the world and I would have to inject her every day until she died. She was already delirious from having been put under for a routine teeth cleaning. The effects of the anesthesia had not worn off after two days.
The night before, I had a dream. Sadie had snapped out of her catatonic state and was chasing my bird, Mr. Mumbly around the house. I noticed something shiny and golden hovering above Mumbly's head as he flew back and forth, teasing Sadie. It was a halo. Mumbly had died six months before. I had found him at the bottom of his cage, his little body stiff. I woke up thinking that Mumbly had come to me as an omen of Sadie's return to health.
As I walked back in to the vet's office he looked at me and knew my decision before I had spoken it. I asked him to put Sadie to sleep. I was mad at myself for using the all-too-familiar euphemism. I had asked the vet to kill my dog, to inject her with something that would make her organs cease to function. I wanted him to end my dog's life. He began by injecting a small dosage of some kind of lidocaine agent. He asked me if Sadie took vaccines well. I couldn't help but smile as I said "She'll try to bite you." I held her head in my heads as the vet injected the lidocaine into her back thigh. She made a quick motion to bite at his hand, and the vet jumped back, but I held her tiny face in my hands and before long she had rested her head on the table.
Next the vet took a larger syringe and injected it into her forearm. He left it sitting in her arm and said he would be back in two minutes. I assumed he was going to leave us alone while Sadie died in front of us. I stayed next to Sadie and her eyes were closed. I put my hand in front of her nose so she could smell that I was with her and so I could feel her breath grow weaker. But it didn't. Two minutes later, the vet came into the room and my father asked why her lungs were still moving. He frowned and said he must not have given her enough. He emptied the other half of the syringe into Sadie and brought out his stethoscope. A steady crease was on his forehead as he waited for her lungs to stop breathing. For five minutes they did not cease to inspire and expire. The vet took out another syringe. I looked at him and he told me "Her brain is dead, but her lungs don't want to stop." He injected another half of a syringe into her and a couple of minutes later (which felt like seconds) her lungs finally stopped moving. He looked at my father and I and said "I gave her the dosage I would have given a horse."
As we walked out the door, the vet gave me a hug and said he was sorry. I thanked him, and went home to face Jonesy. After Sadie died, Jonesy lost his appetite and became very thin. That following Halloween he refused to get up from my mother's bed to greet the trick or treaters in his bat costume. He just growled softly at the constant ringing of our doorbell. Then for my twenty second birthday I got Teddy. Jonesy started wrestling with him after a few days and chasing him around the backyard. My boy was back.
But the love Jonesy has for Teddy is not enough to make him live forever. At least, in heaven, of which I have no doubt that all dogs end up in, Jonesy will be reunited with his Sadie.
The dream I had of an angel-Mumbly flying around the room with Sadie running after him was still an omen. I reinterpreted my dream as Mumbly having been Sadie's guardian angel coming down to Earth to collect her soul and take it back up with him. This is not the first time I see souls on their way to heaven. I said goodbye to my grandmother in a dream, and to my other dog Rosie, I said goodbye to my Uncle Bob while I was asleep.
Maybe there are some people in this world whose hearts are open. And when people and animals die they are drawn toward the people with open hearts. While we sleep our defenses are down and the souls of the departed are able to send messages to their loved ones. The message is always the same: "We're happy. We're healthy. We're not in pain. We love you and we'll see you again."
But tonight, in particular, I put the dogs out back and went to brush my teeth in the bathroom, finished my skincare routine and got into my pajamas. I took my time so the dogs would be ready to come back inside when I was finished. Only this time, I forgot to latch up the doggy door that leads from our kitchen into the backyard. I lay in bed reading for about twenty minutes when Teddy started pestering me with his grunting that I assume he wants to sound like a bark. I asked him what he wanted and he crawled under the bed only to reemerge immediately. I took this to mean that he wanted something under the bed, but when I looked underneath I saw that Jonesy was missing. I quietly walked through my hallway, past the bathroom, past the living room, around the kitchen and looked out the kitchen door. In the moonlight I saw a figure about Jonesy's size lying on the bench in the backyard. I opened the door and Jonesy didn't even look at me. I sat down next to him and he looked at me once then continued to stare off toward the back wall where the possums like to make their midnight crossings. Jonesy was intent on the wall and hardly noticed me scratching his ears (normally his favorite area to be scratched). He usually collapses into soft sighs and nudges my other hand with his nose and rolls belly-up so I can rub his tummy and scratch his ears at the same time. This time he ignored me.
