I am sitting on my kitchen floor, on Spidey's hang out. Spidey is my old dog and his hang out is two 3' x 5' rugs pushed together and covered with a sheet with his dog bed that's wrapped in a contractor bag and duct tape, with a zipper furry cover, a water proof crib mattress cover and a towel on top. A dog equivalent to the hospital bed in your living room for your elderly family member.
Wheaten's are supposed to live to be about 12 or 13, so his 14 years is a long time. This year he got suddenly old, slow and messy.
An hour from now, a vet is coming to the house to euthanize him. Joseph and I will be with him and he'll be in his home, on his bed. When we pick our five year old son up from kindergarten, we'll walk him home and then tell him that our old dog has died. We've talked about it a lot. I've tried to prepare him for the day I knew was getting closer. He talks about how sad he'll be. I talk about how Spidey will be free of his body and his spirit will be like a puppy again and he will be so happy.
I have been telling Spidey we are going to free him of his body. I have been asking my mom to meet him on the other side and my grandmother too. I'm imagining them walking up to Spidey and welcoming him with hugs, rubbing his ears, saying hello. Showing him how he can still see us even though we can't see him.
I wonder if I will hear his ghost feet walking in the house at night.
I wonder if our little boy will be okay with it all. We'll have Spidey in the house until Desmond is home from school. Joseph has dug a hole in the yard. We'll bury him all together, the three of us. I have a pink sheet picked out to wrap him in and I think I will write some love notes to Spidey on the sheet with marker. We have candles lit. We have flowers. I am terrified.
I am scared I am making the wrong decision. I hate that he is still alive and that I am making a decision to end his life.
He can still get around, although he is very wobbly on his feet and if he falls in the right way on the hard floors, he can't get himself up because he slips. He ends up like a fish out of water, flopping around until someone comes to pick him up. He can barely see. He walks into walls and doors and doesn't always see what's happening. He can hardly hear anything, he doesn't react when I walk into a room or when I call his name. He can't find things with his nose very well anymore. But he still likes food. And he loves to be pet and hugged and kissed. He has lost control over his bowels and for what seems like the better part of the last year we have been cleaning and cleaning and cleaning up after him, daily, now several times a day. I always said I was okay until he started peeing all over the place, which has begun now too.
I don't know. He is old, he is wobbly, is he in pain? Probably. He is skin and bones. And fur. His skin allergies are bad, he is scabby and probably itchy. That used to happen in the summer time but it's still happening now. He has chronic eye infections and one ear that is prone to infection as well. Some days he has a sty on his eye that bleeds. Some days, the growth on his lip bleeds.
But he is always happy to see us. Always looking for his food. Always grateful for attention. He has been a super sweet, over sized lap dog.
I feel guilty for not having been a better dog parent. I should have walked him more. Taken him more places. We used to take him on hikes and swimming. Then we had Desmond. It was so hard for me to walk the two of them together, I didn't do it enough. I think Spidey had 9 decent years and then 5 years just hanging out. Tolerating Desmond's rough attempts at play or torture.
Spidey drives me crazy. He has a way of blocking my path as you move through the house. Getting in step with me and then stepping right in front of me and stopping so I almost fall over him. He has peed and pooped on everything this past year. He didn't like other dogs after he had a fight with a dog at a friend's house. The dog was a black Portuguese water dog. For a while, Spidey was aggressive towards black dogs and was pretty racist, than it was all dogs. He is the kind of dog that would not run away but he might wander off if you're not watching. He loves kids, he loves all people. He barks like crazy at the mailman though, even though they always give him cookies, or maybe because they do. He loves a ride in the car and sticking his head out the window to feel the wind. He used to know peoples names. We used to go to Long Island together to visit our friends a lot and I would say, "Where's Maureen?!" and he would look at Maureen and jump up and put his paws in her lap and kiss her. He new a lot of names.
He was born on August 19th of 2000 and I bought him for myself as a birthday gift when I turned 26. I found him a few days before but waited to pick him up on my birthday, Nov 19. He was 3 months old and was a brown and black bear cub. So cottony soft and fluffy and for a few days he seemed sad. But he warmed up to living with me in Long Beach, Long Island and we would go for walks on the beach, even in the snow. When I gave him his first hair cut, all of the baby brown fur cut away to a creamy white fur and he was a new dog! I put a red bandanna on him. He was so handsome.
I thought, when I got him, I was going to take him cross country with me in an RV. But I chickened out and moved to the Hudson Valley instead and here we still are.
This is hard. This is so hard. This is much harder than I thought it would be. It's been so difficult to care for him this year and after I had Desmond he really went from being more like a person in my mind to being more like a dog. I thought this would be easier. But it is just terribly sad.
I had a pug that I got when I was 12. I had him put down when I was 24. I lived alone, he was my dog, I made the decision and I took him to the vet by myself and it was not horrible. It was sad but it was okay. This feels much harder. I think it's because there are more people involved. Joseph and Desmond. Joseph loves this dog as much as I do and Desmond hasn't known life without him, even though I don't know how much he has added to his life other than being a constant furry presence. One that made Desmond whine and cry if his breath or his farts were too stinky or if he was in the way of his games or sitting on his toys. We had to keep Spidey away from Desmond when he was a newborn and Desmond away from Spidey because he was too old for rough-housing. They have co-existed and tolerated each other but still, Desmond loves Spidey. And I think, Desmond worries about death. He knows my mother died and that it is sad for me. My uncle just died this Fall. Another woman he knew died this past year. I think he worries about me dying. He is always asking me if I'm young. Reassuring himself that I am not old and dying. Not yet. I tell him I am young. I think I am. I hope I live to be very old.
The vet is coming soon.
After she puts the dog down, he will be here with us until school is out. What will we do with him? Keep him in the kitchen? Wrap him in a blanket and put him outside? What will I do with myself? How do you wait for your kid to come home from school so that you can tell him our dog has died and now it is time to bury him? How will we bury him? What will it feel like? What will it feel like tomorrow? What will it feel like this summer, walking over his buried body in the ground?
I feel scared. And anxious. I want it to be tomorrow already.
I will miss Spidey's warm furry body and face, his cataract eyes, his smelly old dog kisses.
Powers that be, give me strength to walk through this day for Spidey, for myself, for Joseph and for Desmond. Let me get to the other side with some sort of grace and ease. I am going to try to remind myself to just float with the current today. I don't like this. Not at all.
