Musings
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Dr. V | Friday | July 10, 2009 |
My boss is a very talented clinician. He has expertise in both internal medicine and in surgery, which makes him a great wealth of knowledge on just about anything. Except rats or hamsters, so I have some value to my place of employment.
I went into work today, on my day off, to watch him do a forelimb amputation. It went swimmingly, by the way. While the tech was with the dog in recovery, I was hanging out in the back and chatting while my boss looked at some of the drop offs. Among them was a really sweet pup who was in the middle of a course of chemotherapy. The owner brought him in because she felt, despite the treatment, that he seemed to be getting worse.
My boss looked at the dog, who was bouncing off the walls. “I’m sure it’s just an overreaction,” he said, reviewing the notes. The cancer was caught early. It was one of the most responsive types of neoplasia, with a very good remission rate. The median time of first remission with the protocol he uses is somewhere around a year. This dog was only two months into treatment and had responded beautifully- there was no reason to think this patient should have anything short of a long remission. He patted the dog’s head, reached over, and felt his lymph nodes.
And said, “#$@!#!@#.”
It made no sense. The dog had a remission of 7 weeks instead of 7 months. That isn’t supposed to happen. There was no logical explanation for it, other than that cancer sucks and sometimes it behaves ways it shouldn’t. Sometimes you wind up like my grandfather, given 6 months to live with lung cancer, but who lived another 12 years. And other times you wind up this dog, who had the best of everything, an owner who would do whatever was suggested, and the cancer basically flips everyone the bird and says, meh, chemo schmemo. The dog is in recurrence.
There are other options, though usually they follow the law of diminishing returns. In other words, things are looking less than great for the poor little guy- who was sitting there obliviously eating treats, enjoying the attention.
The staff gathered around, tears in their eyes, while my boss went over all of this with the owner, who pretty much knew where this was going before she walked in the door. After all, I’m a vet too.
And then Emmett and I came home. And I cried.
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Dr. V | Thursday | July 2, 2009 |
(K, I hope you don’t mind me talking about you here- if so please let me know and I will remove this right away.)
My heart is breaking for my friend today. She has a wonderful cat Bailey, whom she adores and spoils and overall just loves to pieces. Bailey has been having a rough go of it lately- what started as an upper respiratory infection turned into a frightening series of seizures. After a myriad of vet visits, referrals, clueless receptionists and a neurologist visit, K and her husband were told it was likely a dental issue. Great, right?
So today Bailey was getting a dental examination and a CT scan. When the phone rang with what she thought was a perfunctory “All is well” call, the voice on the other end said the words that no one ever wants to hear. “I’m sorry. We found a mass.”
(more…)
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Dr. V | Friday | May 22, 2009 |
Please let me come back as a dog that lives in Carmel.
I just got back from a most wonderful mini-trip to see a friend (if you read this blog from day one you would remember my mention of Candie from vet school) who is now an emergency vet up in Northern California. She mentioned that she has been to Carmel a few times and suggested we go grab dinner there one night and try to spot Clint Eastwood.
While I didn’t see Dirty Harry, I spotted a good 50 dogs in a one block radius- in and out of stores, wandering into cafes and boutiques, and generally living the good life. Doris Day owns a hotel up here- dog friendly, of course- and several of the restaurants not only welcome dogs, they have special menu items for them. Dogs in Carmel live better than my human kids. People up there probably spend more on them, too. 
I haven’t ever really entertained the idea of vacationing with my pets, mostly because I don’t think big hairy Goldens are received the same way as, say, a Yorkie in a Gucci bag, but being up there made me think that maybe it can be done. I know pets are generally accepted more readily in Europe, but here in California seeing them out and about to this extent was a real rarity.
Anyone here ever vacation with their pet? How hard was it to be accomodated? Would you do it again?
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Dr. V | Thursday | May 7, 2009 |
I was a very sensitive kid. So much, in fact, that my mother only got through “Rock a Bye Baby” one time because I cried so hard at the idea of “down will come baby cradle and all.” What a mean lullaby. I couldn’t watch Road Runner cartoons because I was so sympathetic to the coyote- he wasn’t evil, he was just a carnivore. He just wanted to eat. And Tom and Jerry? Awful. Poor Tom. I’d cry every time I had to watch him get disemboweled, electrocuted, or decapitated. Man, that was a sadistic cartoon.