I noticed that his fur was cold and slightly wet. Jonesy had been sitting outside staring at the wall for what I can only guess to be the full 20 minutes I had been reading. I called his name quietly a couple of times and his ears twitched to signal that he heard me, but his eyes stayed on the wall. He was tired. His eyelids kept blinking and I know my own dog's "sleepy look." But for whatever reason, my old boy was laying outside in the middle of the cold night guarding his house from an unseen enemy. I gently picked him up and his hind legs were limp in my arms. I brought him inside with Teddy following closely. And as I placed Jonesy on the floor it took him awhile to walk again. His legs were stiff and awkward as he stretched out the kinks that had gathered from being in one position for too long. I said "let's go to sleep." And he looked at me then turned to go back out the doggy door, but I had closed it. He stared at it for a few seconds, then looked at me, and walked to my bedroom where he collapsed under my bed on his warm piles of fluffy blankets.
As I'm writing this, he's snoring under my bed. I occasionally hear him barking very softly as he dreams about chasing rabbits and running through tall fields of wet, muddy grass: the kind of dreams dogs love. But I can't help but think, or actually remember that Jonesy is thirteen years old now. He's an old dog. And I've been seeing signs of his decaying health for over a year now. He doesn't hear certain frequencies anymore. I used to call out "COOKIE!" and he would come running to the kitchen for a treat. But now.... I can say cookie up to ten times and if he doesn't want to move then he won't.
I have had friends who make fun of me for how much I love my dogs, but I never took it to heart. Love is not an ability only afforded to humans. If anything, I believe that animals know how to love more profoundly than we do. Our love dissipates over time, and changes over fickle matters. Our love can become a form of obsession and illness. But love is what kept Jonesy alive.
When he was ten, I chose to put Sadie (the female he grew up with) down. She was diagnosed with Diabetes. Don't ask me how a dog gets Diabetes, but I always suspected that only a tumor could cause that kind of spike in her blood-sugar and blood lab between a six month period. My mother was away for work in Indianapolis; my brother was in school, my father refused to make any decision. "She's your dog, so it's your choice." he said. He thought I would keep her alive. He thought I would be selfish and inject her with Insulin everyday for the measly extra year of her life that I could buy.
While we were waiting for her results the vet asked what I was in school for, I said "English, but I'm going to be a doctor." He smiled at me. When I had first heard that Sadie had Diabetes I told my mother I wanted a second opinion. Dr. Gerghis was our second opinion. The results came back the same. Even though my father was in the room with us, Dr. Gerghis spoke to me. He said that in cases like Sadie's that "The insulin buys them one extra year of life, at most." I told him thank you and said I needed to go outside to make a call. He nodded and said he would stay with Sadie while we went outside to think it over.
The second I heard my mom's voice I couldn't speak. My composure was gone. I sobbed the words out and asked her what I should do. She was in the middle of a conference so I heard her say "Hang on." She went outside and spoke softly to me. "Neni, you're the one that's there. You have all of the information in front of you. I trust you to make this choice for Sadie and for the family." I told her okay and handed the phone to my dad as he calmly explained everything to her. I sat on the curb outside the vet's office and stared off into space. I heard my parents' conversation, but didn't listen to the words. I knew what they were saying.
