In this week’s issue, here’s what we are sniffing out

When is it time?

This is a tough subject. I feel many people won’t have the emotional strength to read this newsletter. And even as I know this, I am certain many of you WANT me to talk about it. I know this because you’ve told me specifically that this topic is important to you. For some of you, the timing is terrible, and for others, it’s like I’m reading your minds. And for some of you, it’s both at once. The thing is, there’s never a good time for this conversation. Many of the newsletters I’ve written have prompted you to reach out and tell me you feel like I’m writing them directly for you. I’m not a mind reader, and I’m not writing to one person. The reality is, we’re ALL going through the same things with our senior dogs, in one way or another. We’re all struggling with anticipatory grief, quality of life, end-of-life decisions, and grief in surviving pets. But we don’t all FEEL like we are surrounded by people who get our pain, our struggles. We feel alone, on an island, without the support we need for our aging dogs. We feel like we are the only ones who are dealing with these issues, when in fact, it couldn’t be further from the truth. I have, on average, 3 “how do I know when it’s time” conversations per week. So it’s weighing heavily on all our minds. We want to do the right thing every chance we get. I talk to as many of you as I can each week to offer support where I can. And, many times, as an advocate for senior dogs and an adopter of the oldest ones I can often find, I need the support myself… and I thank all of you for bolstering me when I need it. We’re a community even if I’m just the mediator right now. So as the mediator, let me share my thoughts on how to know when the end may be near.

We can all find the end-of-life checklists online. I will point you to a few at the bottom of this newsletter, in fact. But here are some personal stories that I hope are helpful to go along with the formal measuring tools.

Macy Roo was our OG. Ages ago, my husband and I signed the lease on our first apartment together. Next, we ordered a living room couch. A white couch, fyi, not smart for our third stop of the day… Petsmart, where we immediately fell in love with our little Roo, her black, brindle and white coat, and her beacon tail. She was a year old then. When she was heading toward 15 and declining, we found out she had hemangiosarcoma. The doctor at the time thought she was strong enough to tolerate a spleen removal. I was terrified that she would spend the remainder of her life trying to recover from that surgery, even though I knew other dogs who’d had it totally successfully. My gut was telling me it wasn’t a good idea. This may sound silly to you, but I laid down with her that night as we went to bed, looked into my favorite old gray face with the cloudy eyes, and little fuzzy white caterpillar eyebrows that wiggled when she slept, and asked her what she wanted. I cried, and told her that I would do anything for more time with her, but that I just needed to know what she wanted. I told her we would be okay without her, although to be honest, at that moment, I wasn’t even remotely sure that was true. I told her that if she wanted the surgery, I would hold her paw while she had it, but that she needed to give me a sign if she wanted it, because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what was best for her, and that was all I wanted in the whole world. We went to sleep that night, and the next morning, she didn’t get out of bed. She had never done that before, so I took it as her sign. We contacted the doctor to set our appointment, and soaked up every second we had left together. She declined over the next few days, so we knew even as our hearts broke, that we had made the right decision.

ALLY

Ally was actually the second dog we adopted, but the first that we put to sleep. We adopted her when Macy Roo was 2, and she was 1. Once again, PetSmart saw us coming. We went in for dog food, and this gorgeous white dog with a black face and black freckles came over to me, stood on her hind legs, put her front paws on my ribs, closed her eyes, and smiled. I was a goner, of course, who wouldn’t have been? Ally was our problem child. She had behavioral problems we could never fix, despite spending much time and energy on trying. We did the best we could for her, and she loved me fiercely every day of her life. She tolerated my wonderful husband, too, as though he was an accessory she allowed me to have. When she was 14, she really started to decline mentally. She was more aggressive, and she just never seemed happy. Medically speaking, she seemed to be ok. We didn’t do a bunch of invasive tests on her because she hated the vet. Was she happy? How was her quality of life? I felt like it was impossible to tell. I talked to a good friend of mine, a vet tech, who suggested we make a list of all the things Ally used to love and all the things she didn’t love anymore and compare the two. I took that one step further and made a third column of all the things that terrified her, because her anxiety was really getting worse. I don’t remember everything on the lists, but I remember the lengths of them. There was one, maybe two, items on the Makes Ally Happy side, a moderate amount on the Doesn’t Like Anymore side, and the longest list on the Terrifies Ally side. That objective exercise helped us decide. Even though she was eating, taking walks, and going potty, with seemingly nothing medically wrong, she was NOT happy unless she was with me, touching me, every second of every day. Once again, we made her appointment and soaked up every moment with her until then.

PURDY

Purdy was our first senior adoption, at age 13. She was an older client’s dog who could not care for her any longer. We had Purdy for a year before we learned that she too had hemangiosarcoma. Before her diagnosis, she was showing symptoms that led the doctor to believe her spleen would rupture in the imminent future, which we were told is a terrible thing to both endure and watch happen. So even though Purdy was still happily taking her old-lady toddles and going to the beach to wade in the water, we had to let her go so she didn’t suffer a medical crisis. We made her appointment, took her to the beach one last time, and then went to the vet (one of her favorite places to go, otherwise we’d have been at home) totally sandy and sopping wet. She played old lady catch with her tennis ball and ate treats while we waited for the doctor to come in. THAT was crashing into the finish line, if ever I have seen it.