It seems that my daughter is following in my footsteps. One morning while I was at the gym, my husband turned on the TV to a station unknown and went back to bed. When I came home, my daughter was bawling her eyes out because she was watching a cartoon about either a puppy mill or a lost dog or something involving dogs and animal catchers, and she was inconsolable. When Mulan died, my son was philosophical. He said, “OK,” and went to play with his trucks. My daughter, on the other hand, still talks about her. Empathetic child.
When I found out about Emmett, my first thought was, “#@$@%!@#@#%@#”. Then, it was “How am I going to explain this to my daughter?” I figure, at least I have some time to figure it out, because I still don’t know the answer to that.
Tonight, she started crying shortly after I put her to bed. “I had a dream about a doggie who lost his family,” she sobbed. Apparently she saw something on TV this afternoon- this time Grandma was the culprit- and it again made her sad, musing about pets and loss. “Don’t worry,” I said, “Emmett won’t lose us,” then paused without saying, but we are going to lose him.
She looked at me and sighed. “But we already lost two dogs this year,” saying what I was thinking. “Skippy went to live with Maria, and Mulan…..Mulan…..”
I had no response to that. I gave her a hug, tried to distract her, and then went downstairs to give Emmett his meds.
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Dr. V | Friday | May 1, 2009 |
When Mulan was sick last year, the simple act of petting her was a stressful event. There was always a new lump, some sore spot, something to make me nervous and want to do tests and see what was going on. It was always such a relief to pet Emmett, so sturdy and unproblematic, to scratch him under the chin and not feel enlarged nodes, to thump him the way you thump big dogs in greeting and not worry about hurting him. And after Mulan died, under the grief and sorrow there was also a weight lifted, to not have to worry about daily meds and trips to the oncologist and the constant clock hovering over her head, counting down to a time I couldn’t pinpoint but knew was coming.
Three weeks ago, Emmett was attacked by the neighbor dog. His ear has healed nicely. Sure he’s been a little mopey since Mulan left, but he’s getting older. 7, not really old, just a little old. He’s been picking at his food, but he’s always picked at his food. Antibiotics like the ones he’s been on are rough on the stomach. He needs to lose a couple pounds anyway, his bloodwork after the dog attack was fine, no biggie.
These are the things we tell ourselves, even vets who should know better. He’s fine because he has to be fine.
I had him in on Wednesday to get groomed, and a niggling little voice in my head told me to weigh him. My tech took him to the scale, and when they came back in he put his head in her lap like he always does for rubs. “What’s up with the lump?” she asked nonchalantly.
“What lump?” I said, and there, oh, no, no, no, his lymph nodes were enlarged.
They were enlarged on the right side, which is the side he got bitten on, so surely this is some residual infection from the dog bite. Except it’s not.
Emmett, my best buddy, the healthy one, the coolest dog in the world, has lymphoma. I have just gotten to the point where I can pat Mulan’s box of ashes without tearing up, can talk about her without a knot in my stomach but just the sad tug of loss, just pushed through to the surface of the grey sea of grief that we all find ourselves submerged in from time to time, and now I have to do it all over again. Herein lies the flip side of loving a pet. The clock is back, hovering over his head like a grey cloud; I can’t read the numbers but I can hear the ticking, quiet and insistent.
I wish what I do for a living made this easier. Logistically, it does. Emotionally, I feel just as blindsided and sad and small as anyone else dealing with this kind of diagnosis. No other way to say it: This sucks.
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Dr. V | Friday | March 27, 2009 |
I have a confession to make, and this one is hard.
Skippy is no longer with me.
This is painful. I feel like a failure, especially since I spend so much time talking about responsibility and how a pet is a lifetime commitment. I still believe that, which is why I also think you should be really careful about the hows and whens of bringing a new pet into the home, and that is where I really screwed up.
