Creek Running North

Thanks for the update!  I hope you all enjoy the weekend!

Zekey. :(

I know exactly how you feel. I had to make the decision to end our Bonnie’s life when when she was 16, but there was no overriding cause like cancer. I would have felt better if there were. All the same, I felt an odd sense of relief, mixed in with the terrible grief. My arms felt strangely light. I’d been carrying her up the stairs at night for months.

I’d done the right thing, but at the right time? I’ll never know. She was walking into corners and staying there, seemed not to know us, or where she was. After she was hit in the eye by a pop-up sprinkler, she went totally blind, and then I just knew the time had come. Or maybe it had.

Whatever it is, you’ll make the right decision, since you love him and want what’s best.

I recently had to say goodbye to my 15 year old Cocker Spaniel, RexyRex. He just kept going, and we agonized about How Would We Know When IT Was Time? All the usual things happened: Blindness, deafness, arthritis, inability to get around. But he still wagged his stub when we got home from work.

When the time came HE picked it. We need not have worried. One day he looked around and said, (almost audibly) “Well,I have had enough of THIS shit!” (He was a Very Butch Dog.) He suddenly rejected all of his medicines, (that he had actually been great about taking, as they were usually embedded in pieces of steak). His very voice just rang out silently, saying, ENOUGH ALREADY! I know this sounds all hippied-out, but his feelings about it all were very clear.

I know this doesn’t always happen, but I just wanted you to know that it is possible that YOU won’t have to make the decision. Zeke might make it for himself, as to when it is time to, as the saying goes, get rid of his container. If he is like RexyRex, it may not be for another improbable six months. I think you are doing the right thing in being fully present with him right now, and hoping for the best.

Best Wishes

Chris,

Enjoy this weekend with your Zeke.

pax.  Kimberly

Kathy’s thoughts above reminded me of something.  I had a friend in Brooklyn who, after a couple of bad years in his life, quit his job as a city planner and became a dog walker and caretaker.  In short, he was INTO dogs, observed them, wrote about them, spent most of his days in the company of a large variety of them.

He once told me that he had come to see that dogs weren’t as attached to their physical selves as we were to ours.  I disagreed at first because I had come to really understand, especially having a dog in the city, how much they lived in their bodies as opposed to their heads, how they WERE their bodies, so much more than we were.

I think we were both right.  Dogs, of course, have an abstract sense- anyone who’s lived with one knows they can think, manipulate, lie, enjoy a joke.  But it doesn’t mean as much to them as ours does to us, it doesn’t nurture and comfort them---- (And maybe ours shouldn’t mean that much to us) ----clearly, the fullest, most balanced expression of dog spirit and lifeforce is primarily physical. But after having lived for a while with an aging dog, through her decline and death, I saw how much of an unwanted burden and task it was for her to stay in that decaying container. It became obvious, in time, she didn’t want to be there anymore in that prison.  Not even for us, her pack.  It became clear how much more we were attached to her body than she herself was.

As I write this, I have a parrot on my knee, my eight year old cattle dog is sighing louder and louder to remind me that THE WALK is over due, and the 9 month old carolina dog is pestering the cat, channeling his pent up energy till I pick up the leashes.  So, I know something about living with animals. Living longer than them, seeing them through those transitions, be they sudden or prolonged, is awful, wrenching, overwhelming.

You’ll do the right thing at the right time because you are his and he is yours. 

Peace

Aw, what a great old puppy he is.  Good for you for loving him as much as you do.  You are all so lucky to have found each other at all and to have even these days to spend with each other.

Continued best wishes, of course.

Oh, Chris. I saw this picture and burst quite suddenly into tears. Zeke looks so much like my childhood dog, who was my only friend for years. I was so impressed by how much effort he put into his final days, how much he seemed to care that we saw him trying. What a terrible loss that was.

Endless hugs to sweet Zeke.

Oh, Zekey. I think the first comment I ever left on your blog, Chris, was to say that I was in love w/ your dog. Thank you for sharing Zeke with us. He is so obviously an amazing dog. I don’t know what else to say. xoxo