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#personal #life #updates #blog #love #loss #pets

Quite a lot has happened in my personal life. Some of it I've shared, other stuff, not so much. The pain of loss is probably the hardest thing I've ever had to go through. But to lose my Dad and my dog in the same month has been an especially terrible to experience. A bit compounded by the fact that last Friday (May 9th) would have also been my Mother's birthday.

It's a morbid and depressing part of life for anyone who has ever had pets, but putting them to sleep is part of the process after they've lived a full life. I have to say that our experience with the service we used was the lowest stress possible... They came to the house and it was really quite peaceful. We were warned that there might be some erratic breathing or other “distress”, but Daisy went with just a sigh. Which was heart-wrenching and bittersweet, because her sigh was something that I was quite fond of. She was always doing it in protest; “No, you can't get on the couch right now.” sigh. “You already have food! You don't need to bug me for mine.” sigh... I'm so sorry girl, it's time. sigh.

We spent the day just feeding Daisy treats, crying, and giving her lots of pets. Eventually the doorbell rang and the vet was there to administer a couple of shots. Daisy fell asleep and that was it.

A couple of images will probably never leave my mind. Ella, our cat, wandering over and saying goodbye, and helping to carry Daisy out of the house. Not that she was especially heavy, in fact I had grown quite accustomed to lifting her in and out of the bathtub over the last year and half. She had gotten to the point where she couldn't stand up to relieve herself, so we were constantly having to bathe her. But more than a few times in just the past couple of months, sitting in the living room and watching TV, I would look over and could see that Daisy was in pain.

Originally we had Daisy scheduled for a visit at the vet's office. When I came home on Friday after work I had to help my wife clean up the house because Daisy had diarrhea again. Wasn't long before I broke down in tears when I realized there was blood in her stool. The earliest appointment they could give us was for Sunday at 8:30am.

We had all day Saturday to think about everything. My wife and I talked about it in bed that night, and we realized it was just time. For me personally, I couldn't see a situation where the vet would let us bring Daisy home with us. She was in really rough shape on Friday night, barely able to walk, and then with blood and a mucus-y substance in her feces, it didn't look good. As she's gotten older, stuff like this has been happening with increasing frequency. Nearly two decades is a long time for a golden retriever.

Daisy wasn't just any golden though, she was a mutt from the pound, mixed with at least border collie, and probably some other breeds sprinkled in as well. To me, she always looked mostly like a golden, but when her ears would perk up that's when you could see the border collie in her, or when she was busy trying to herd my nieces and nephews. It's actually kind of mind blowing to think that Daisy was 5 years older than my youngest niece. Whenever anyone would ask, I usually would just say she was a golden retriever. Border collies being less prevalent as house or family dogs, and much more of a working breed.

Daisy was Skyler's dog first, I came along after, a few years later even. When my wife got Daisy, she was only 11 months old but had already been returned to the pound twice. She was a wild puppy, always chewing on things and lashing out. On top of that she only had half a tail. Very aggressive toward men, but never toward me. We suspect she probably was the victim of some type of cruelty, probably whatever resulted in her half of a tail. She was the best dog though. Such a sweetheart. Skyler refused to give up on her, and I didn't have to do much, but she was pretty rambunctious on walks. It wasn't long after I moved in that I found I actually quite enjoyed taking her for walks and getting her trained to be more comfortable on a leash.

When I was younger we owned a few dogs, but we never had them long enough to see any of them put to sleep. I think the longest we had a dog was probably Prince—he was a short-haired collie of some kind—but he was only around for three or four years total. So, with Daisy, twelve years was quite the length of time for me to bond and grow old with a dog.

In a way, Daisy's declining health sort of mirrored my Dad's. For probably two years now she had been on carprofen (basically doggy ibuprofen), and we've had to administer it a couple of times a day for her back and legs, just so that she could get around. Plus we had to give her special eye drops. My wife did it in the beginning, at some point I took over, so that was part of my daily routine before and after work, and a reason to get up early on Saturdays and Sundays. Even if I just woke up and then went back to bed; I would give Daisy her pill and eye drops in the morning.

There were probably a couple of Saturday or Sunday mornings that I forgot, but I could always see the pain in her when she would move around. The pills definitely helped. It got bad in the end though. Just this last week, and periodically throughout the last few months, she had some serious senior moments; signs of dementia, falling down, being tired all the time.

I had secretly been hoping that she would just go in her sleep. However, there is the very serious question of quality of life versus quality of care. She was getting to the point where it would have been cruel to keep her alive. That was one thing that Skyler said she didn't want, for Daisy to suffer just so that we could keep her around.

We did have a scare several years ago, when we both thought that would could lose Daisy. It was during COVID, she had a fairly large growth on her chest, and the vet wasn't sure whether or not it was benign or cancerous. Daisy was absolutely mopey for like 2 months. She also hated it when you touched the bump, and she was noticeably very self-conscious about it. Wouldn't you know, as soon as they did surgery and got rid of it, Daisy recovered very quickly and was like a little puppy all over again.

It was maybe another year or several months later that I learned what reverse sneezing was. Yes, dogs do it, and it's very scary if you've never experienced it before. She woke me up around 4:30-5am on a weekend. I promptly woke Skyler up, “you gotta listen to Daisy!”

When a dog reverse sneezes, it sounds like they can't breath, or are having difficulty breathing. We took her to the only vet we could find open, which was nearly on the other side of the city, at least a 30-45 minute drive with no traffic. The veterinary assistant who was working at the time didn't seem concerned at all, my wife and I were still half-asleep and freaked out waiting for the vet.

I don't remember what the vet said, I just remember replying with, “what the fuck is a reverse sneeze?!?”

None the less, she had stopped sounding like she was going to die, and was breathing perfectly fine... Probably because we had driven her far, far away from the source of her allergies; whatever weed was growing in our backyard that caused her to start reverse sneezing in the first place.

I'm really going to miss her, I've never known any other dogs with such personality. And there definitely haven't been any other dogs who have been such a big part of my life.