I knew after Mulan died that I would eventually want another dog, and I had a specific kind of dog in mind. Skippy was not that kind of dog, but he was kind of in the right range, and he needed a home. His owner came to my house to check it out and give Skippy a chance to meet everyone. I went over my ‘deal breaker’ questions, specifically, Is he housetrained, and Does he bark, and was given the answers yes, and no. He seemed to get along with everyone. I was planning on thinking it over for a couple of days, until the owner told me she was moving the next day and was really hoping he could stay, if I thought I was going to keep him.
And me being me, I said OK. The things she mentioned as issues- separation anxiety, and cat chasing, I was prepared for, and really were OK to handle. But. butbutbut.
It only took one day to realize he wasn’t housetrained. Not even close. Worse, he was a closet pooper, so he’d go run far away where no one could see him or correct him, and hide a treat. OK, I said, I’ll have to crate him. No problem.
The next day, I found out he was a barker, and not a little bit, but the worst kind of offender- yippy, hysterical, and to top it off he’d pee all over the place when he got excited. I was a bit miffed at this point, but still ready to try and figure it out.
On the third day, I realized he could squeeze through the bars on my fence and go running around the neighborhood, more specifically, into the neighbor’s yard with 4 large dogs. And because he hadn’t had any sort of training to respond to come or other commands, once he was gone, it was a wild chase. That is when I really started to panic. We spend a lot of time running around in our yard.
On the fourth day, I spent hours retrofitting the fencing with chicken wire.
On the fifth day, he dug right under it.
By necessity, Skippy now spent the entirety of his time attached to a lead. He was either in a crate, tied to a table, or tied to me. He couldn’t be trusted inside, where he’d either run off to take a poop or eat cat poop; he couldn’t be trusted outside, where he would run away. I consulted a trainer and a behaviorist to get some suggestions about what I would have to do to mold him into a model citizen, and the answer was, to put it mildly, daunting. And would probably involve methods far more intensive and aggressive than those I have ever used in the past.
His old owner was by now unreachable, of course, and wouldn’t have been able to help anyway. I spent the next two weeks conducting doggy boot camp, which worked as long as he was under constant surveillance, but he really didn’t have much desire to please so any slip of the guard, and off he would go to wreak havoc. One bright and sunny Saturday morning was spent trespassing through my entire neighborhood after my son accidentally let him dart through his legs. Off he went, through one fence and under the next, boom-boom-boom throughout the whole development, me in pajama bottoms and wild morning hair, waving a salmon strip at him, calling, “Oh Skip-py!” in my cheeriest voice since of course we can’t let him know we are fuming since he won’t come if you are, but it didn’t matter since he didn’t come anyway. I had to ambush him under a blackberry bush. I spent the next two hours pulling foxtails out of my hair, wondering how many neighbors saw me and how many knew what I supposedly did for a living.
My friends, my co-workers, everyone who knows me and how I am mentioned to me at some point or another that this was not the ideal match. I knew it, but I had made a commitment, and damnit, I wasn’t going to give up. I can’t give up. I made this decision to give him a home and I should abide by it. I seemed to be the only one who felt this way.
A couple of days later, a family friend came over, and I pre-emptively apologized for what she was about to endure. “Oh, it’s no problem,” she said over Skippy’s high pitched screeching. She picked him up and cuddled him while he peed on her. “I love poodles.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” she said as he licked her with his cat-litter breath. “I had one who passed away a few years ago.”
“Well, I really am sorry,” I said as he sunk his teeth into her pants leg and started to hump her. “I’m trying to make him better.”
“Oh, that’s just how they are,” she said and petted him affectionately. “He’s just young.” She looked at me intently. “If you don’t want him, I would love to give him a home. My chihuahua would love a friend.”
I said we were working on things, but I would for sure let her know. Another long week passed.
As I stood there, Emmett by my side hiding from Skippy’s aggressive ministrations, it hit me. Skippy was not, and would never be, the right dog for me. The words of my trainer friend echoed in my ear: “He really just needs someone who doesn’t care about all that crap.” I wasn’t so determined to make this work out of a deep bond and love for Skippy, but out of a sense of obligation. And was it fair to him to keep him with me because I didn’t want to seem like a bad pet owner for giving him away, to in essence save face, when there was someone right in front of me who would offer him a better life? My friend would love him as he was. I would not. I would be like that woman in Cosmo they always warn you not to be, trying to fix her man, dress him up, teach him some manners, when all he wants is to sit in a wifebeater with a Coors in one hand and his junk in the other.
