My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs

by Cierra Rantoul

  CHAPTER 9

  Trust and Respect

  Trust is something that is often first given freely and then when lost has to be earned. I knew that getting Trooper to trust men again was going to be a slow and patient process. “Going to school” and “getting a job” would boost his confidence. Positive reinforcement would help to calm his fears. But getting him to trust men again wasn’t going to be so easy.

  Using the day care as a start, I asked that he be handled by as many different men as possible and not just the women that worked at the kennel. I wanted him to learn to trust different men in a familiar and friendly setting.

  Next I started to introduce him to men who lived near me by throwing parties for my neighbors. I didn’t push him on anyone, but would let him reach his own comfort level for approaching someone. I started telling him in advance if there were going to be men in the house. I was getting some long overdue house repairs done and so each time would talk him through everything that was going to happen before the repairman would arrive. As much as possible I used the same repairman for all my work so that he could establish a consistent trust with them. Paul does excellent work, and over time Trooper began to trust him enough to be able to go up to him when he needed to go for a walk. Fortunately Paul is understanding and patient enough to stop his work and actually take him for a walk!

  But as much as Trooper has come to trust Paul, he still has trouble trusting some of his helpers. They have done work for me off and on over the last few years, and each time Trooper sees one man in particular he will bark at him and not let him approach him. For whatever reasons, Trooper doesn’t trust him, and while I have not yet formed my own opinion of him, I do respect Trooper’s feelings and won’t force the issue with him.

  Trust and respect. Two very key elements in any relationship. Trooper has come so far in his recovery from the abuse because he trusted me, he knows that I trust him, and he knows that I respect him enough to know his boundaries and to let him stay within his comfort zones. When we had been approached by any men in the past—familiar or unfamiliar—Trooper would bark and run or stand behind me if he was on the lead. Now he recognizes familiar men with a wagging tail and an eagerness to greet them. Unfamiliar men are greeted with defensive barking that warns them to stay back unless I tell him it is o.k. and introduce them. He continues to put himself between me and any man, and there are only a few neighbors and friends that he is relaxed enough around to be able to wander into another room to nap while we talk. When he does bark at anyone now—man or woman—I respect his instincts and keep distance between us. While I have never had to test the limits that are part of his “job” to protect me, the other pets and the house, there has been only one time when someone else was foolish enough to test him.

  Not long after his training I took him one afternoon to the dog park. For a while we were the only ones in the park, and then a woman and her dog arrived. Her dog was semi-aggressive toward me and so I moved to put a bench between us. He soon lost interest and went to the far side of the park. His owner, however, did not follow him and Trooper began barking at her. For reasons I will never understand the woman began to taunt him, calling him names and lunging at him repeatedly. Trooper would bark, back off, and bark again, but each time she lunged at him I noticed that he was becoming more and more agitated and aggressive and the space between them was closing. Both of them were ignoring my request for her to stop and for him to sit and stay. I had never seen him so angry and so defensive and it was starting to scare me. He was baring his teeth and every hair on his body was standing up. I decided it was time for us to leave before he actually attacked her (although a part of me felt she deserved it) and after a very frustrating time when I came close to just decking the woman myself to keep her from continuing to taunt Trooper, I got him back on the leash and we left the park. I immediately complained to the park owners and it was a long time before I took him back. But as a result of that showdown, I have no doubt that he will do whatever he feels is necessary to protect me.

  Recently a friend and former neighbor, Ashley, stopped by to visit when she was in town. She has two dogs, Ziggy, a dachshund, and Lily, a terrier mix she rescued in Italy. When she had been a neighbor they all often came over to visit so we sometimes had a house full of dogs with Tink, Trooper, Lily, Ziggy and Ripkin. After we talked for a while she asked me what I had done to Trooper. I was confused. She hadn’t seen him in almost two years, and so when she last saw him he was at the peak of his fears and insecurities. For me, the improvements in him were gradual and subtle. But when she saw him, she said it was like night and day. He seemed happier and relaxed. That was the best thing I could have heard.

  By helping Trooper … I’ve been helped as well. In the process of both of us learning to trust again, we have opened our hearts to love again.

  The funny thing about love is that you can’t have love without heartbreak. Otherwise, how would you know love when it arrived? Without the rain, we cannot have rainbows. The same is with love. Without sadness, we cannot know joy, and all too often we forget that the unconditional love and joy our pets bring us sometimes comes with a responsibility to accept sadness.

  CHAPTER 10

  Love

  This will be—is—and was a hard chapter to write. You’ve probably picked up on the past tense reference I’ve used when talking about Tink, so you already know how it ends. Unfortunately, the tense changes were recent. When I started writing this book, she was still running to greet me every day when I came home from work, or bossing me around when she thought I had spent too much time on the computer. She was still squeaking with excitement as we drove to day care, coming home exhausted to snore at my feet or on my lap as we all crowded onto the sofa to watch TV. The pain of losing her is still fresh. An open wound. Both Trooper and I miss her terribly. When she passed I had to put this aside for a few weeks because I had just started to write this chapter… with a happier ending in mind.

