Dogs Were Rescued (And So Was I)

by Teresa J. Rhyne

  Copyright © 2014 by Teresa J. Rhyne

  Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Laura Duffy

  Cover image and author photo © Kimberly Saxelby/True Emotions Photography

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  This book is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of experiences over a period of years. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been re-created.

  Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  1. Seeing Red

  2. This Is Personal

  3. Honey and Anchovies

  4. Words, Wine, and Wags

  5. Breathing In

  6. Alone in a Crowd

  7. Namaste

  8. Eeny, Meeny, Mina

  9. In the Pond of Wonder

  10. Walk Beside Me

  11. A Good Dog

  12. A Place in the Sun

  13. A Shot in the Dark

  14. The Dog Days of Wine Country

  15. Sniffing Things Out

  16. Here Comes the Beagle

  17. Naked to a Dogfight

  18. Cold Tofu

  19. Couch Nights and Coffee Mornings

  20. I Didn’t Know

  21. Yappy Hour

  22. A Piece of My Mind

  23. Raw Vegan

  24. Superpowers

  25. Sanctuary

  26. Tribal Drums

  27. Unremarkable Me

  28. Great Love

  Resources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For the animals.

  And always, for Chris, my favorite animal.

  “I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.”

  —Mahatma Gandhi

  Author’s Note

  This is my memoir. As such, it is my story from my experiences and memories, and mine alone. Most names have been changed, some characters are composites of people, and occasionally, for the sake of story, timelines or dates of events have been altered or events combined—because life doesn’t always make sense, but a book should.

  This is my memoir. As such, it is not a how-to guide, nor a cookbook, nor a psychological thriller. (You were expecting that, right?) This is the story of how I came to live a more compassionate lifestyle, inspired by some adorable beagles, and the struggles we all had along the way. It’s also a love story. But in neither instance do I intend to be giving you advice. (Maybe warnings, but not advice.)

  This is my memoir. As such, I hope it brings you pleasure while you read it. And if it causes you to think about the animals a little more than you used to, well, that will bring me pleasure in return.

  Chapter 1

  Seeing Red

  My dog Seamus and I were sitting in the backyard of a friend’s home—the same home where I’d celebrated the end of my cancer treatments in a Survivor-themed party—when I saw red. It was a bright, clear fall day in 2011. As Seamus wiggled in my lap, the sun illuminated a pool of blood deep in his eye.

  I immediately denied what I was seeing, unable to believe there could be another health issue. Not now. This was a shadow, a reflection of my fuchsia sweater, an illusion. This was anything but what I knew it was. If I hadn’t been so shocked, I would have seen the irony in finding that spot in his eye just then.

  We were posing for the author photo for my memoir about how he—my beagle, my love, my hilarious, spirited guide to life—had survived his own cancer and given me the strength and courage to survive mine. As soon as the photo shoot was over, in what was a familiar routine for me, I scheduled a vet appointment. The vet just as quickly sent us to a specialist.

  I was back in a sterile, white room with my dog—trusting and fearless—standing on a metal table. The initial evaluation was done by an intern. He was polite, quiet, and appeared to be thorough in his exam, but he said very little to me. Seamus stayed calm on the table, as he always did, glancing my way only occasionally. When the exam was over, Seamus howled.

  “He wants a cookie,” I said. “He’s well-trained to know he gets a treat when the exam is over. Preferably a green dog bone, if you have one.”

  The intern smiled. “Poor guy. I’ll get him a treat, but I don’t know about green. I’ll bring it back when the doctor comes in.”

  Several minutes later, the intern, the doctor, and a tech came in the room—an entire, foreboding team. The intern handed Seamus a cookie. It wasn’t green, but Seamus merrily took it and howled for more. The intern laughed and petted Seamus’s head. The doctor promised he’d give him more later. Other than that, though, the doctor was all business. And maybe that should have been a clue too.

  Seamus had first been diagnosed with cancer a year after I adopted him. He was only two, maybe three years old at the time. He spent a year in treatment—two surgeries, many months of chemotherapy, and then another year and a half of follow-ups and blood tests before he was deemed cancer-free and released from treatment. Six months after that, I was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer and spent nearly a year in treatment myself. I was still going for semiannual oncology checkups. So, it’s not like I was new to doctors and devastating diagnoses. You’d think I’d get used to this.

  “I don’t like this,” he said, peering with the ophthalmoscope, its pinpoint light shining in Seamus’s left eye. “Did you see this…?” And here he switched into the medical jargon that some medical personnel use so easily without any thought that the patient—or, in this case, the patient’s guardian—cannot understand it and therefore would only be frightened by it.

  “I did see that,” the intern said, glancing quickly in my direction and away again.

  Of course there’s something to see. It’s why I brought him in. I tried to stay calm, but the doctor’s approach was not helping.

  “Yeah, that’s not good at all. I don’t like what I’m seeing,” he said to no one in particular as he was still looking into Seamus’s eye.

