|
Daisy ~2001/2002 – 1/15/2021  My favorite picture of her. Such a beautiful dog. I want to tell you all about Daisy. At the time of posting this, it's been approximately 12 hours since we said goodbye. I know I made the right decision, but I'm sick to my stomach with grief.  She was eternally vibrating with concern. Daisy was a very good girl, like all dogs are. She lived to be at least 19 and change and when we brought her in for the last time, her body was incredibly healthy for such an old dog. Good heart, good lungs, good bones. A real drat shame. We took good care of her, which is good to know because we did our best with very, very little. She ate better than we did, and we did everything in our power to manage her symptoms and keep her comfortable. Other than the slow-then-sudden creep of doggy dementia, the only problems she had were generic old dog problems and an ear infection that were easily managed. I always knew her mind would go before her body did, and this week she reached the point where enough became enough and I couldn't watch her regress any further. I'm not even sure she was cognizant enough to know what was going on, but that doesn't change that I still feel like I betrayed her.  A funny face on a funny dog. She came to us in '03 or '04, already an adult. I was in middle school. My mother was working at a vets office, and someone brought her in and never came back to get her. They called her previous owner dozens of times and when they finally got through to him he said he no longer wanted her and didn't have time for her anyway – she was spending 20 hours a day in a cage because he didn't feel like training her. Mom brought her home and we saw why her previous owner didn't want her. She needed so much work. She didn't know how to dog. She was so traumatized and so fearful. Man? Cower, fear pee, hide. Hair brush? Cower, fear pee, hide. Fast movements and loud noises? Cower, fear pee, hide. She was a JRT, or at least that's what we were told, but never acted like one. Like me, I always thought, she was too broken by where she came from to behave like she was supposed to. She was never a problem though; in fact, the opposite. She didn't dig or destroy furniture. She didn't bark like other members of her breed are supposed to. She wasn't a hunter at all. She was so smart and so good and so loyal.  Going by the laundry basket and floor, I think this was sometime between 2007 and 2009. She wasn't even my dog until '06. She was just a dog no one wanted, who ended up with us. When my parents divorced, she stayed with me and my dad – the woman that had first brought her home no longer wanted her. She had a new dog, a different dog, a dog she liked better. So Daisy stayed here, because no one knew what else to do with her. Once my mom was gone, Daisy blossomed into an amazing companion. I brought her out of most of her fear, and she got to do normal dog stuff like get belly rubs and play fetch without flinching. She loved fetch, but hated giving the ball back and I would chase her around and she loved it. She was sharp and quick and so desperate for positive attention and love that she was an absolute breeze to train. Her recall was excellent and I could trust her off leash anywhere. She loved me. I was her person. I was the one that worked her through her issues and for a long time I was the only person she trusted. After a couple of years, you would have had no idea that this dog once spent her days locked up and was so afraid of people she would shut down. Cats, toddlers, other dogs, other pet species, she didn't have an aggressive bone in her body, she was everyone's friend. She was so sweet and she became so brave.  So gentle, she was allowed to say hello to the rats. From 2015. Louise, the rat pictured, passed in the summer of 2018, the last of the colony I had kept for nearly a decade. The mystery tail belongs to Cookie, who passed in 2016. I guess this is for them too. She was so funny. She never learned to give kisses 'the right way' – instead, she would get right up in your face, stare deep into your eyes, sneeze, and then give you a single teeny tiny little lick right on the nose before running away. You could boop the dot on her nose and she would spin. She would do those cute little spins when she wanted something. We called them her Daisy Dances. She had so many dumb little nicknames – Doodoo, Doedoo, Daisy Danger Dog, Doze. So many songs I would change the words to fit her name and sing to her, and she would bounce and spin in excitement. She got me through every single bad thing that happened to me since. She protected me. She was there for me during the dark years I can't remember. She knew when I was upset, and she hugged back. I can't even tell you how many nights I cried into her fur. She was beautiful inside and out. She slept in my bed by my feet every single night until she could no longer get on and off the bed on her own and then we got her the biggest, comfiest beds we could find.  Just a danger dog on a dangerous deck. Over the last few years, the brave and loving dog I grew up with started to lose herself. She would forget where she was, or who we were. At first, it was infrequent. Her eyes would glaze over and she would stare at nothing, shaking like she did before she became my best friend. She became fearful again, worse than she was when she first came to me. We couldn't brush her or trim her nails without traumatizing her worse. More recently, we couldn't even touch her or walk by her without her flinching and throwing herself away from us – she even hurt her paw trying to get away because she thought my partner was going to hurt her just walking by her. This dog that was so gentle and so sweet started snapping at us and my cat, who is the same-ish age as her and has been with her since she became mine. They were best friends too. I know it was fear because she was losing herself and she would never willingly hurt even a mouse much less the cat that she'd been snuggling with and letting clean her for years or the people she loved so much.  