  But it is a chapter that I have to write because Tink was—and is—a huge part of Trooper’s story. And mine. She was a part of our healing and if we hadn’t known her sweet face and happy tail we would have missed out on so much. The unconditional love she gave to both of us was so much more than what most of us probably ever experience. So go grab a box of Kleenex—I’ve already got two boxes here—and I’ll tell you about the strongest and bravest pug I’ve ever met.

  While I was working so hard to restore Trooper’s confidence, I was also doing everything I could to try to ease Tink’s pain and health issues. When she was about a year old, I noticed that she was urinating more often and that it was orange tinged or bloody and so took her to the vet. She had a bladder infection, what would turn out to be the first of many. Antibiotics cured the infection, but then she started passing bladder stones when she urinated—sometimes as large as the nail on my little finger—and always without even a cry of pain. Analysis of the stones showed that they were Struvite Uroliths and an x-ray showed that her bladder was almost completely full of them, requiring surgical removal in March, a year after I had gotten her. Her recovery took about two months before she really acted like herself again, and she was put on a prescription diet after the surgery to discourage formation of new ones, but that unfortunately was not successful. By December she was again passing stones and had a bladder infection. X-rays again showed that her bladder was completely full of stones and another surgery was done, this time with a longer recovery. A blood test revealed that she had liver shunts and her blood was not being fully detoxified which was contributing to the stone formation. It was a condition that did not have a high surgical recommendation because of how extensive the surgery could be with limited positive outcome. They wouldn’t know what they were looking at as far as repairs until they actually got in there, and there may not be any possible fixes depending on whether or not her shunts were congenital or had formed later. Most puppies born with congenital liver shunts didn’t live long, and she was now over two yea
rs old. At that time I made the decision not to subject her to another surgery and started to look at alternatives.

  I gave her only distilled water to drink to avoid the minerals and chemicals in tap water. She stayed on a low protein prescription diet until she started to put on more weight from the high carbohydrates and so I started researching organic foods, trying everything I could to reduce her weight gain, but still try to help avoid stone formation. The vet told me that when her blood reached toxic levels, she would begin to have seizures, dementia and would become emaciated. I figured that her extra weight gave her a little bit of an edge to give me more time to find a way to help her. I started taking her to day care more often to give her more exercise and avoid the couch potato pug bottom we were both starting to have. At day care I learned that she stayed active all day, running and defending “the hill” with one of her rat pack buddies. She would come home exhausted, often falling asleep in the car, and would snore loudly until I woke her when we got home or took her up to bed.

  As she got older, she got slower. Arthritis was developing in her hips and spine, and she also had severe dysplasia in one hip. When she began to limp on a front leg, x-rays showed arthritis in her elbow and shadows that could possibly indicate developing tumors.

  But in spite of all the pain she must have been feeling from the persistent bladder stones, frequent bladder infections and arthritis she never whined or cried, and never slowed down. I started to have to limit how often she went to day care, taking her only once or twice a week with a few days between just so that her joints could rest and her limping would be less pronounced. She would be furious when Trooper and I left without her and I could hear her angry barks as the garage door closed behind us. When we returned at the end of the day, however, all was forgiven and we were showered with pug snot and kisses.

  Medications—especially pain medications—were limited because of the impact on her liver. The safest alternative was equivalent to an aspirin and only once a day so I usually gave it to her at night so she could sleep better. I also started her on a liquid Milk Thistle extract twice a day in her food to help her liver function.

  In January 2008 when she started to throw up undigested food from the day before, I worried another problem had developed and she spent a day at the vet’s getting x-rays and blood work. X-rays showed what we already knew. Her bladder was full of stones. Her liver was smaller than normal and tucked up under her ribs in a hard to reach place. There weren’t any obvious issues with her stomach so she was referred for an ultrasound.

  When her blood work results came back, the vet waited 48 hours before calling me. The results were so off the chart abnormal that she consulted one of the teaching universities for advice. Tink’s liver was technically non-functioning. Levels like hers had not been seen in a live dog that was as healthy otherwise as Tink was. She should have been dead, but was very obviously not. She wasn’t even suffering seizures or dementia, and was certainly not emaciated. Early on when she started to put on weight from one of the first prescription diets, a neighbor’s little boy started calling her his “Little Sausage” and the nickname still fit. The university recommended a surgical biopsy of her liver. I could take her to them and leave her there for tests and then pick her up a few days later. There were risks of course—she might not survive the surgery based on her liver function tests even though she appeared to be perfectly healthy. I refused the recommendation. The last thing I wanted Tink to remember was her “mom” turning her over to strangers who would torture her with needles before she died. No thank you.

  When she went for her ultrasound, she had to fast from the night before. I was diligent about removing every possible speck of food or treat from her reach the night before, and when she didn’t get breakfast the next morning she stomped her feet and grumbled at me. So when the vet called and asked why I had given her food I was shocked. The ultrasound had showed food in her stomach, and a possible mass as well. I told him there was no way she had gotten anything to eat in the last 12 hours. His recommendation was a follow-up ultrasound in 30 days, or an endoscopy to biopsy the mass. I decided to wait and looked for other alternatives. I wasn’t comfortable with any kind of invasive tests on her. I was worried she wouldn’t survive.

