Hound Dog Blues

by Peg Stomierowski Gould

  And I think now of Dad declining to get a wheelchair for Mom so she could get outside during her last year; he was afraid it would turn her into an invalid. I have nostalgic photos of Duke, usually after going to the dog park, wrapped in blankets on the front porch, his food bowl nearby, so he could get some more fresh air and a nap and not be trapped into staring at the same four walls all afternoon. That he couldn’t enjoy more of life hurt us as much as him. This boy had been our smile-maker.

  And who would ever forget Duke’s love of popsicles? A children’s picture book is what I most expected to feature him in—not a book about grief and recovery from loss.

  At first, despite a limp that a brace won’t substantially help, and being on medication for pain and discomfort, he does surprisingly well completing the same walking loops and crossing the creek to traverse a few forested trails. This feeds our delusions that he can beat the odds and recover. He even walks the planks at the agility park and we proudly snap his picture, up on the middle board, with a tennis ball in his mouth. In hindsight, these photos give us pause. Ironically, his declines now are easier to see than when we interacted daily. We wonder if he had more pain than we realized, how much he did suffer to show off, whether remaining active and engaged helped him cope as much as it did us. It’s not just the walks we kept going, but the barking, the smells, knowing which mornings the grass outside was pearly wet.

  After their dog’s experience with pain-medication “cocktails,” Yella’s mourner keeps advising us not to undermedicate Duke. We are naturally resistant to overmedication. Everyone knows dogs hide their weaknesses. She warns against surmising it is not painful because Duke isn’t crying like a baby and still wants to go for walks. She urges us to toughen up and make wise decisions for him, since he can’t do it himself.

  She bares regrets that she didn’t have Yella on opioids her last week, that she didn’t welcome, with everything else she had to do, the hassle or the whining. Not hard to understand at all.

  In our history with pets, for most of us there are instances of frustration over elimination woes or other messy or time-consuming hassles. Hey, this is life and death, people, and not so different for humans in our care who no longer can make it safely to where they need to go. Their dignity suffers. We don’t have to make it worse. Here’s where the Golden Rule applies.

  Once or twice Duke draws his teeth at us or at Susan, the neighbor who kindly backs us up a few times while we are away. So we become more cautious around him, wondering whether that sweet countenance will turn mean in an instant from pain and protective impulses. Snuggling isn’t the same when you fear a snap in the face. I wonder whether he secretly detests us. We do our best now, as we always did with him, to allow him his full range of feelings. Looking back, we only wish we were not so reluctant to knock him out more. We are warned not to let the pain go too long, that it’s not worth it to hang onto our boy for another week or two. But right now that sounds sweeter than his drugged-out sleeping.

  Overall his warnings to us, with a snarl or bared teeth, are few and far between. Our belief that he wants to keep up with our routines keeps us in the game, and him with us. At the dog park, we discover a peculiar pattern we wouldn’t have predicted—any more than we would have anticipated Duke’s illness at all. Some owners of healthy, boisterous dogs appear to be deaf to verbal warnings, upon approach, that our dog needs space, to not feel set upon by stronger rivals curious about his condition. We advise them to stay back from Duke because he is on medicines and less predictable.

  Even when they aren’t distracted by complicated cell phone conversations, owners of other canines daily ignore the warnings until our dogs are too close for comfort. So we often are pulling Duke close to shield him from curious noses, from poking and prodding, from any discovery of his weakness.

  Mac and Raven walk amidst tall trees.

  SLOWING DOWN (9)

  What explains this unawareness of our plight by other owners and dog walkers I’m not sure; denial again, maybe. On the other hand, a few folks are critical that we bring Duke, in his condition, to the dog park at all—a place, in their minds, I guess, for only healthy dogs and life at full throttle. I make no judgment about this. I can see their point, and there are children here as well, walking their dogs with adults. I just can’t cut Duke any shorter on his small pleasures at this juncture than the tumor already is doing. I figure he will let us know when he is done. Care and caution do walk with us, and eventually he does let me know when he can’t handle keeping going. It’s like giving a horse full rein one last time.

