This has been a real bummer of a day. We took Clara to the vet today and the news was pretty much what we expected and none of it good. A couple of days ago she had a really bad problem breathing. She did fairly well for a day and a half after that, but yesterday things started going downhill again. She was falling trying to go up stairs, and just generally having a dreadful time even getting up and down off the floor.
The doctor confirmed that things are at an end for her. Her liver and spleen are really badly enlarged, her muscles are atrophying, and despite eating well, she's dropped 4 pounds in a week. That's a lot for a dog; even a big dog. So he gave us some pills to make her comfortable, took her off of all of her current medicines, and scheduled her for Saturday afternoon to be put to sleep. There is no point in allowing her to suffer. She's barely able to get around, has two independent types of cancer, and is simply too sick and too tired to go on.
This isn't going to be easy. Not for any of us. I took her outside to go potty today. We have a wheelchair ramp in the front of the house, and I took her down that. Unfortunately, she didn't even have the strength to walk back up it. She couldn't get up the stairs either, so I wound up lifting her onto the lowest step so she could get up the others.
Her name is Clara, by the way. She's one of the quietest, gentlest, and sweetest dogs that ever was. She will be so missed. I'm not overly fond of dogs, but I'm very fond of this one. She has a very expressive face and when she was excited she'd do this little dance to let you know how happy she was. She had a lot of silly little quirks, such as barking over nothing if her brother got all wound up. She wouldn't know what she was barking at, but that didn't stop her. Same with whining. She would whine as if her tail was being pulled off from time to time. Not pain. Just this stupid whining. If you told her to shut up she'd look at you as if you'd suggested she eat dirt. Trust me, she had the best "are you crazy?" look you can even imagine.
We will have her another day and a half. Then she'll be gone. Her sister died last year. That leaves us with one dog.
2 comments:
We never made it to tomorrow. Clara died this morning just minutes after Steve arrived to be with her. They got to say goodbye, then she was gone. We took her to the vet to be cremated.
It's a really sad day here and everyone has been crying a lot.
Funny how dogs can get to us when humans don't. Well, dogs don't question everything we do. All the stupid things we do, and all our stupid needs.
Dogs are about as close to unconditional love as you can get, but everything else has conditions, rightfully so.
It will be okay, cry it out and move on.
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