  I took her to a vet that offered holistic and alternative treatments on the recommendation of my regular vet office. She had a water acupuncture treatment with B-12 injections, and was put on Chinese herbs and a dehydrated raw food diet supplemented with steamed meats. After the first treatment, she seemed to respond well—better than expected. But after her second treatment she seemed to crash. Her pain intensified and for the first time she woke me several nights in a row thrashing and crying in pain. A second ultrasound didn’t show any mass on her stomach, but it also didn’t show any obvious reason for her sudden increase in pain. Her gall bladder was slightly enlarged, but didn’t show any stones, and her liver again looked abnormally small. They also wanted to do surgical biopsies of her liver and gall bladder, but I refused. The risks were too high.

  I decided then that if she wasn’t going to have quantity—a long life - that she was going to have quality. I stopped all treatment except for occasional pain medications and natural herbs. No more painful needle sticks for blood draws. No more tests or ultrasounds.

  She went to day care any day she wasn’t obviously limping because she just got so much joy from going. She stayed on a low protein diet, but wasn’t severely restricted. When she wanted a treat, she got one as long as the proteins were less than 10%. She preferred raw baby carrots because they were so crunchy. When she grumbled that I’d been on the computer too long, I logged off and sat with her on my lap watching TV. I learned to hold a book and turn pages with just one hand when she fell asleep on my other arm. At night when she slept on top of the covers between my legs I learned how to ease my legs up to my chin without waking her when I needed to go to the bathroom—or when a leg cramp woke me.

  I talked to her constantly, telling her how much we loved her, how happy she made us, and what a wonderful dog she was. I gave her massages every night. When she was too sore to go to day care, I would take her for a ride around the block and let her sit on my lap with her head out the window, the breeze making her little ears flap. She was happy.

  Trooper sensed a change in how I was treating her and while he still played and stalked her, he seemed to be extra gentle with her. More often than not I would come home from work to find the two of them curled up together on the sofa. He was extra protective of her when we were outside or people were in the house. Even the cats seemed to treat her differently. Ebony had always given her face a bath, but now I even caught Oreo giving her kisses occasionally and Mandy would sleep next to her on the bed.

  There is a Contemporary Christian song by Toby Mac called “Love Is in the House” and part of the chorus line is “Love is in the house and the house is packed, so much so I left the back door cracked.” That was our house with Tink in it. She didn’t have any special talents—she couldn’t whisper or speak when asked, but she could sure grumble and mumble when she wanted attention. She didn’t always come on command—her “hearing” was selective and dependent upon whether or not she was done meeting and greeting someone else or if you had a treat in your hand. While she was house-broken, there were times when her bladder stones would suddenly shift and the pressure built up by the urine would cause her to suddenly let loose—there wasn’t any intent when it happened and the shocked look on my face was matched by her own. She could be demanding, stubborn, and at times snored loud enough to shake drown out the sound on the TV or radio. But she could love. She loved everyone unconditionally. No questions asked. She didn’t care who you were, where you came from or what you had done. She loved and was always happy to see us. Her love was so powerful it could heal all of us. It did heal all of us.

  I thought we could go on like that forever.

  CHAPTER 11

  Letting Go

  In May I had sp
ent a ten day vacation in Alaska reconnecting with a long lost cousin and the dogs had been boarded where they went to day care so I knew that both of them would be well cared for. I had thought carefully about whether or not to board Tink and had looked at getting someone to stay at the house with her, but finally decided that both dogs would be miserable if they were separated for that long. Explicit instructions were left for Tink to only get a few days of exercise so that she would not get over tired, and both dogs were kenneled in the same run at night so they could sleep together like they did at home. I left enough pain medicine for her to get a dose every night, and since she would be getting it more often, put less in each dose than what I usually gave her every two or three nights. A friend would check on the cats every other day. All my bases were covered.

  When I returned home and picked up the dogs they were ecstatic to see me. Tink didn’t appear to be limping any more than normal so I wasn’t worried about her. At the house, Mandy meowed and yelled at me for almost 18 hours before I finally was forgiven for leaving. The first few days I was home it was impossible for me to do anything alone. Even going to the bathroom in the small half bath downstairs I had both dogs and at least one cat crowding in to make sure I wasn’t stepping into some Star Trek transporter and disappearing again without them. Sleeping at night was more like a contortionist’s act. Trooper took up half of the bed to my side, Tink was on the covers between my legs, Ebony and Mandy each took a corner at the end of the bed, and Oreo demanded that we “spoon.” I woke up stiff and sore but knowing without a doubt that I was loved.

  The second week after my return though, I began to sense a change in Tink. She was suddenly sleeping later, not greeting me at the door, reluctant to eat, and whenever I held her and talked to her, I just got a sense of being sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was still jet lagged a week after the trip since I had been up almost 48 hours for the return flight and then immediately jumped back into work the day after I returned. I wasn’t sure if it was my own exhaustion I was sensing, or Tink’s. One night she was already on the bed while