In Loving Memory

HeadShot

_My Dog_
Nuke (aka Lucas)
Eighty-Pound Labrador/Sheppard
June 1988 to June 2003

My dog ...

I put my boy Nuke to sleep two days ago. It was the most painful thing I have ever experienced … top of the list. I break out into sobs during the day and I have to stop typing every few phrases because of sobbing. He was still happy and alert, but his rear legs were very weak. I could boost him up under the thighs and he could walk slowly, pausing every few steps. His rear legs would cross sometimes, and sometimes he would collapse, not often, but sometimes. He was a beautiful and wonderful eighty-pound white lab/sheppard. He made it to fifteen years.

The problems started some time around last June when he first fell on his poop while squatting during a walk. I borrowed someone's hose and hosed him off, and thought "that was a strange accident". Over the next months he started to fall in it more and more often. He would bark to let me know he needed to go outside, and I'd go out with him. When I'd see his tail go up, I'd get over him, and hold him up again under his thighs. There were very few 'casualties' this way. Life was still relatively normal. He could still get up the stairs to my second floor dwelling with one of my arms under his chest and the other hand behind his thigh. But the weakness kept getting progressively worse.

Then sometime around last fall, maybe October, he started looking like he was going to fall down the stairs on his way down. So I started carrying him down. It got easy after a couple of weeks.

Around January he stopped wanting to come upstairs at all, even with my assistance. He and the other dog, Nigel, just preferred to stay down in the storage area which was poorly heated. There were some space heaters down there and I added a remote thermometer so I could keep track of the temperature. When it got cool I'd put sleeping bags over them. Nigel (part Husky) always slept down there anyway, he likes the cold. It has a concrete floor and is fairly spacious and well lit, and they have warm beds. The space heaters couldn't keep it at 70, so I put a furnace in, not entirely for the dogs, but they were a strong influence.

Anyway, their lifelong six-to-ten-miles-a-week walks had pretty much disintegrated over the last six months because, by now, they couldn't go more than a couple of blocks and weren't really too interested in walking anymore anyway -- just rides in the car. The walks used to stimulate their bowels. Now, without the walks, pooping was more of a random event. Nuke would bark to let me know when he had to go outside, including in the middle of the night once or twice a week. I'd run down there and take him out and support him. I thanked him for telling me.

Around April he seemed to lose the ability to know when he had to poop. His tail would twitch a little and the mess would just happen. I also notice urine rings under him in the morning and he'd be damp. I threw out his ruined mattress and got him another, and covered it with a vinyl covering. I covered that with a textured plastic for traction, and covered that with a butyl drop cloth for washability. I'd put a clean top (butyl) on every few days. The 'leaking' was getting to be a problem. In spite of his objections, I started insisting he go out before I went to bed. He always peed but didn't often poop, despite me standing out there with a flashlight for ten or fifteen minutes. Eventually I'd let him go back inside anyway. This routine greatly cut down the pee rings and eventually he stopped resisting. Maybe he understood the benefit. I'd just turn the light on and talk to him and 'scritch' his ears for a few minutes to wake him up, and then say "okay, let's go" and he'd sort of grumble but let me lift him up to a standing position and we'd go out.

Every once in a while when I'd go down to give them their breakfast he'd be sitting in a poop. I had, by this time, installed a warm water hose spigot outside, so I'd take him out and hose him down, then I'd put a new rubber sheet down for him, dry him off and feed them breakfast. He had lost the ability to let me know he had to 'go' because he couldn't sense it anymore. I'd regularly take him out after meals and walk around with him, but he often wouldn't poop. He'd lay down in the yard and I'd go about my routine and come out and boost him up every five or ten minutes … but often with no luck. Then I'd go out but one more time and he'd be laying on a poop. He just seemed to be losing his connection to his rear half. It almost seemed like his rear half was getting pretty much numb.

Towards the end, it got to the point where we'd be lucky to go a week without me having to hose him down and hose off his rubber sheet. When he had diarrhea, which was getting more common, we might have a mess twice in one day. I'd try to take him out in the middle of the day but he often only urinated.

I felt bad that they were down there all alone so I'd sit down there with them and read. I got a wireless LAN so I could do email down there, too. Nuke would lay on his bed and look over at me with those beautiful brown eyes every five or ten minutes ... "hey dad, are you still over there? … yeah, you are". That is one of the visions in my memory that fills me with so much emotion <I had to stop typing again>.

A couple of times, while reading, I saw his tail twitch, and out 'it' would come. He'd lower his head like "uh oh … I'm sorry." … My poor boy. Sometimes we'd go a week with no accidents, sometimes two or three days in a row. This had been going on now for a couple of months. The main problem was that the poop was a sort of random event that he couldn't feel coming on anymore. I would have to march him around the yard three, four, five times a day to eliminate the 'hose downs' … maybe.

So last Sunday morning I was going down the stairs with their breakfast and I smelled the smell. "oh no, not again". … I do the routine. Sunday night his bowel cooperated and we got a poop outside before going to bed. Monday morning everything is fine, he gets a poop after breakfast. ... Monday night, not so fine. I coax him to make the journey outside and only get a pee. It was really late and I didn't feel like arguing with him so I let him go back inside. Since it was so late I thought it would make him have to 'go' more if he had to 'go' at all, so I thought we'd be okay. I went upstairs and headed for bed, but went back down to make sure I locked the door. I smell the smell. "Oh no, not again." ... A big brown liquid puddle. I'm thinking "oh my god 2, 3, 4 times a week, how much of this should I expect myself to take?! and how does he feel about himself?" While outside shampooing him, he collapses into the brown puddle of runoff in the yard, and he can't even stand up with help. I move him over to an inclined part of the driveway so the rinse-off would run away from us and I continue shampooing with him laying on his side. I notice circles all over his stomach and chest -- bacterial skin infections (I found out later) probably from the 'leaking'. I thought "I don't want my boy to become pathetic, and he's on the verge".

