In Memoriam Jasmine Maurer (Family Pet)
My wife always says before giving bad news, always say whats ok. When I called swiftwind23 to tell him I wouldn't be at dinner and poker because Jasmine had a seizure, apparently I was not clear as to whom Jasmine was and he was worried that a human being had had a seizure and maybe that twelveoaks had. So. I include in the In Memoriam that Jasmine is a dog and not a sister or something.
When Cosmo was about 6 or so, she really wanted a dog. Mongasika was only 2 and so she wasn't quite as vehemant, but anything her sister wanted, she wanted as well. It was all we heard for a while. Dog dog dog. My wife and I put her off for a good while, explaining she needed to be older, that she would not want to take care of a dog, etc. The clinching point was when a neighbor up the street had puppies and was giving them away for free. We had visions of Cosmo coming home, having convinced the family that we agreed to take one. We knew we had to act fast.
tha_monsta's wife worked with an animal shelter. We asked her for an older dog.We didn't want to have to teach it potty training. We didn't want it chewing up our furniture. We didn't want it running around and tearing up the house. We ended up with Jasmine. She was about 8 years old when we got her. Well into doggy middle age. She was a sedate grand lady. Her only real bad habit was that if you left food unsupervised, she would eat it. Apparently she was a street dog and her scavanger skills were honed to a fine art. She could get food from the table, she could probably eventually get food off the kitchen counter.
She had other problems as well. She somehow managed to stink no matter how many baths we gave her. Her farts were truly things of legend. She had a bit of a limp in her hind leg, the vet thinks it was an incident with a car that never fully healed. Her head had a bony ridge that was the result of malnutrition over a long period of time. Even when she was new to us, she developed the nick name "Litch Dog." But she put up with everything with stoic good humor. Even when we got the cats, she would occasionally bark at them and chase them to show her dominance then go back to sleeping in her bean bag chair. Life went on like that for about 4-5 years
Over the past year or so, things started sliding downhill for her. She started losing weight. She had a week or so of really bad vertigo where we were all sure we were going to lose her. She could barely walk. She threw up everything she ate. It was pitiful. Back in December the vet said that she was becoming dangerously unhealthy weight wise, and that her heart murmur made it almost impossible to put her under and run any tests that might hellp us hep her. In any event she was already around 14 years old and that was pretty old for a dog her size. She started having trouble with incontinence which was quite the treat I tell you. I probably cleaned up dog mess ona weekly basis. So I was sure that despite losing weight, she was eating! Often my wife or I would carry her up the stairs so she could sleep in our room.
Last night, just before we left to go to our weekly Wild Wing dinner and poker event, she had a massive seizure right in the middle of the lviing room. She thrashed. her teeth chattered and her entire body was stiff as a board. It lasted about five minutes. After that she was calm but still rigid and still had trouble moving at all. We called the vet and took her in. The vet told us that the likely reason for the seizure was a brain tumor. And that the brain tumor would also explain the incontinence and the loss of weight. He said that in order to help her we would have to spend several thousand dollars in diagnostic tests. And that the results of those tests would likely be fatal whatever they were. The best we could really do was determine her condition and medicate that condition for the remainder of her life, which would likely be short and filled with seizures. Fairly quickly we agreed that the best option was Euthenasia.
loresinger brought the kids to say good bye. Jasmine was fairly heavily sedated so she would not have any more seizures. They got to cry and pet Jasmine as much as they wanted. Mongasika had made a little picture of a heart with Jasmine inside of it and wrote Jasmine's name at the bottom. We all cried ad reminised about good Jasmine stories. I pointed out that she got a last meal. That she ate some pizza that the Mines Kids left out on the coffee table. The girls went and sat in the lobby with loresinger while twelveoaks and I watched the doctor Euthanize our dog. It only took a few minutes before Jasmine was gone. The vet made an impression of her paw to take with us. The medium was sculpy. We were given instructions on how to properly bake sculpy and laughed a bit about the irony.
This weekend we will probably buy a bush and plant it in the yard. We will put Jasmine's sculpy paw print under it. It is interesting. When I saw my dad's body back in 1996, I lost my faith for about a year. I said that there was obviously no god, that my dad was gone, and that there was no afterlife to look forward to. Ultimately I did come back to my faith and have remained strong in it, if not my religion. This time, when Jasmine died, I did feel a sense of peace. I was reminded of the statement made, I think it was by DeLenn in Babylon five that said "The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make this station and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff. We are the Universe, made manifest, trying to figure itself out" I really felt that when I said good bye to Jasmine. We are all the same thing. We are all star-stuff. And that Jasmine is still part of us.