ESTHER

Esther Peebody was a failed pig hunter born on Kauai. If anyone had done a temperament test on her out of the womb, they would have seen she’d be an abysmal hunter. She was a world-class goober, though, and we loved every minute with her. At 14, she had an emergency cancer surgery from which she recovered well. A year and a half later, she was still eating most of the time, but she was getting confused, and she seemed to be getting just faintly frailer every day. She slept a lot, and she seemed a bit like her zest for life was fading. I think we didn’t see the decline she had, because it wasn’t critical, emergent, or smack-you-in-the-face obvious. It was like she just stopped thriving. Sometimes we think we waited a bit long for Esther, but since it wasn’t a clear-cut case, it was a tough call. If we look now at the “Esther” that Esther was 6 months before we said goodbye, I think in hindsight it was maybe a bit more obvious than we thought at the time.

GROOT

We adopted Groot at 13 when her owner had to move to a nursing home. She was sick then, but after removing every tooth in her head the week she came to us, she bounced back and became a hilarious, goofy, wonderful little force of nature who never stopped. As she approached 16, she became sick again. We spent a week in and out of the ER, without a solid diagnosis, but with the doctors believing she’d bounce back. We managed to get a vet appointment with a new doctor at her regular clinic at the end of the week. We hoped to regroup, see what their opinion was on her recovery chances and next steps, and move forward. However, while Groot was there, she had a medical crisis that changed everything. We ended up driving her to the ER for euthanasia, because the vet’s office was closing for the day. That one hurt especially because I was under the impression that we weren’t at the end yet, based on my conversations with doctors throughout the week. That was one situation where I don’t feel like we had any say in the matter… any time to prepare or come to terms with her ending. We could have taken her home to have more time with her, or to wait for the hospice vet to come to us. But we didn’t want her to suffer, and we didn’t want to hold onto her longer for our sakes, so we did what we felt we had to do to give her peace.

RADAR

Radar was the dog we sort of accidentally adopted at 16. He was found wandering Denver’s streets in December, bedraggled and miserable. Before his rescuer took him to the shelter, she posted him on Next Door to see if anyone claimed him. Of course, me being me, when the woman said she was taking him to the shelter, I went down there to see about him, and somehow got put on the hook to adopt him if he wasn’t claimed. I think you probably knew where that was going before I ever did. Anyway, almost 3 years later, with heart problems and trachea issues, one morning Radar started having acute trouble breathing. Up until that point, at almost 19, he was eating like a champ, going potty outside, but he’d started to refuse walks because they tired him out too much. Given the color of his tongue during that incident and his stress level afterwards, we decided the kindest thing was to let him go so he didn’t go through that again. Could Radar have lived longer? Yes, the cardiologist said. Some dogs who had episodes like that didn’t have another one for 3 months. But he was already 19ish, so it seemed like it was better to let him go before those episodes became more frequent and even more serious. Letting him go before things got really bad for him seemed like letting him go out on top, which I think is what Radar would have preferred.

In fact, if I look back at my own words, I think that’s the approach we’ve tried to take when we have the option, while not realizing it precisely. I tell people when I talk to them that it’s a good idea to let an elderly dog go before every day is a bad day. But in some ways, it feels like a platitude that all of us who work with end of life situations say: “it’s a blessing to be able to put them to sleep vs watching them suffer… We’re kinder to our animals than our humans.” But while those quotes may seem like platitudes, they are actually true. It may feel like an abstract concept when you’re in the thick of the last time with your dog, but it’s important to try to keep the clearest eyes and head you can. I hear people all the time tell me they hope their dog just passes on his own, so they don’t have to make that decision. Or they’ll tell me that they’re hoping for their dog to tell them it’s time, or for when they can see it in his eyes. But in the reality of our dogs’ lives, that is not what usually happens, although it does sometimes. There’s typically no clear TIME. And if we let our dog pass on his own, he could suffer for some time while he waits. And if you ask us all that question bluntly… Do we want our dogs to suffer? Of course, we’ll say No. Absolutely not. Never. Just like we don’t want our loved ones to suffer at the end. I know it’s not a great, uplifting conversation to have, but hopefully you can learn from our experiences, as we’ve had a good number of elderly dogs and different circumstances with each of them… Through it all, just know you’re not alone, that this isn’t easy, and most importantly, that you’re doing a great job, and your dog loves you. Now, go hug them all for me!

Quality of Life Checklists

• Quality of Life Scale: When to Put a Dog Down by

  Dr. Alice Villalobos, FNAP

• Quality of Life Scale Calculator by Journeys Home Pet Euthanasia

• Quality of Life Scale by Lap of Love

🐶 Sniffing Out Senior Dog News 📰

💵 ‘Economic euthanasia’: 52% of America’s 87 million pet-owning households have decided against vet treatment, and it’s leading to deadly consequences.

🚗 Friends Take A 2,000-Mile Road Trip To Save Senior Dog Discarded By Breeder

📈 Girl Scout Champions Senior Dog Adoptions with Gold Award Project

Senior Dog Cartoon of the Week  

How did we do with this week’s newsletter?

• High Paws

• Pooped in the House