I called my friend and asked her if she was still serious about Skippy. “Yes, absolutely,” she said. I told her very bluntly why I was willing/mandated to give him up, and all the issues he was bringing to the table. She said yes, she knew this, and was still ok with it.
Skippy went home with her on Wednesday. The first thing he did when she came in the door was take a poop right in front of her- a final sendoff to me, I suppose, and she laughed and cleaned it up. “Let me know if it doesn’t work out,” I said. “I have contacts in rescue.”
“Oh, I’m keeping him,” she smiled, poop bag in one hand, dog in the other. “Let’s go, Skippy.”
I guess I can tell myself that everything happens for a reason. I still feel like a failure.
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Dr. V | Thursday | March 26, 2009 |
I.e. trying to get a thicker skin.
Today I went into a room to give a little dachshund puppy his vaccine boosters. This was a cute dog. Seriously cute. I had seen him once before, 3 weeks prior, for his first vaccination and he was healthy and adorable then, as he was today.
I went in and gushed, trying to ignore the fact of the very stone faced owner glaring at me. Everyone has bad days and bad moods, right? She asked me a couple of questions that I started to answer, and she cut me off each time before I could finish. I did my exam, gave the dog a few extra pets, complimented him, and then got him his vaccine. It was a very standard visit.
The owner then went out and told the receptionist she wants to see “the other guy” next time. She saw “the other guy”- my colleague- one time, for a cough that she declined to do anything about. Nothing special.
Personality is a matter of preference, and I just can’t help whether or not someone likes me. It makes it easier, though, if there is something I can pinpoint that I did to make a person not happy, but in this case, there really wasn’t anything that went wrong. I was in top veterinarian form today. I even wore PEARLS to work, which I never do. My hair was perfect. I did the best I could but it was just me, personally, that she rejected.
Well, you know what? Her dog was UGLY. Ugly and goofy looking too. I’m glad I won’t be seeing him again, him and his dumb floppy furry ears and little brown nose….
*sigh* I lie. He really was seriously cute. Maybe she was afraid I was going to steal him. I could lie a second time and say I don’t get hurt at all, that’s life, but truth be told I do get a wee bit hurt. Much less than I used to for sure, but I prefer to delude myself into thinking my magnetic personality is utterly irresistible to all.
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Dr. V | Thursday | March 19, 2009 |
I haven’t euthanized a pet in a couple of weeks. That is one of the things I like about day practice, as opposed to emergency, less of that sad stuff. But for whatever reason, this sort of thing comes in waves, and the tide came rolling in today.
First was a young cat who was horrifically sick. He was so jaundiced that you could see the yellow tinge from across the room. The owner had him euthanized. I never did find out what the cause was.
Next was an older cat, who was also horrifically sick. The owner agreed to all the bloodwork, and unfortunately he was in end-stage renal failure. She, too, was euthanized.
Be it a serious disease in a crappy economy or just a flat out end stage illness, some cases are pretty black and white. There just weren’t other realistic options.
I thought I was going to get through the day with just these two euthanasias, each sad, but ultimately understandable. Then Johnnie’s owner called.
I’ve been seeing Johnnie since he was born a year ago. Johnnie was a mutt of dubious origin, struck with affliction after affliction of the sort that ill bred dogs often develop. Giardia. Coccidia. Mites. Retained testicles. Funny eyelashes. A brush with parvo. But his owners love him, and each time he came down with a new and expensive problem, they rolled their eyes, sighed, and treated them. Another thousand dollar discount mutt.
Johnnie’s owners were recently flattened by some unrelated events in their life, so it was less than welcome news when he was diagnosed with a serious orthopedic problem that would eventually require surgery. Even still, they took home some Rimadyl and decided to start saving up. They put up with a lot.
Until today.