  Even though we make frequent rest stops at tables and benches, and in grassy areas around the walking loop, over time Duke chooses his own rest stops not far from the opening gate. For his size, walking any distance on three legs is extremely strenuous. After awhile, he barely sets the bad leg down. Eventually he slumps down in the grass and resists exertion. Probably he is okay being left there, under a tree, to die. Still, we drop down beside him for awhile, and then try to cajole him to keep going. It works until it doesn’t. He is stubborn by personality, and sick or well, we can hardly move him at all without his acquiescence. A few times, though, I tug and cajole. Remembering this brings a lump to my throat.

  We were warned, after all, that he can go down anywhere and we won’t be able to get him out of the park, so we have contemplated the possibility of gridlock. I wouldn’t say we’d thought hard about it; our denial wouldn’t let us go that far. So unDukelike it would be to stop cold in his tracks, it is hard to imagine.

  And truthfully, a small part of us clings to the idea that a miracle can save Duke from the cancer death we have been sentenced to; after all, in large part because of the certainly in the veterinary staff, we had never biopsied to be sure he had cancer. Is there any such thing, anyhow, as false hope? That we had considered during chaplaincy training, one of those bedeviling questions like whether a spirit can be broken. At any rate, when it comes to Duke’s end-of-life dilemmas, no one seems to think more biopsies are a good use of our resources.

  So we carry on day by day, which is all anyone can do, until even that starts to slow down. We continue to visit his favorite place, even just for half an hour. One way or another, after a short walk and relieving himself, he rises from a spell resting in the grass and limps back as best he can on three legs to the car in the busy parking lot to go home. As with people living with illness, there is no overall general energy pattern. One good day is no prediction of another. Once, on an awful day when his energy isn’t there, I leave him in the back seat of the car, with the windows down in the morning coolness, and try to quickly walk the other two. No go. Raven refuses to leave the car and go back into the park without him.

  A full year after he dies, she still refuses to get up on the couch where Duke, her mentor in our home, was sick and dying. He had been rescued long before her, and we wouldn’t have kept her, too, without his agreeability. But for her at the end there is scant closure. For all she knows, we just took him out in the car one day and threw him into a dumpster. She doesn’t come with us when he is euthanized, yet resists the couch where he reclined and entering that vet clinic for any treatment. Duke was her partner, brother and surrogate parent, and his illness, for her, represents a pushing away over time. Disengagement. She can no longer roughhouse or we stop her from playing. It is a slow saying goodbye for her, too.

  Raven often ran alone after Duke’s death.

  FORCED MARCH (10)

  Six months or more after Duke’s death, leaving the local clinic where I had my annual physical, and again a few days later departing the eye doctor center with blurriness due to dilation, I gather up Raven and Mac for a short walk near the parking lot and reflect on aging. Specifically, I ponder how I find myself to be in my late sixties. It’s hard to get your head around the idea you may not live more than 10 to 20 more years. Since Mom died younger by only months than I am now, it’s even harder for
me to imagine being 80 than to imagine my husband being the same age. His parents enjoyed greater longevity than mine.

  One past summer we visited his mother, now nearing 90, when his brother was away and she was recovering from a melanoma excision that had limited her walking and bathing for a time. For years she has been battling high-risk moles and skin lesions, and with the sunny climate in southern California, she has had plenty of company.

  With some reluctance, she had hired a woman to walk her schnauzer, Buster, a few times a week. She now welcomed the safety of our company in getting back to her normal walks when the heat was less extreme. Some of our most revealing talks about life and death happened around walking her wiry guy with his signature grey and white moustache. After she had lost her husband of 62 years, none of us were too certain how to help make the empty house and meal times a little less lonely. Todd’s brother had a clue. Getting Buster, and first his predecessor Sauerkraut, proved to be brilliant medicine. Again there is someone else in the house to talk to, wonder about, and dote on.

