Tuesday, April 09, 2019

Losing a Dog


Our little Soozzee has left us.  As I've described in several recent posts, she was suffering from a variety of ailments: deaf, blind in one eye and almost blind in the other, Addison's disease, arthritis, bladder stones, a thyroid condition, a skin condition, and worst of all, dementia.  Since my post last month, the dementia took more and more of a toll.  She got lost in the house pretty much all the time. She used to bark when she wanted us to get her down from the bed, but she stopped doing that.  We think she probably just forgot about barking.  Her inner GPS (the primary subject of my last post) got significantly worse.  She just seemed lost all the time.  She had often had trouble standing up and would stumble more on her walks.

Soozzee still had her happy moments, though.  She enjoyed parts of her walk: she'd stop and sniff at anything, even if she didn't know which way to go.  If we got out "the light" in the evening (a laser light that she has chased around the house since she was a little pup), she'd still pounce on it, but only for a minute and then she'd forget it was there.  And she liked to have some reassuring pettings.

But it was clear that she wasn't going to last long.  And on Saturday, April 6, that day came.  We did the morning walk and she kept going off the wrong way.  After getting back in the house, she wandered around lost, and while walking down the hall, she pooped without breaking stride.  The poor girl would never, ever, have pooped in her own house if she was at all aware.  The fact that she didn't know enough to control her own body was our signal that she was, to all intents and purposes, gone.

We called our vet, the Animal Hospital at Reems Creek, and made an appointment.  The people there have taken wonderful care of our dogs for almost 15 years and were almost as torn up about it as we were.  So just after noon last Saturday, they gave little Soozzee the injection and she passed away in my arms.

Good God, I wanted to die.

We're trying now to adjust to life post-dogs and, damn, it's hard.  For years, our lives have been largely structured around Soozzee and her sister Indy, who passed away a bit over a year ago.  At 9 am, it was time to wake up the dogs (yes, you read that right) and take 'em on their morning walk, then give 'em their meds.  Around noon, it was a ride in the car to take care of errands.  Around 4-5 pm, it was their evening walk and then dinner.  At about 7 pm, it was play time, usually with "the light".  Around 11 pm, one last time outside to do their business, take their evening meds, and off to bed.

Now, I'll be thinking "oh, it's 4 pm, gotta take Soozzee on her walk .... uh, damn ..."  It's a great big emptiness where Soozzee and her sister used to be.  Janis and I don't quite know how to fill it.  We'll get there, but it's going to take a while.  I still tear up over Indy's passing and that was well over a year ago, so it'll probably take at least another year or so to get over Soozzee.

I've been asked several times if we're going to get another dog.  No, we won't.  For one, it's unfair to any dog to be asked to fill in the hole left by another.  For another, there are things that we want to do, mainly travel, that were difficult or impossible with two dogs that were special needs.  And we just need to figure out life as empty-nesters.

Ever since I started writing this blog, there have been occasional posts about our two sweet Shih Tzus.  This is probably the final one.

Goodbye, little Soozzee.  You have my heart forever.

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