Today, he bit their son. Apparently, he has had some aggression issues they have been trying to work through, on top of everything else. I knew he had an occasional brush in at the dog park, but I didn’t realize it had gotten this bad. So we talked. She knew as well as I did, that with the glut of healthy dogs in the shelter there was no dog less adoptable than an aggressive mutt with orthopedic issues. The rescues had no place for him. She didn’t want him to languish in a shelter for a few days, confused and alone, just to assuage her own guilt that maybe someone might want to take him on. She knew as well as I did what the chances really were.
I used to say to myself, I would never euthanize a healthy dog. Never euthanize a dog who didn’t have a terminal disease. Wouldn’t consider it for behavioral issues, because after all, it’s the owner’s doing and why should I have to clean up after their mess. That was then.
I’ve learned a lot about black and white and shades of grey, about being a parent and making a commitment and sometimes even about getting in over your head. About judging people and situations by standards 95% of the population can’t live up to. It’s paralyzing sometimes, standing in a sea of grey trying to make out the shapes. Life is so much easier in black and white, one dimensional line drawings in perfect contrast. Simple, and not very realistic.
So we talked, and talked some more, and the one thing I can tell you is that Johnnie’s owner absolutely loves him. Her decision, that most people can’t/don’t make, was to spare him being scared and alone and let him go in her arms rather than in the back room of a shelter. It was, I think, the right decision. I support her in that.
Time for the tide to roll on out. I don’t like to tread water for very long.
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Dr. V | Thursday | March 12, 2009 |
Every morning when I get into work, one of the first things I do is check the fax machine. (OK, I’ll be honest, the receptionist checks it and I just ask her if anything came in. But you get the idea.) There is the usual stuff- requests from online pharmacies, continuing education announcements, Viagra ads- but there are only two things I really care about: labwork, and notes from the emergency hospital.
We have a great 24 hour emergency hospital that we refer to after-hours, or even during normal hours if there is something critical we are not equipped to deal with. In my current place, we have the basics, but we aren’t meant to deal with critical cases that need around the clock monitoring. This hospital usually keeps us updated by fax, with the occasional phone call if something really wonky is going on.
The most common fax from them, unfortunately, is notice of euthanasia. In part that is just the nature of emergency medicine, but I do think that is somewhat heightened in these days of economic devastation. So I look through the notices and see who got hit by a car, or diagnosed with heart failure, hoping each time it isn’t one of the previous day’s surgeries gone terribly awry. I am always saddened to hear of a patient’s passing, but like all things in life you learn to separate yourself a bit from the things you can’t control and be grateful that for people who can’t afford extensive treatments, there is at least a humane option to dying at home.
I was reminded of that this week. About 15 minutes before closing, a person came in with a cat who had been vomiting for 2 days. My receptionist had told me it had diarrhea, which was the only reason I agreed to see it that late to begin with- 15 minutes is just not enough time to address a serious problem. Looking at the cat, it was immediately apparent he was in pretty crummy shape. My initial guess was renal failure, though there are a lot of other things on the differential list at that point. They agreed to labwork, knowing I wouldn’t get it until the next morning.
That morning, I beelined for the fax and grabbed his bloodwork. It was not good- he was a diabetic who had progressed to being ketoacidotic; in short, he was in a medical emergency. I called the owners at the only number we had for them, repeatedly. When I finally got through, they said they were at work and couldn’t get in until 6 that night. I went over the bloodwork and the seriousness of his condition and told them to please come in ASAP.
When they arrived, I went over the situation and told them they basically had two options: take him to the emergency hospital and begin treatment, or euthanize him. They said they couldn’t afford the treatment (it is lengthy and difficult; even if/when you get them under control you still have a diabetic pet requiring lifelong treatment) but they weren’t ready to euthanize him yet, and could they come back tomorrow.
I feel a lot of sympathy for people when they get a bomb dropped on them; at the same time I feel a responsibility to advocate for their pet, too. In this case one member of the couple agreed with me and wanted to euthanize him right away, and the other one was pushing to take him home. I explained why I felt the way they did, how sick he was, and they told me they would be back in the morning. Just in case, I gave them the emergency hospital number in case they changed their mind overnight.
