It’s been an eventful couple of weeks.
Before the region I live on the edge of was ravaged by a firestorm, and before I started to have sleepless nights waiting up for The Fireman who was out there doing his bit round the clock, and before I had to bake Little Bean’s birthday cake and get organised for her first birthday bash, I had to take my dog to the vet and hold him while they put an IV in his leg and injected him with green liquid in order to kill him.
Ferris was a five year old golden retriever and he was my shadow, my comforter, my jester; my hairiest, sweetest friend. He had been ill for a while. We found out just before Bean was born that he had congenitally small kidneys and eventually renal failure would kill him. He was wasting. Impossibly good-natured, he remained cheerful through most of it.
Need to stick me with some more needles? No problem! Need to stop feeding me food I actually like and give me this prescription guff? Okay! Need to stop taking me for walks because I’m too weary to handle it? It’s fine! Need to pay more attention to that pink screaming thing in one hour than you’ve given me all week? No worries! I’ll just sit here and sleep at your feet. Or outside the shower door. Or right here next to your bed.
His decline, in the end, was steep. It was too much to ask of us, to see him like that. And too much to ask of him. We made the decision to euthanase him on Friday the 6th February. It wasn’t his fault that it would have been my late father’s birthday that day, but it made it harder for me all the same. I couldn’t – can’t – stop conflating the images in my mind: My father, grey with pain. Thin. Hollowed from the inside out. A supreme effort to remain composed and stoic in his final hours and to say All The Right Things in order to please us before morphine brought relief and release and peace. My Ferris, so emaciated his whole pelvis showed through as if his skin were simply draped on bone. So exhausted he couldn’t walk up one step and so sick he couldn’t drink water. Until the end, battling to raise a tailwag to show us that it was okay.
My grief for a dog is nothing to my grief for a much-loved father but the mechanics are much the same.
Except this time there hasn’t been space for it.
I feel almost ashamed of this small, personal sense of loss in the face of mass tragedy. What right have I to mourn when I have my home and my family? And how can one go about the business of mourning when the evidence of life and joy is bounding about the loungeroom in her birthday dress?
The fact remains that we owe it to Ferris to mourn him well. He earned the highest of titles he could have hoped for: he was a Good Dog.
Losing animals really, really sucks. I keep rats and it’s bittersweet because they love so much and live such a short time. I am truly sorry for your loss.
I’m so sorry for your loss. We’ve had a golden for 9 years now. I bought her as an engagement present for my husband and she’s been with us through almost every stage of our lives together. I cannot imagine what it will be like when we have to say goodbye to her…
What a beautiful post – and a fitting way to honour Ferris, an equally beautiful dog.
I vividly remember the day our golden retriever had her own appointment with the green fluid (16 years ago!). Your post made me bawl my eyes out!
I found your blog the other day through blue milk and I’m enjoying your writing and perspective.
He was a Good Dog. And a Fun Dog, a Silly Dog, a Hungry Dog (aren’t they all), a Warm Dog, and a Friendly Dog. But most of all he was your dog. I can’t miss him like you will, but I miss the fluffy guy anyway.
‘Honour’ was the word i was going to use, but Not Drowning Mother got there before me. I feel as if i’d met Ferris – for which thank you. More than met, got to know a little. And he was great. 80)
I second thingummy’s compliments (in comments on a different post) about your writing. This is good enough to be the epitaph on the stone, if it fitted.
‘The mechanics are much the same’ – clear-sighted as ever, and makes sense of the feeling ashamed you mention. Doesn’t matter if one grief is ‘smaller’ than another. This phrase explains what i try to tell people; every grief matters and needs to be grieved, in its own right.
You’ve had a rough few months. {hugz}
Before the Boychick was conceived, I spent a month taking our cat (given to me by The Man on our 3 month “anniversary”) to the radiologist. The month the Boychick was born (when The Man was still on his pitifully short 3 weeks’ paternity leave), we found a lump indicating his cancer was back. We euthanized him when the Boychick was 7 months old, the very week we were moving in to a new house (did we choose then because it would be too damn hard to move him with us, only to lose him shortly after? was it selfishness that cost him another week? did our distraction with the move make him suffer longer than he should have? these are the questions I tortured myself with). We euthanized my childhood dog just 10 months later, many many months after we should have noticed something wrong and taken him to a vet (can we say “denial”?).
These losses were colored by and colored the Boychick’s first year and a half on this earth. They hurt all the more and took less of my attention and emotional energy because of the presence of my child.
Which is all to say: this stuff is complicated. And I feel you.
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I rescued my Annie dog in April. She was taken from a so-called “shelter” where the Animal Welfare League found her living in a shed amongst 162 other malnourished dogs.
Though Annie is stubborn, cranky and fiercely protective of me, I can’t imagine living without her.
I understand your pain.
Thank you.
Oh so many (((((((hugs))))))) I have lived through that with a kitteh whose kidneys failed, and our dear dear beloved dog is just slightly starting to slow down, realising she won’t be around forever… and I wish I had met Ferris, so I could give him a pat, because they love their parents/owners so so so very much. Do not feel ashamed of your grief. xx
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