My father hung up the phone and put his hand on my shoulder. My tears had dried on my cheeks. He told me "I don't care what it costs; we can keep Sadie alive for you." My father wanted to comfort me, but I knew what my decision would be. I would not let Sadie live with a declining quality of life. She hated needles more than anything in the world and I would have to inject her every day until she died. She was already delirious from having been put under for a routine teeth cleaning. The effects of the anesthesia had not worn off after two days.
The night before, I had a dream. Sadie had snapped out of her catatonic state and was chasing my bird, Mr. Mumbly around the house. I noticed something shiny and golden hovering above Mumbly's head as he flew back and forth, teasing Sadie. It was a halo. Mumbly had died six months before. I had found him at the bottom of his cage, his little body stiff. I woke up thinking that Mumbly had come to me as an omen of Sadie's return to health.
As I walked back in to the vet's office he looked at me and knew my decision before I had spoken it. I asked him to put Sadie to sleep. I was mad at myself for using the all-too-familiar euphemism. I had asked the vet to kill my dog, to inject her with something that would make her organs cease to function. I wanted him to end my dog's life. He began by injecting a small dosage of some kind of lidocaine agent. He asked me if Sadie took vaccines well. I couldn't help but smile as I said "She'll try to bite you." I held her head in my heads as the vet injected the lidocaine into her back thigh. She made a quick motion to bite at his hand, and the vet jumped back, but I held her tiny face in my hands and before long she had rested her head on the table.
Next the vet took a larger syringe and injected it into her forearm. He left it sitting in her arm and said he would be back in two minutes. I assumed he was going to leave us alone while Sadie died in front of us. I stayed next to Sadie and her eyes were closed. I put my hand in front of her nose so she could smell that I was with her and so I could feel her breath grow weaker. But it didn't. Two minutes later, the vet came into the room and my father asked why her lungs were still moving. He frowned and said he must not have given her enough. He emptied the other half of the syringe into Sadie and brought out his stethoscope. A steady crease was on his forehead as he waited for her lungs to stop breathing. For five minutes they did not cease to inspire and expire. The vet took out another syringe. I looked at him and he told me "Her brain is dead, but her lungs don't want to stop." He injected another half of a syringe into her and a couple of minutes later (which felt like seconds) her lungs finally stopped moving. He looked at my father and I and said "I gave her the dosage I would have given a horse."
As we walked out the door, the vet gave me a hug and said he was sorry. I thanked him, and went home to face Jonesy. After Sadie died, Jonesy lost his appetite and became very thin. That following Halloween he refused to get up from my mother's bed to greet the trick or treaters in his bat costume. He just growled softly at the constant ringing of our doorbell. Then for my twenty second birthday I got Teddy. Jonesy started wrestling with him after a few days and chasing him around the backyard. My boy was back.
But the love Jonesy has for Teddy is not enough to make him live forever. At least, in heaven, of which I have no doubt that all dogs end up in, Jonesy will be reunited with his Sadie.
The dream I had of an angel-Mumbly flying around the room with Sadie running after him was still an omen. I reinterpreted my dream as Mumbly having been Sadie's guardian angel coming down to Earth to collect her soul and take it back up with him. This is not the first time I see souls on their way to heaven. I said goodbye to my grandmother in a dream, and to my other dog Rosie, I said goodbye to my Uncle Bob while I was asleep.
Maybe there are some people in this world whose hearts are open. And when people and animals die they are drawn toward the people with open hearts. While we sleep our defenses are down and the souls of the departed are able to send messages to their loved ones. The message is always the same: "We're happy. We're healthy. We're not in pain. We love you and we'll see you again."
It's a beautiful belief I've held onto for my entire life.
And I'm not ready to let go of this belief. To those that would doubt me, tell
me I'm a sentimental idiot or that I live in a fantasy world, I will say this:
The world is what we make of it and I choose to believe in connections that
cannot yet be proven. I experience these connections firsthand because I have
not grown hard and cynical to the world around me, no matter how much I have
been bruised and beaten by it. Because this world has also educated me,
nurtured me, and loved me.
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