  Now it’s the other way around; we are concerned that she worries too much about her feisty companion. She is disappointed that she can no longer walk him alone without fear of falling; notably, her last fall happened on her way to the door of one of his veterinarian’s offices. As with so many conditions in pets and humans, his persistent throat problem remained undefined and unresolved, not for lack of caring from her. Most days now they sit out back together, in front of a peaceful pond, accommodating to the practicalities of aging. While sitting out back is not as stimulating for him as a walk, forgiveness isn’t an issue. After all, he’s a dog.

  She assures me that her Buster glances back anxiously from the kitchen door to be sure she is coming. At times, even anxiety is better shared. Wherever these two are, they are comfortable together.

  And so this morning, after my own eye appointment, watching Raven’s excitement at smelling new turf, I, too, wonder about this sensitive canine companion who had slowed down for most of a year after Duke died. Is she aware she is middle-aged or older? Does she experience life differently?

  From her behavior, it certainly seems so. With Duke’s demise, running with wild abandon in the confines of the dog park was mostly over, and now she sticks close to my side. Part of that change came with being roughed up by a group of dogs inside the front gate before Duke got sick, but after Duke’s death she developed a tic or a twitch; for a year or more, at intervals outside, she would snap her head back and nervously look for something in the trees that might be nipping at her flanks. She doesn’t do that anymore, but still seems hyperalert compared to her old self.

  Always we wonder, with her, about separation anxiety—from us, from previous owners, and now from Duke as well. Before we flew to California to visit Buster and left her with a sitter, there was a period after Duke’s death when she disdained the warmth and friendly contact of others—dogs and people—and often, during our dog park outings, acted as though she were on a long forced march. If I had forgotten something—the camera, for instance—and had to fetch it from the car, she would push to get out of the gate with me like she’d never wanted to be there in the first place. It’s like the music in visiting the dog park for her had gone off without Duke being there with her, providing protection, at least by size if not ferocity.

  When we would arrive home, she didn’t gobble her food like her buddies; often, hours would pass before she sampled her dinner, and we might have to add milk to draw her interest; usually it would pick up when there was competition. While we’ve always noticed her anxiety—definitely that uneasiness about separation, which we attributed to her herding genes—since Duke’s death we had concluded she had rare but occasional episodes of full-blown depression. Except for her chin pressed flat into the blanket, the most noticeable feature was this: For a full year, she wouldn’t climb up onto Duke’s favorite couch if you set out on those soft brown cushions a fatty steak with gravy on a plate.

  She did, however, snuggle with Todd evenings on the facing couch, which she seemed to consider hers, or theirs. And if we should build a nest of blankets on the floor to watch a favorite movie together, she invariably snuggled between us. That’s also where she spends her nights, on our bed.

  Now we take her to run at a nearby mesa, with a wide and stunning view. Chasing rabbits has become an avid but solitary pursuit, and she runs and jumps into the bramble bushes like she did as a young buck at the dog park, popping up against the wall of blue sky from the high grass like morning toast not well attended. However, she is wiser now, and only runs alone or with our newest dog Curly Willow, also a female—not with dogs whose habits she isn’t sure of. She hasn’t lost her own drive for adventure. Once she even led me into a swampy area where I sunk up to my knees in quicksand-like mud and needed the help of a rope to pull out. As ruffled as I was when she wouldn’t clean off in the tub, and as happy for the rabbits that didn’t fall prey, my soul was pleased to see her own soul re-ignited.

  Willow is strong but easily cowed.

