Rascal
A few years ago, my brother made a couple of blog posts about his dogs. They were more like eulogies, as each post was made after the dog in question had died. Having known each of these dogs, having welcomed them into our family, and having played my part in raising them, I was deeply touched by my brother's words. He loved Lotus and Ludwig very much, and it's clear that our family has a bond with our pets that transcends the usual pet/owner relationship.
I've been living with Liz for several years now, and we started dating in late 2002. She's always had Rascal. And she's another example of someone who looks at her dog and sees her small, furry child. A child she's helped to nurture, to teach, to heal, to be happy. Rascal is now 13.5 years old, and her age has been weighing heavily on Liz's mind for several years.
Rascal was about a year and a half old when Liz adopted her from the SPCA, and had already given birth to a litter of puppies. She was in poor health, most of her hair had fallen out, and it turns out she had a serious birth defect in her kidney plumbing. So, pretty much right away, Liz needed to invest a great deal of money, care, and time into surgeries and medications to get Rascal into a better state of health.
That was almost a dozen years ago.
Since then, Rascal has been there for Liz through trying times, through new boyfriends and breakups, through frustrations in school, trials and tribulations in her career path, and through moves all over the place.
Rascal has traveled across this country three times.
While my family has always (for better or worse) taken a laissez-faire approach to our pets' health, Liz has always been right on top of Rascal's shots, vet appointments, and other important health tasks. This has rubbed off on me quite a bit, and it makes me even sadder to think back to my family's hands-off methods. On the one hand, maybe we didn't have the ability to dump all that money into our pets. But, on the other hand, our little furry kids likely would have been happier and lived longer. If there's one upshot, it's becoming clearer to me now: at least we weren't always thinking about the impending death of our little loved ones.
See, Rascal's sick. She's got a small growth on her upper jaw, and we just got confirmation that it's melanoma. Research suggests that, in long-haired retrievers with dark fur, melanoma (especially when found in the mouth) is a Very Bad Thing. I don't remember the exact statistic, but it's highly unlikely she'll be with us a year from now, and six months might even be a stretch. And, given that serious treatment would likely mean removing a large portion of her jaw, neither of us want to put Rascal through it. We just went to a consultation with a doggie oncologist, but we're both of the mind that decreasing her quality of life for the sake of longevity is not right.
It's just really hard to look at someone you love, and know that they are dying. And she has no clue.
But I've got to give Liz serious credit for her thoughtfulness. She noticed, even before I did, that I might have a hard time of it, since I basically had to watch my mom decline into cancer. It's something I've long since faced and grown to understand, but it's still an old wound that gets itchy when our fur-kids get sick, and you've got to make the choice of whether or not to treat it.
I've been living with Liz for several years now, and we started dating in late 2002. She's always had Rascal. And she's another example of someone who looks at her dog and sees her small, furry child. A child she's helped to nurture, to teach, to heal, to be happy. Rascal is now 13.5 years old, and her age has been weighing heavily on Liz's mind for several years.
Rascal was about a year and a half old when Liz adopted her from the SPCA, and had already given birth to a litter of puppies. She was in poor health, most of her hair had fallen out, and it turns out she had a serious birth defect in her kidney plumbing. So, pretty much right away, Liz needed to invest a great deal of money, care, and time into surgeries and medications to get Rascal into a better state of health.
That was almost a dozen years ago.
Since then, Rascal has been there for Liz through trying times, through new boyfriends and breakups, through frustrations in school, trials and tribulations in her career path, and through moves all over the place.
Rascal has traveled across this country three times.
While my family has always (for better or worse) taken a laissez-faire approach to our pets' health, Liz has always been right on top of Rascal's shots, vet appointments, and other important health tasks. This has rubbed off on me quite a bit, and it makes me even sadder to think back to my family's hands-off methods. On the one hand, maybe we didn't have the ability to dump all that money into our pets. But, on the other hand, our little furry kids likely would have been happier and lived longer. If there's one upshot, it's becoming clearer to me now: at least we weren't always thinking about the impending death of our little loved ones.
See, Rascal's sick. She's got a small growth on her upper jaw, and we just got confirmation that it's melanoma. Research suggests that, in long-haired retrievers with dark fur, melanoma (especially when found in the mouth) is a Very Bad Thing. I don't remember the exact statistic, but it's highly unlikely she'll be with us a year from now, and six months might even be a stretch. And, given that serious treatment would likely mean removing a large portion of her jaw, neither of us want to put Rascal through it. We just went to a consultation with a doggie oncologist, but we're both of the mind that decreasing her quality of life for the sake of longevity is not right.
It's just really hard to look at someone you love, and know that they are dying. And she has no clue.
But I've got to give Liz serious credit for her thoughtfulness. She noticed, even before I did, that I might have a hard time of it, since I basically had to watch my mom decline into cancer. It's something I've long since faced and grown to understand, but it's still an old wound that gets itchy when our fur-kids get sick, and you've got to make the choice of whether or not to treat it.