DogTown

by Stefan Bechtel

  Wise old Bruno’s thick red coat needed a trim when he arrived at Dogtown.

  09

  Bruno: Last Days of the Cinnamon Bear

  Imagine an elderly man in a flimsy hospital gown, blind in one eye, nauseated, disoriented, and with multiple health problems, who cannot care for himself or even speak, being dropped on a stranger’s doorstep.

  That’s what happened to Bruno.

  He was an old dog, down on his luck, tottering on his feet, drooling, dizzy, and nearly deaf. His problems had become so overwhelming, in fact, that his owner had simply dropped him off at an animal shelter in East Los Angeles. Perhaps daunted by the potential vet bill, or the demands of taking care of Bruno during his declining years, the owner had essentially dumped him out the back of the car—knowing full well, no doubt, that at the shelter a dog like Bruno would probably have only a few days until he was euthanized.

  Yet as broken down as he was, Bruno could still break some hearts. He looked like a cinnamon-colored teddy bear, with eyes so dark they were nearly black; a shiny black nose; and short, furry, forward-facing ears. An extravagant ruff of red fur encircling his face like a mane gave him, at the same time, the look of a lion. His head was so richly mantled in reddish fur that it seemed to nearly bury his black eyes, and he had a line of darker fur down the center of his forehead, the way a lion does. But his demeanor was almost completely devoid of a lion’s ferocity; despite his discomfort, Bruno’s mood was mellow. In fact, when Bruno peered out of his cage at the shelter, with his head tilted quizzically to one side, he looked about as forbidding as a plush toy.

  It was hard to believe, seeing him in such sad circumstances, that Bruno came from an illustrious lineage going back 4,000 years. He was a chow chow, or chow; one of the oldest dog breeds, it is thought to have been developed by the fierce horse warriors of Mongolia, and later spread to China as early as 150 b.c. With their distinctive black mouths and tongues, chows are bundled in such resplendent fur that the Chinese had a name for them that meant “Puffy-Lion Dogs.”

  But Bruno looked less like a puffy lion and more like a sad, sick old man when Best Friends volunteer Nadine Goodreau spotted him at the shelter. Nadine, who ran the Los Angeles chapter of the volunteer group called Best Friends Brigade, worked on the front lines trying to rescue the neediest animals from California shelters. And she was immediately touched by this gentle old dog, with his serene, lion-bear face, peering out of a cage. She could tell that Bruno required serious medical attention and vowed to find him a better life.

  To start, Bruno’s coat needed some care. The old dog’s fur was so hopelessly matted that it took Nadine and a couple of helpers two days (three hours each day) to shear it down to the skin in a “lion cut,” leaving red fur on his legs and head. They even shaved his tail except for a comical little pom-pom of fur at the end. His cinnamon fur would grow back rich and radiant, but for now he just looked amusing: His endearing face, still regally adorned with fur, looked almost as though it were disconnected from the rest of his body, which was naked as a freshly shorn sheep.

  Bruno stayed calm and patient while Nadine administered his beauty treatment, but “while he was at the shelter I believe he lost his spirit,” she later wrote. “From that point on, I was on a mission to not have him die at the shelter. Bruno needed a better ending to his life, and I was going to see to that.”

  Nadine “networked like crazy” but could find no rescuer or private party that would take the old chow. Finally, she decided to “bail him out” of the shelter and take him to her home temporarily, until she could find a better place for him. She was amazed to discover that good-natured Bruno was calmly tolerant of all her dogs and cats. After three weeks, she got the good news that Old Friends—the part of Dogtown reserved for elderly dogs—had a spot for Bruno, so she and a couple of friends made the eight-hour drive from Los Angeles to Kanab, Utah, to bring Bruno to the sanctuary and the medical care he needed and deserved.

  Surrendered to an East Los Angeles animal shelter, Bruno made his way to Dogtown via the L.A. chapter of the Best Friends Brigade.

  When she arrived at Dogtown after the exhausting drive from L.A., vet tech Jeff Popowich helped Nadine take Bruno out of his crate in the back of her SUV. She told Jeff everything she could about him, but admittedly, she didn’t know much about Bruno’s history—his owner had given nothing to the shelter when Bruno was surrendered. His medical history, from his present condition to vaccinations, was a mystery. “He’s extremely mellow,” she told Jeff. “And he’s OK with dogs or with cats.”