When Cosmo was about 6 or so, she really wanted a dog. Mongasika was only 2 and so she wasn't quite as vehemant, but anything her sister wanted, she wanted as well. It was all we heard for a while. Dog dog dog. My wife and I put her off for a good while, explaining she needed to be older, that she would not want to take care of a dog, etc. The clinching point was when a neighbor up the street had puppies and was giving them away for free. We had visions of Cosmo coming home, having convinced the family that we agreed to take one. We knew we had to act fast.
tha_monsta's wife worked with an animal shelter. We asked her for an older dog.We didn't want to have to teach it potty training. We didn't want it chewing up our furniture. We didn't want it running around and tearing up the house. We ended up with Jasmine. She was about 8 years old when we got her. Well into doggy middle age. She was a sedate grand lady. Her only real bad habit was that if you left food unsupervised, she would eat it. Apparently she was a street dog and her scavanger skills were honed to a fine art. She could get food from the table, she could probably eventually get food off the kitchen counter.
She had other problems as well. She somehow managed to stink no matter how many baths we gave her. Her farts were truly things of legend. She had a bit of a limp in her hind leg, the vet thinks it was an incident with a car that never fully healed. Her head had a bony ridge that was the result of malnutrition over a long period of time. Even when she was new to us, she developed the nick name "Litch Dog." But she put up with everything with stoic good humor. Even when we got the cats, she would occasionally bark at them and chase them to show her dominance then go back to sleeping in her bean bag chair. Life went on like that for about 4-5 years
Over the past year or so, things started sliding downhill for her. She started losing weight. She had a week or so of really bad vertigo where we were all sure we were going to lose her. She could barely walk. She threw up everything she ate. It was pitiful. Back in December the vet said that she was becoming dangerously unhealthy weight wise, and that her heart murmur made it almost impossible to put her under and run any tests that might hellp us hep her. In any event she was already around 14 years old and that was pretty old for a dog her size. She started having trouble with incontinence which was quite the treat I tell you. I probably cleaned up dog mess ona weekly basis. So I was sure that despite losing weight, she was eating! Often my wife or I would carry her up the stairs so she could sleep in our room.
Last night, just before we left to go to our weekly Wild Wing dinner and poker event, she had a massive seizure right in the middle of the lviing room. She thrashed. her teeth chattered and her entire body was stiff as a board. It lasted about five minutes. After that she was calm but still rigid and still had trouble moving at all. We called the vet and took her in. The vet told us that the likely reason for the seizure was a brain tumor. And that the brain tumor would also explain the incontinence and the loss of weight. He said that in order to help her we would have to spend several thousand dollars in diagnostic tests. And that the results of those tests would likely be fatal whatever they were. The best we could really do was determine her condition and medicate that condition for the remainder of her life, which would likely be short and filled with seizures. Fairly quickly we agreed that the best option was Euthenasia.
loresinger brought the kids to say good bye. Jasmine was fairly heavily sedated so she would not have any more seizures. They got to cry and pet Jasmine as much as they wanted. Mongasika had made a little picture of a heart with Jasmine inside of it and wrote Jasmine's name at the bottom. We all cried ad reminised about good Jasmine stories. I pointed out that she got a last meal. That she ate some pizza that the Mines Kids left out on the coffee table. The girls went and sat in the lobby with loresinger while twelveoaks and I watched the doctor Euthanize our dog. It only took a few minutes before Jasmine was gone. The vet made an impression of her paw to take with us. The medium was sculpy. We were given instructions on how to properly bake sculpy and laughed a bit about the irony.
This weekend we will probably buy a bush and plant it in the yard. We will put Jasmine's sculpy paw print under it. It is interesting. When I saw my dad's body back in 1996, I lost my faith for about a year. I said that there was obviously no god, that my dad was gone, and that there was no afterlife to look forward to. Ultimately I did come back to my faith and have remained strong in it, if not my religion. This time, when Jasmine died, I did feel a sense of peace. I was reminded of the statement made, I think it was by DeLenn in Babylon five that said "The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make this station and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff. We are the Universe, made manifest, trying to figure itself out" I really felt that when I said good bye to Jasmine. We are all the same thing. We are all star-stuff. And that Jasmine is still part of us.