Today, I was off, so I had to call in to work to ask if we had gotten any faxes regarding Neptune. “Yes,” the receptionist said sadly. “They euthanized him at the emergency hospital last night.” I sighed in relief.
She seemed very confused that I would have that reaction. It’s hard to explain, but in the face of certain types of suffering sometimes yes, the notice of euthanasia is indeed a relief.
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Dr. V | Wednesday | March 4, 2009 |
First in a series.
The most famous is: never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
Oh wait, wrong topic. Rules for a Long and Happy Life of a pet.
Be trite, if it makes you happy. Name your dog Fluffy or Rover or Fido. Be ironic- name your chihuahua Cujo or your bulldog Daisy Mae. Name your cat after your favorite literary character, anime cartoon, or hobbit. If and only if you are homeless, you may use an expletive in naming your pet and delight in introducing people to your pit bull “Shithead.” These are all acceptable.
You may name your pet after a celebrity, such as Elvis or Darth Vader; an attribute, such as Speedy or Frisky; be formal- Mr. Whiskers is so much more dignified than just plain Whiskers, right?; or informal- Stew has a nice casual ring to it.
But whatever you do, amongst the thousands and thousands of possible pet names at your disposal, you must do this one thing: Do not, under any circumstances, name your pet LUCKY. It is the one forbidden name.
It’s tempting, I know it is. Especially if you’ve rescued a cute little fuzzball from certain death at the pound, or found him on the side of the road, you might think to yourself- man, that is one lucky dog. Resist the urge. Trust me on this.
Ask any veterinarian and they will back me up. We all have a laundry list of Luckys we can pull up from memory, the cat who got a rare neural cancer at 3, the dog whose owner passed out drunk at the steering wheel while parked on TOP of the dog, the rat with its foot caught in a toaster, the guinea pig who choked on a Cheerio. These things all happen after the pet received the unfortunate moniker from his well meaning but uninformed parents. These things go beyond the realm of normal “crap happens” and into the “man, that really sucks. What are the chances of that?” sort of zebra category.
I have a theory. I think there is a netherworld demon, a little poltergeist who is filled with a seething hatred. He delights in irony and hates all things cute and fluffy. The sole purpose of this existence is to find cute and fluffy animals named Lucky and turn it from a ‘descriptive’ sort of name into an ‘ironic’ one. Be wary. He is very good at what he does. “YESSSSS!” he booms malevolently from his smoky lair. “I see a young couple from Schenectady has rescued a maltipoo from the shelter and named HIM LUCKY!” He puffs and snorts and leers at the image of the happy family. The next week a polar bear escapes from the zoo and winds up on Lucky’s street, where he is messily devoured in front of a horrified kindergarten class who happens to be walking by. Trust me, it’s probably happened already.
I know all you animal health people out there can verify this. Let’s hear those sad Lucky stories! We must spread the word!
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Dr. V | Sunday | March 1, 2009 |
I think some clients truly believe I have a crystal ball squirreled away in the treatment area. With such a mystical device at my disposal, surely there is no need for such silly, superfluous money wasting devices like bloodwork, x-rays, or even a pesky physical exam. I simply see the dog or cat- nay, with my powers I can even ascertain their sickly auras over the phone- run into the back, whip the velvet cover off my ball-box, and gaze into its depths.
“O, Great Crystal Kitty Ball,” I intone. “Max has been vomiting for 2 months. He is an indoor/outdoor kitty and he is 10 years old.” I pause for dramatic effect. “Is it IBD? Did he eat some bad tuna? Is it lymphoma? Is it diabetes? Is it hyperthyroidism? Is it a piece of yarn? Squamous cell carcinoma? Hairballs? CNS disease? Pancreatitis? Cholangiohepatitis? FIV? Hepatic lipidosis? GI ulcers? Parasites? Salmonella? Fungus? Melamine? Rat poison?”
“You forgot renal disease,” the crystal ball reminds me.
“Shoot- or renal disease! Or any of the other myriad causes I missed! Please, crystal ball, enlighten me!”