  MOVING ON (11)

  Our newest girl, Curly Willow, is a rescue dog who came too quickly to us after Duke’s death. She came through a small network of online and foster contacts. Willow (for short) is a tall and impressively muscular mix—mainly of Great Dane and Boxer—with dark spots on her skin peeking through her thin white coat, a brindle patch over her left eye and pink around the right one, with a black dot near that tear duct. Her tail is white and curled high. Despite her extreme caution or timidity, at times she is taken to be a pit bull, with all of the reactive force that impression generates in critics of the breed.

  We weren’t ready for another dog, and realized that no one could replace Duke. Since we are older than 60, big dogs are harder to manage. Todd wanted a glad-happy Lab again. However, this sensitive youngster was in danger of being farmed out to strangers who might not be motivated to find places she could run, nor devoted to unraveling her bonding secrets.

  While I was getting to know her habits and reactions, I learned of a small poodle mix named Jewel who was being fostered during a difficult transition from life in a puppy mill to finally seeking a forever home. The foster mother was describing how careful she is to not disrupt the dog’s every peaceful moment by moving too randomly or forcefully around the family home. She was learning to reverse her normal pathways—moving away from the dog to go to the kitchen and fix food, for instance—rather than scaring the poor old girl by moving directly toward her. Her reward, she explained, was to find Jewel eventually following behind her with curious but cautious baby steps toward a confident bounce. Unfortunately, this dog’s spiraling health problems led to a terminal diagnosis, then her too-soon death. There was joy, however, in seeing her be queen for a day or two.

  Many of Jewel’s anxious reactions reminded me of Willow’s, and yet, as her caregiver pointed out, it’s a whole different prospect for a mill dog, who never has known a home at all outside of a cage. Dogs who have been adopted repeatedly, I’m advised, may not know for sure at first where they even can poop without causing problems, and so can develop massive insecurity. And while we were advised Willow had been crated before coming to us, she also had known what it was like to live with humans in shared space. She had been with people moving around doing different things between eating and sleeping. Her crate went into our garage and never was taken out again in front of her. She has a dog bed, a basket of play curiosities, and chew-toys.

  But, however her experience of home had been before she joined our pack, there seemed to have been scary moments in her lifetime when she feared being punished whether she’d done anything wrong or not. One of those times seemed to be the end of the work day. Often she would, almost instinctively, beat it hastily out the dog door when anyone came in the front door to take off their coats, greet one another and shake off any work day weariness.

  From the first day at our roomy home, Willow feared or s
hied away from most direct attention, dishes or morsels extended in her direction, end-of-day reunions, unknown objects, often even known objects, noisy moments, and quick movements. If we moved the broom, she invariably ducked. At first she cringed at the sound and ran for cover when we flushed the toilet. If we offered her a bowl of warm milk, she would back away as though we were trying to trick or poison her. Unlike Raven, she is meticulous about sniffing and sampling anything before she chews and swallows it.

  Instead of the dog park, her daily routine for most of her first year with us ended up being this: She jumped up into the back seat of my husband’s work truck and went to work with Todd, a fence-builder and handyman who has come to enjoy her company. A few times a day, he walks her, and he lets her run in fenced areas or romp and play with many of his clients’ dogs. Some customers bring her treats, so she has come to know the kindness of strangers. The daily routine has done her good; she has come to prefer going with him to not.

  But no matter how fine a day they have, coming home remains especially sensitive—she seems to fear being berated or beaten rather than encouraged, and some days will habitually duck and cringe for the first hour or two after having been in the truck seat or in a fenced yard. Heartbreaking, but we try to reassure her that now she is loved, she is safe, she is cherished. She has found her voice, and enjoys barking while playing with Raven in the evening. At first her expectation of trouble made it difficult to correct such nuisance offenses as barking each time someone passes the house. She aims to fiercely protect our house or vehicles, and her docility recedes when she perceives herself to be on guard duty. Apparently she carries emotional baggage, not unlike many combat veterans who retain traumatic muscle memories. We look for and celebrate even little breakthroughs, however long it takes to change her darker expectations. She is coming along, but progress is slow.