  Nadine, a striking, middle-aged woman with dark hair and hoop earrings, wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket, mentioned that Bruno hadn’t urinated during the whole eight-hour trip from California. That was worrisome: Jeff knew from experience that it can be a bad sign if a dog urinates very infrequently.

  Nadine had put Bruno on a leash and was leading him up the steps into the clinic when he stumbled on the stairs. Jeff, whose job was to make the first, preliminary assessments of animals being admitted to Dogtown, grew more concerned. Bruno’s weakness and disorientation were obvious, but the cause of these symptoms could be ascertained only by Dr. Mike, Dogtown’s medical director and head vet.

  “LET’S LOOK AT YOUR GRILL, KID”

  You didn’t have to spend much time with Bruno to realize something was seriously wrong. When Jeff got him into an examining room at the clinic, he immediately noticed that the touching way Bruno tilted his head to one side was permanent. His head was always leaning to the left. Bruno constantly drooled; a silvery necklace of spittle was permanently suspended from the left side of his mouth. Bruno also seemed perpetually off balance, as if he’d just kicked back a martini or two. Jeff knew that these could be signs of a serious medical issue for an elderly dog.

  Jeff lifted Bruno up onto an examining table for his assessment. “Let’s look at your grill, kid,” Jeff said, taking Bruno’s muzzle in his hand and gently lifting his jaws apart. “Can we open up?”

  Bruno good-naturedly opened his black mouth and gave Jeff a putrid blast of bad breath. Then he sneezed all over him.

  “Whoa! Thanks, man!”

  Jeff noted on his exam charts that Bruno’s breath was horrible, and that he seemed to have some lip fold pyoderma, meaning that where drool had been seeping into the fur below his mouth it had become infected and malodorous.

  Still, “when you get a dog like Bruno, you’re not sure if he’s happy or if he’s miserable,” Jeff said. For one thing, his black eyes were obscured by his dense mat of paprika-colored fur. For another, chows are by nature reserved, regal, and difficult to read, like cats—or, perhaps, like lions. Bruno’s calm demeanor didn’t reveal much about his physical state: “Bruno’s a blank slate—we don’t know the pain he’s in,” Jeff said. “And it’s not like we can talk to him.”

  Jeff, big as a barn door and sporting a buzz cut, a goatee, a couple of days’ growth of stubble, and a gold earring, likes to park his sunglasses on top of his head, where there’s an old, ugly scar showing through just above the hairline. He has the intimidating physical presence of a bouncer or a bull rider; the scar suggests a story you’d probably rather not know about.

  Two common symptoms for dogs with painful mouth disease are excessive drooling and bad breath.

  “I’ve got a chow named Fuzzy at home, and I know how they can mask things like pain or discomfort,” said Jeff, who looks as if he might do the same. “Fuzzy’s nickname is Mr. Personality, because you can never tell what he’s thinking.”

  Even so, Jeff said, “Sometimes you make connections with dogs and it’s just instant. I don’t know if it’s because Bruno is so mellow, or the little head tilt, or the little drool that comes down, but there’s something about that dog that you just say, ‘You know what, you need a treat and a pet on the head. You need something.’ It’s just easy to give to a dog like that.

  “Bruno is a dog that, one, he has a pulse, and two, he’s cute as hell. So, I mean, fro
m there you can’t go wrong. Most people would say, ‘There’s a dog knocking on death’s door.’ But we don’t see it that way here. Bruno’s a dog that with a little TLC, he can be bouncing around. He can get a second chance at life.”

  A VISIT WITH DR. MIKE

  After the assessment, Jeff turned to getting Bruno cleaned up. He had to give the old boy a bath, clean out his ears, and put some medication in his left eye, which looked caved in and was oozing. He noted that the hair around Bruno’s lips needed to be shaved and treated with medication to help clear up the festering infection and the bad case of dog breath.