In the morning, I called the vet, they said they had an opening in a week, I said "that's fine." When I told her the reason, she said they could squeeze me in in four hours. I was thinking "what's the rush?" and "well, maybe I need to do this while the exasperation is fresh or I'll cancel the appointment like I did two weeks ago" … "yeah, okay, four hours" I say. I really don't know if that was a wise choice or not. I drove him down our favorite walk route with the windows open so he could sniff the smells and bought him his Chicken Burrito Supreme and headed for the vet. He was put to sleep that day. My dear baby boy was put to sleep in my arms. I wept uncontrollably for hours. It was his fifteenth birthday. His creamains were ready the next day.

I can't eat or sleep. I'm not comfortable pacing, or sitting, or laying down. I want to climb out of my skin. I feel crushing guilt. I have to stay alive because of my Nigel (also 15, and also starting to 'lose it') and my cat (19). I keep replaying everything in my mind…. "did I do it out of anger?,.. no", "did he know what was in store?" "could I have built a toilet for him to sit on until he 'went? and would that be costing him his dignity?", "would it even work?".

So, from my last 60 hours of soul-searching and leaning on several of my patient friends and my unfortunate vet, it seems to boil down to a general question of dignity versus life prolongation. He was still a clear-headed and alert boy in the end, but his rear half was failing, and his energy levels were getting low. I could have built some sort of toilet, but would that be getting ridiculous? Would it work? If it worked, would he be embarrassed? … or would he think he had the best dad in town? And if it worked, how bad would his loss of control continue to get over the next couple of months? Would I want to remember him that way? Would I want to be so stressed out over it I'd never want another dog? Would Nuke want me to remember him that way? How much was my mind mixing the frequency of Nigel's messes with Nuke's? Did I deprive him of the natural fading-away death and going to the light? Did my boy go softly into that dark night?

I can only desperately hope his spirit is saying "thanks dad, I'm amazed you put up with so much, we had a great life together, thanks for rescuing us from the pound (it was love-at-first-sight for me, too), and for buying a station wagon for us, and for thousands of walks, and burritos, and birthday cakes, and all the home cooking, and Thanksgiving dinners, and vitamins, and talks, and coming home at lunch to see us, and the swims in the lake, and taking me to chase a sky full of geese, and road trips to the forest, and letting us climb up into bed with you for an hour every night, and learning how to train us, and pulling the thorns out of my feet, and pulling off your glove and warming up my frozen feet with your hand, and getting us those boots to keep the ice and salt out, and getting all our aches and injuries fixed, and getting rid of our fleas, and for all the trips and vacations you didn't take, and carpeting the house when I started having my trouble standing up on the hardwood. Thanks for picking up after me and hosing me down for the last year, and for putting in a furnace to keep us warm downstairs. And thanks for loving me so much. I understand what a mess I was creating at the end, I don't blame you, I hated that I couldn't even feel it coming anymore. I never ever wanted to leave you, but it was time."

I'm teetering on the side of thinking I did the right thing, but the guilt is absolutely crushing.

Throughout his life I would have protected him with my own life, and at the end, I hope I was protecting him from becoming pathetic or miserable. I don't know if I did the right thing. It's eating me up. I wish I could look into his beautiful brown eyes again. He was such a sweet and loyal soul, and a bright cheery character. He never complained about anything; he just adapted. He was always happy to see me. He'd come nuzzle me every half-hour or so when we were outside as if to say "I just thought I'd come over and get a hug." When I was at the computer he'd come lay his head on my lap. He smelled good. He was beautiful. He was always kissing me. He was healthy and robust. He was protective of me. He loved his green couch. And his tan fluffy-man squeak toy. He had big, beautiful, warm paws. And boy, did he love to go on walks!! wow. We walked some 5,000 miles together, through rain, heat, blizzard, fog, ice and snow, and beautiful blue-sky days; and through city streets, river beds, shorelines, and country trails. He really loved his stewing-beef chunks, and his granola bars dipped in yogurt. He liked bananas, and grapes, corn, and burritos, apple juice, granola, raisons, pizza, hot dogs, fries and quarter-pounders (no onions), ice cream, chips and salsa. He loved chasing squirrels and bunnies. He hated trucks, and was always ready to 'take one on'. He didn't like to share his bed with Nigel. He regularly made guard-duty rounds looking out the windows of the house.

When I'd leave them in the car during errands, Nuke would keep watching in the direction I walked away … watching that same door for hours until I came back out. Now that's love.

In the morning I'd wake up and lay in bed for a while. Sometimes for a short time, sometimes long. When I'd decide, in my mind, "okay, it's time to get up", he'd bark! Against my beliefs and scientific training, I can only attribute it to telepathy. It went on for 15 years. All I did was decide, and open my eyes (and wait for his bark.) Not every morning, but many. He did it last week a couple of times.

He was pretty much my twin brother and soul-mate. I've never had a feeling like that with any other person or pet or anything else. He was an extension of me. Though I love Nigel and Pascal it's not the same, they are more like my kids. And now that I'm scarred with the devastating loss and profound ache that goes with the inevitable end, I can't imagine it could ever happen again. It was a beautiful thing. Maybe it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

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PICTURES FROM THE LIFE OF NUKE

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Just A Young Pup