The crystal ball fills with a grey furry fog. It swirls and glimmers and whirls. It raowrs a bit, and starts making a gagging noise. Then, it hacks out a little piece of paper covered in wet cat hair. I pick it up with some forceps, wipe off the cat hair, and unroll it.
“How…should I know…did you even SEE the cat?…you idiot….get a CBC…and a chem panel….And a urinalysis.”
Sorry, Max’s mom, the ball is feeling feisty today. Looks like you need to come in for an exam. And I just might need to run a test or two.
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Dr. V | Thursday | February 19, 2009 |
Mulan’s ashes arrived back from the pet memorial park in a very nice cedar box. I took the box inside the house, and placed it on the counter next to my keys, whereupon my 4 year old immediately honed in and asked what was in the box. “Memories,” I told her, then whisked the box out of her hands before she tried to open it.
Right now Mulan is resting on top of the TV. It is the only place where she is safe from kid-hands and misplacement. I feel badly that I haven’t picked somewhere more permanent yet, but in life Mulan liked to be there in the living room best of all, so in some ways it’s rather fitting. I’m debating what to do from here. My last dog who I had to put to sleep, Nuke, arrived from a different crematorium in a crummy floral print tin and I was in a bit of a hurry to get him somewhere more dignified, so I buried his ashes under a pepper tree in our yard. Unfortunately, we ended up moving 2 years later and I am to this day consumed with guilt about abandoning him to strangers.
I am oddly (well, not that odd, I guess) defensive about dignified comportment of a pet. To me how we treat animals in death is just another reflection of the respect we had for them in life. I’ll never forget Charlie, a little dog we saw for the first and only time last fall. The owner was debilitated, so her sons brought the dog in for euthanasia. They could have cared less and were combative about my need to examine the dog before committing to doing the euthanasia. Poor Charlie was a total disaster, obviously in the end stages of some sort of (undiagnosed, untreated) chronic disease, and I agreed at that stage euthanasia was the best option. The sons complained about the price, but paid for the euthanasia with communal cremation, and left before the deed was done.
Imagine my surprise when, two weeks later, Charlie’s ashes arrived back at the clinic. Apparently, a staff member had checked the wrong box, and Charlie was given an individual cremation. Thinking that perhaps the owner would still like to have the ashes, we attempted to call them, but they had provided a false phone number. “Well, that stinks,” said one tech, and started to take Charlie over to the trash can.
I had what could only be described as “strong words” with the tech, and within a few moments Charlie was sitting on my desk. I wasn’t quite sure what would be right or fitting, not knowing anything about the dog, but I eventually decided on a small park by my home to be as good a place as any. So after work the next day, I headed to the bank of a tiny creek at the park, and scattered his ashes. In the end, did it matter? Not really. Not to anyone but me. But that is enough.
Mulan, on the other hand, wasn’t that fond of the park. She liked to be at home. Her, I know. We went out and bought a maidenhair tree, because the little yellow leaves remind me of her ears. When we plant it, I will mix some of her ashes in the soil. It still feels like not enough, though.
My sister insists that when she dies, she wants to be turned into a Life Gem. When they first came out, you used to have to ship the whole body to the Life Gem place- augh- but now they have refined the process so you can get a diamond made out of a lock of hair, which is so much better. The thought of wearing my sister- my whole sister- and constantly living in fear of losing her down the drain is a bit creepy to me. If you have the money to spend (and it isn’t cheap), they do offer the service for pets too.
Much as the idea of wearing Mulan as a cheery yellow diamond is appealing, in these times of recession it isn’t going to happen. I kind of like these little lockets that hold a bit of ashes in them. Is that creepy? I find them appealing, actually. Keeping your pet close to your heart as they have been for so many years. I will tell you the one option I never considered: Freeze drying my pet (warning, link contains photos). As much as I love Scrubs, the fact that JD and Turk have a freeze dried dog in their house is a constant source of discomfort for me when I watch the show. Yuck. Who would do this? Really? That makes turning someone into a gem look positively dignified. Thank God my sister isn’t asking me to do that. I can picture my daughter, circa 2045 in therapy: “Well, it all started the day Auntie K came back from the freeze drying place…”
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