  I wanted to smack him. I’m sitting right here. Hold your editorial until you are ready to talk to me. But I have a history of wanting to lash out at doctors. I’d felt that way about Seamus’s first oncologist (I not so fondly referred to her as Dr. Sorority Bitch) and the oncologist I did chemo with (Dr. B…no explanation needed, I trust, though clearly I could use some creativity in my anger).

  The intern switched the exam room lights back on.

  Finally, the doctor turned to me. “This isn’t good. What I see is most likely—I’m almost certain—a melanoma.”

  I had long ago noticed, in my vast experience with cancer, that very few people, medical personnel included, actually say the “C” word.
<
br />   “Cancer?” I said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Shit! I am so sick of cancer. How bad is it? This cannot be happening. How bad is it? Can. Not. Be happening. Not again. How bad is it?

  I stayed quiet, stroking Seamus’s head while I steadied myself. “Can you give him that other cookie now?” And maybe one for me?

  The doctor pulled a dog biscuit from the pocket of his lab coat and fed it to Seamus, who gladly ate it in only a few quick bites and then howled, wagging his tail.

  “He’s a really cute dog,” the doctor said.

  “He is. And he has already survived cancer once—a mast cell tumor. He’s been through two surgeries and months of chemotherapy.” While one hand held Seamus, my other was clenched in a fist at my side. “Is this related to that cancer? A recurrence now—seven years later?”

  The doctor’s eyebrows shot up, but he was quick to recover. “No, not related. This is a different cancer altogether. He’s just not very lucky.”

  Luck? It was only luck or, more to the point, bad luck that determined who got cancer? “I guess I’m not very lucky either. I’m also a cancer survivor.”

  Now the doctor’s surprise stayed on his face. “Wow. Um, wow. That’s a lot of cancer in one house. Do you live near a nuclear reactor or something?”

  I was no amateur at hearing a cancer diagnosis—I’d experienced it done both better and worse than this. I couldn’t tell if he thought he was making a joke, but whether he was or not, it was an entirely inappropriate comment. Now we’d swung from “luck” to where we live maybe being the cause of cancer. Time to bring the doc’s focus back to where it should be—to what next?

  “So where do we go from here? What’s the treatment? Do you know for certain it is cancer?”

  He gave a long explanation, with the usual amount of confusing and frightening medical terms. It came down to surgery. The doctor was 99 percent certain there was a melanoma on Seamus’s eye. Whatever it was, it had to be removed. Chemo and radiation were not options for this cancer. They could remove the eye and likely be done with it. Or they could try shaving the tumor off and saving the eye, but if it grew back, they’d have to remove the eye then. Chances were it would grow back; the only issue would be how long it took. The longer it took, of course, the longer he’d keep the eye—could be weeks, could be months, could be years.

  Seamus was nine, maybe ten, years old then. Since I’d adopted him from a shelter, I was uncertain of his actual age. But still, at nine or ten, he could live four, five years longer, maybe more. Trying to save the eye seemed the right thing to do. If he were older, maybe I’d worry more about the possibility of two surgeries and the toll that would take. But he’d been such a trooper during all he’d been through that I had great faith in his recovery abilities. Plus, I’d become accustomed to beating the cancer odds, maybe even, inexplicably, cocky about it.

  “I want to try to save his eye,” I said.

  “That’s what I’d do too.” The doctor moved toward the door. “We’ll get you an estimate of the cost and schedule the surgery.”

  We scheduled the surgery for December. I considered waiting until January, because December is when all bad things seem to happen in my life. My entire family has a bad history with the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas—accidents, deaths, cancer diagnoses (note the plural on all of those events). I dread the entire holiday season, but particularly the month of December. And now, another reason to despise it. But I didn’t want to just leave cancer hanging around in the poor dog’s eye any more than I had wanted to leave it hanging out in my right breast when I was diagnosed in December 2008.

  Seamus, in his usual style, and as I had counted on, recovered from this surgery quickly. But he still needed care—bandages changed, pain medication, and eye drops—so I resumed our old routine. I was his caretaker, working from home, and he was his rascally self, using his diabolical cuteness and now his new swashbuckling eye patch to work me over for more treats. And for those days, at home with Seamus, the doctor’s words ate at my brain.

  “Do you live near a nuclear reactor or something?”

  We didn’t, of course. Does anybody anymore? I lived in a townhome, up on a ridge in Riverside, a suburb in Southern California (usually described as halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs). I lived there with Seamus and Chris, the beagle and human loves of my life. There was no nuclear reactor. But three cancers in one household over seven years was a lot of cancer. Too much cancer. Was I doing something wrong? And, of course, I’d tied my own cancer recovery so closely to Seamus’s it was difficult not to think I might have a recurrence too. “The dog lived and so will I” had been my mantra as I went through a breast lumpectomy, three months of chemotherapy, and thirty-six rounds of radiation. “The Dog Lived” was the name of my blog, and eventually The Dog Lived (and So Will I) was the name of the memoir I’d written. And now the dog had cancer again. It was impossible not to feel “…and so will I.” Maybe I had done everything wrong.

