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The hardest day

(If you read this blog for the technical bits - or have a dog - you might want to skip over this post. It’s one of those blogging-as-catharsis things that many people hate.)

Yesterday was one of the hardest days I can ever remember having. Lacie and I had to make the decision to put our dog Daisy to sleep.

(more here)

We adopted her in May of 2006 - she was nine years old, and her owner didn’t have time for her anymore. We took her for a weekend and after about fifteen minutes, we were completely in love. She was the sweetest, happiest dog I can imagine - when she’d see you, her three-inch tail would start vibrating with excitement, and she was always happy to give kisses.

We found out soon after adopting her that, like many older Brittanys, she had an enlarged heart and a pretty serious heart murmur. Over time, we were told, it would get worse as the heart grew even bigger and became less efficient, leading eventually to heart failure. There was no way to tell how long that would take - and even once it happens, some dogs live happily for years… so we gave her the appropriate drugs, walked and played with her, and generally just fell more and more for her.

In May of last year, we moved from Virginia to North Carolina - and on her first appointment with our new vet, we discovered that her heart murmur had progressed to the most severe level. That meant more medication and more watching, but she was still doing well. She was always eager for a walk or a big bellyrub, and she loved the new fenced-in backyard (her first reaction to it was to roll around in the grass with her legs in the air).

A couple of months ago, though, she developed a cough. When she got really excited, she’d start coughing a little - it would build to a final body-shaking cough, and then she’d be OK. We took her to the vet, who said that her heart was so big it was now pressing on her trachea, and that over time the trachea would move up and out of the way, reducing the cough. So she kept coughing for a bit, then would get better. This happened several times - but she always improved, and even when she was coughing her tail would still be vibrating.

Then about a week ago, she started coughing and she didn’t get better. She stopped eating as much, so we changed up her food - that worked for a bit, but Thursday she didn’t finish her dinner. By the end of the week, the character of the cough had changed, too. She was almost constantly wheezing, and when she did cough it sounded somewhat wet.

On Friday, things got so bad that whenever she’d lie down, she’d have to lift her head into the air to breathe. This tired her out, though, so after a while her head would drop - until she needed to breathe again, at which point she would struggle to get it back up. (At the time, we didn’t realize how bad it was - we just thought it was a minor progression of the illness, and that by upping her medication she’d be OK). Friday night, she coughed pretty regularly from 2:30 AM until 6 or so, when she finally was able to get some sleep. I had a lot of trouble getting her out to go to the bathroom, though, so Lacie made an emergency vet appointment and we took her in around 11:30.

On the way to the vet, she was still wheezing, and I noticed that her gums were almost white (instead of their normal pink). At the vet, they pretty quickly took her into the back and put her on oxygen, and eventually x-rayed her chest. As it turned out, her lungs were entirely full of fluid - she was in severe heart failure, and it had happened over the course of a day or so (what’s even more unsettling is that she’d had her regular checkup the week before, and had not shown any signs).

At that point, we had to make a decision - she could’ve gone to into intensive care (in Cary or Raleigh), where they’d hook her up to oxygen and try to drain her lungs. That would be uncomfortable, risky (with no guarantee it would help), and at best would only prolong the issue (since she could relapse at any point afterwards). The alternative was to put her to sleep.

So we talked for a while… and I came home to get some of her favorite toys… and when I got back to the vet, we went into the back where they’d inserted an IV into her leg. We hugged her and talked to her and petted her, but she was already feeling bad again without the oxygen, so she kept trying to get into the corners of the room (she loved corners, where she felt safe). After a little while, we petted her and told her we loved her while the vet injected the anesthetic - and she laid her head down and was gone, at around 1 PM.

Since then, it’s been … difficult. Her things are all around the house, and my office in particular. I know that it’ll get easier over time, but at the moment that seems like a hollow help, at best. We’ve lost something - somebody - we loved, and who loved us, and that’s hard. At the same time, though, we know that it was the best thing to do. She was suffering, and would continue to suffer, and the best we could provide for her was an end to that. We’re happy to have had the time we did with her, and we definitely won’t forget her.