A bad Christmas photo of her and my cat, Cashew. It was a slow decline at first, and then over the last few months it accelerated. She became withdrawn and stopped playing. Stopped responding to both the audible and visual commands she once learned so quickly. Stopped having any kind of drive, but she still looked forward to food. Sometimes I would be talking to her and I could see her slip into one of her confusion states. Over the last couple of weeks, she got hit by a double whammy of physical issues. She's always had a persistent ear infection and that came back worse than I'd ever seen because we couldn't make her feel safe enough to tend to her properly without terrifying her. Her old bones were sore, and this week she stopped being able to stand up without assistance. Assistance that she would yelp and flee from, hobbling on whichever of her legs hurt the least that day, because she was so lost she could no longer trust us. Relatable.  Daisy and Frankie, probably a year or two after I got the pug. I made the decision this morning, after watching her sharply decline since Christmas. She started falling a lot. She would get stuck because she didn't have the strength to stand back up. She fell hard into the water bowl and then wedged herself into the corner by the fridge, staring at the wall and shivering like she'd never felt warmth in her life. I gave her the space and time I knew she needed to come back to herself so I could move her safely and when I got her back into her bed I knew it was time. I could always tell whether she was 'home' or not. I was sort of raised by animals and I've always been more in tune with them than other humans. This morning, when she came back to herself, the look on her face and in her eyes said she was tired and had had enough and I made the call. I'd been waiting until she got to the point where she was having more bad days than good days, because she was a good dog who deserved to enjoy her life. The vet said she was healthy for her age aside from the recent problems and wanted to treat her, but he hadn't witnessed her decline like I did. We may have been able to keep her body alive, but she lived in pure terror most recent nights and she deserved so much better than that. Were it not for her ever worsening mental state, she honestly probably had a few more years left in her. I am full of guilt. What if she could have had more good days? I know in my heart and mind that she couldn't, but that doesn't make it hurt any less. Keeping her for longer would have been selfish and cruel, but letting her go also feels selfish and cruel.  Fall 2015. You can see how old she'd gotten. Today (well, yesterday now, gently caress) you could hardly tell that she ever had color to begin with. She deserved more than I was able to give her, that's for drat sure. Sweet Child o' Mine played softly on the radio as we pulled up to the vet; a song I often sung to her and a song I will never be able to hear the same again. I stroked her age-bleached face and told her how pretty and good and sweet she was and that it would be okay and I loved her, and then I watched the light leave her eyes and she was gone, just like that. I hope she forgives me. I feel like I betrayed her even though it was the right thing to do. She deserved to rest, after all she's done for me. I feel like she only held on as long as she did because she felt like she had to protect me. I was her person. I was the person that took her when no one else wanted her when she was so broken, and I think she knew that and she rewarded me with so much love and loyalty. She was one of the only things that mattered to me. I have so little left from the brief period of time my life was worth living, and absolutely nothing to look forward to but misery. She is survived by Frankie, who we got as a companion dog for her almost a decade ago, and Cashew, an also ancient and now one-eyed cat with diabetes who nearly died last year, himself. I don't know if they realize she isn't coming back, but they knew she wasn't doing good. The pug has never, ever been alone in her life and I think I'm kind of projecting my own anxieties about coping without Daisy on to her. I think Frankie is doing better than I am. She's a tough little dog, raised by another tough little dog. In the summers before, when things were good, I would load up both dogs and take them to get ice cream and then drive around so they could see and smell the world. I brought them everywhere I could. We didn't get to do that the last couple of years. It snowed a little when we pulled into the driveway with an empty collar and heavy hearts. She loved the snow when she was a younger dog. Please rest in peace, Daisy-doo. Know that you were important, and that you were loved, and that you were a good girl and we never blamed you. You deserved so much better, and I don't know what I'm going to do without you.
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2021 10:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 03:24 |
|