  With Seamus’s original cancer and again with my own, I never spent a lot of time wondering why the cancer had occurred. I didn’t spend time attaching blame or wondering why me. But now it was getting hard to avoid the thought that maybe there was a reason this was happening to us.

  What was I doing wrong? Why was this happening?

  When I had finished my cancer treatments, I quickly resumed my old lifestyle. I had not had the great epiphany one hears many cancer patients have: I kept waiting for the urge to run marathons, rescue orphans, or quit my job and travel the world, but I was waiting while reading magazines, sipping a martini, and feasting on fried calamari. And my cancer had been triple-negative—which means not responsive to hormones—so the doctors had not given me any dietary restrictions. Naturally, I used that as an excuse for many celebratory meals of dubious nutritional value. Now, though, with Seamus on the couch next to me, curled up and sleeping soundly, his eye patch clearly visible, the bottles of pain medication and antibiotics lined up on the kitchen counter, and with me only a few months away from my own oncology visit, I knew I had to do something. I had to change. I vowed—for Seamus, for me, for our household—that I’d find a way to do better.

  I’d find a way to fight for us all.

  Chapter 2

  This Is Personal

  Since I had a few days at home with Seamus while he recovered, and because I rely on reading like I rely on coffee (I could not live without either of them), I began to read all that I could find on fighting cancer. I read like my life—and my dog’s—depended on it.

  Though I wanted to avoid this answer, very quickly it became obvious that diet and exercise were essential foot soldiers in the assault on cancer I was about to launch. I’d never been good at either of these things. If I didn’t have Seamus, I’d never exercise at all. I’d celebrated oncology checkups at the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. I considered potato chips and chardonnay a meal, and a darn fine one. Comfort food was macaroni and cheese, fettuccine Alfredo, or, of course, fast food—cheeseburgers and fries, burritos, nachos, all of it. I’d never been one of those girls who ate small, dainty foods in tiny, cute portions. The more carbs, cream, and fat, the better, as far as I was concerned. And as I’m nearly six feet tall, I’d always told myself it was okay that I ate like a guy. That guy may have been a linebacker, but whatever. I loved heavy, processed, fatty food.

  I wasn’t that way as a child, though. As a kid, my favorite food was apples. That’s even what I gave up for Lent at the height of my Catholic years, and nobody accused me of trying to make it easy on myself. I wasn’t much of a meat eater, didn’t like candy, desserts, kids’ breakfast cereals, or Thanksgiving dinner (except the mashed potatoes and the cranberry jelly). I loved fruits, salads, and nuts. Somewhere along the line, that changed. And I couldn’t even recall when, let alone why.

  By high school, I was living off fast food. Bacon cheese
burgers, meat-and-cheese burritos slathered in sour cream, chili cheese dogs, and French fries were constants in my life. That didn’t change in college, though pizza and potato chips joined the lineup. Law school did not improve my diet, unless one considered a tuna melt at the greasy diner down the street an improvement. (It wasn’t, and still, there were the fries.) Until I hit my forties, my metabolism kept up with all of this just fine, so I’d never been on a diet of any kind either. I simply never paid attention to what I ate.

  And then along came Chris.

  Chris had gone through Seamus’s and my cancers every step of the way. And he is a wonderful cook who loves food—all kinds of food. So when he moved in with me and began doing the cooking, my tastes shifted again to more of what he liked and prepared. He is a man who loves steak, hamburgers, a pastrami sandwich, hearty omelets, and anything with bacon. And so I began to eat red meat—steak slathered with blue cheese was a signature dish of Chris’s that I favored. He also made a phenomenal paella that became our traditional “Mas-Chris” meal (the weekend before the dreaded “Christ-mas”). I had my limits, though—I did not eat veal, venison, duck, lamb, or, as Chris claimed was my standard, “any cute animals.”

  Fine. Diet is an obvious and important factor in this battle we didn’t ask for. My diet could certainly improve, despite my years of denial. So it was time I paid attention to that. Fine. And I’d pay attention to Seamus’s diet too. Though the surgery had been successful and Seamus recovered quickly, we’d been told the chances were high that the tumor would come back. It was just a matter of time. In the meantime, we administered eye drops twice a day.

  Naturally, I started our nutritional boot camp with changes to Seamus’s diet. This seemed both easier and more immediate. I was right about the immediacy, less so about the simplicity.

  There was, it seemed, a prescribed cancer-fighting diet for dogs. Many articles, books, and websites sang the virtues of certain foods as cancer-fighting and best for dogs all around. My problem was that they were gross. There were a lot of animal organs, bones, and raw meats involved. It was hard to imagine doing this. I ate meat, sure, but I preferred not to think of it as ever having been alive. “Organs” were just not something I wanted to touch. If it would help Seamus, I’d do it, but I hoped to find a better answer.