  Next up was a medical exam from Dr. Mike. But before Bruno even got a chance to see the vet, the old dog fell on his side and seized for a few seconds. Jeff saw the seizure. “It wasn’t a very long one, not too severe, but it was still frightening,” Jeff said. “Seizures are unpleasant to watch, but really you just have to let the dogs ride it out and hope they don’t bang their head on the floor or hurt themselves. But it can be scary if you’ve never seen it before.”

  For Bruno, it was one more ominous warning that something was seriously wrong.

  When Jeff took Bruno to the clinic to see Dr. Mike, he told him about the seizure and about Bruno’s disorientation, and he said that Bruno seemed more comfortable turning to the left than to the right. His head tilted left, and he drooled to the left.

  Dr. Mike lifted the old chow onto an exam table and peered into first one ear, then the other. “In a younger dog, we would suspect infection was interfering with his balance,” Dr. Mike explained. “In older dogs, it could be from a vascular accident in the brain similar to a stroke, an inner ear infection, a tumor, or some other unknown reason (often called old dog vestibular disease).”

  Bruno, as he did in most situations, good-naturedly tolerated the ear exam. But at the end of it, he furiously shook his head, like a big, wet bear. “Good boy,” Dr. Mike said. “Not too bad in the ears.”

  Dr. Mike pushed back the ruff of red fur to peer into Bruno’s left eye and quickly realized that he was blind in that eye. “That could partly explain what’s going on,” Dr. Mike said. But he suspected something deeper was going on in Bruno’s brain. A larger neurological condition was more likely the root of Bruno’s problems.

  He lifted Bruno down onto the examining room floor to check his balance. Bruno woozily thumped into a door, like the last drunk to leave the bar. Dr. Mike felt his old, skinny hips and found a bit of arthritis there. Musculoskeletal problems are common in older dogs, he explained, but the lack of balance suggested something more serious.

  He lifted Bruno back onto the exam table and arranged Bruno’s feet so that they were crossed at the ankles, an entirely unnatural position. A healthy dog would quickly right the legs, but Bruno just stood there dumbly, almost as if he were not aware of his legs at all. “All the symptoms,” Dr. Mike said, “point to brain disease.”

  That was very bad.

  Still, Jeff Popowich remained buoyantly optimistic.

  “We take in dogs that look worse than Bruno on a regular basis here—animals hit by cars, or with really terrible illnesses,” he said. “But even if it’s a brain tumor, we can still give him some quality of life. Here at the sanctuary it’s quality over quantity, and Bruno is definitely a dog that has a potential to have a quality life, even if it turns out to be a short one.”

  Dr. Mike put Bruno in a kennel in the clinic to keep him comfortable and to observe him.

  The next day, Bruno was vomiting and seemed to be having a hard time breathing. X-rays of Bruno’s abdomen showed that he had aspiration pneumonia (inflammation of the lungs caused by inhaling vomit). He also had a condition called megaesophagus (abnormal distension of the lower part of the esophagus because of problems passing food into the stomach). Dr. Mike put him on IV fluids and antibiotics, and placed Bruno’s food so he could eat standing up. Within two days, Bruno’s mood had improved, his energy level was up, and his food was staying down. X-rays taken three days and then ten days later showed that Bruno’s lungs and esophagus had improved greatly, and his balance and breathing seemed better, too.

  THE BRUNO FAN CLUB

  “Bruno’s temperament seems quite sweet,” Dr. Mike concluded in notes he posted on the Guardian Angel website, an online forum for special-needs animals and the people who are touched by them. “I believe we have done all we can medically for him at this time. Bruno is an older dog…who I hope that we can make comfortable for the remainder of his life.”

  A photograph of the lovable cinnamon bear was also posted, along with Dr. Mike’s medical notes. It brought an outpouring of sympathy from those who visited the site:

  Bruno is so stoic and dignified…yet he has the most endearing over-bite. A major mush-magnet for me! Bruno is irresistible.

  I find it upsetting that the “owner” just gave him away after such obvious neglect. But at least they had the good sense to take him to a shelter that could help instead of just letting him die…. I, for one, can’t get enough of this sweet old guy!

  OMG, that is a picture to shred the heart. I cannot imagine that poor old boy out alone on his own, trying to survive and being so sick. Rest easy, Bruno. You’re home, finally, with the best pack that exists.

  Dr. Mike gave the go-ahead to have Bruno placed in the “geriatric run” at Old Friends. Bruno would share an “apartment” with the five oldest dogs at Dogtown, all of whom shared his mellow temperament. Each apartment had a comfortable indoor room, a dog door, and an outdoor run. For now, it was home at last.

  Dog trainer Ann Allums helped introduce Bruno to each of his new geriatric roommates one by one, so he wouldn’t be overwhelmed. The first dog, Kanani, was a splendid female husky. As soon as he saw her, Bruno instantly perked up, wagging his tail and following her around like a small boy with his first crush. But Kanani haughtily spurned Bruno’s advances.

  Next he was introduced to a spunky little male terrier named Mr. Pepper. Jeff, who was watching all this, noticed that Bruno got “all stiff and macho, like a guy walking into a bar” when he was introduced to Mr. Pepper and the other male dogs—a cocker spaniel named Quasimodo, and Clarence, a blind border collie. But when he was introduced to another female, a sweet-tempered shepherd mix named Chili, Bruno went on high alert again, wagging his tail and bird-dogging her around the kennel.

  Sly old Bruno, it turned out, was quite the ladies’ man.

  When Ann posted a note about Bruno’s move to Old Friends on the Guardian Angel site, more adoring fan mail came pouring in. Bruno was becoming a kind of canine rock star:

  Bless you sweet Bruno!!! Perhaps Kanani and Chili are just being coy. In any case, I’m glad to hear that something or someone put a spring in Bruno’s step, and he’s making friends in his new digs. Thank you to everyone for taking care of this dear boy!

  Hey, old-timer! You still have the stuff, huh? Enjoy your new friends and the BF geri-spa routine. I see you got your haircut already….

  It’s so nice to hear that Bruno is feeling better and has his own run now. I bet once that beautiful paprika-colored fur starts to grow back in, the ladies will notice him more….

  Jeff, keeping track of the old boy each day, noticed glimmers of improvement. Bruno’s back end, once listing like an old barn, seemed a little bit more stable. The pneumonia had cleared up. And he was peeing more regularly—“and everybody is kind of happy about that one.”

  Ever the optimist, Jeff kept hoping someone would appear at the sanctuary, or see Bruno’s picture online, and decide to adopt him.

  “Now that he’s out there in his run, all it takes is one person to come by and fall in love with that guy and take him home,” he said. “It’s got to be somebody who is OK having to say goodbye in a year or two, but there are people like that all over the place. I haven’t seen anything about Bruno that says he’s not adoptable. Of course, I’ve never met a dog that’s not adoptable either. I’m still optimistic—I always am. I think he’s gonna be OK.”

  A TU
RN FOR THE WORSE

  Unfortunately, Bruno’s health began failing again not long after he arrived at Old Friends. The vomiting returned. Increasingly dizzy and disoriented, Bruno began to bump into things more than he had before. Dr. Mike decided to move him back to the clinic for observation.

  Even so, in the mere week he had been at Old Friends, the sweet-faced cinnamon bear charmed a couple of volunteers to the point that they put in an adoption application for him. They wanted to take him back to their home in Montana. Now the question became: Could Bruno be stabilized enough to make the ten-hour trip to Montana? Dr. Mike had some serious concerns about the long car trip; it seemed to him that the trip from Los Angeles to Kanab might have played a part in Bruno’s decline upon his arrival at Best Friends. The vet wanted to play it safe and monitor Bruno’s condition for a little longer before discharging him into a new home.

  If a dog is having a seizure, it is unnecessary to place an object between his teeth or to pull out his tongue—dogs are unable to swallow their tongues.

  At the clinic, Bruno’s condition seemed to improve for a couple of days. Still, “improvement” was relative; he threw up only twice in a couple of days, which was less frequently than he had been throwing up at Old Friends. Then he genuinely did seem to improve, going four straight days without vomiting.

  But the hard truth was that Dr. Mike and the veterinary staff had been unable to precisely pinpoint the cause of Bruno’s problems, so they had no way of knowing whether Bruno would live a few more hours, a few more days, or a few more years. Dr. Mike believed Bruno was now probably a good candidate for animal hospice—caregivers who would simply ease his pain as he gradually slipped away.