Over the course of my adult life, I have had seven dogs. Four are no longer with us, but three of them still are. One of them is a bubble-headed purebred cotons, one is a wily trickster we found hiding under a truck in the Mojave desert, and the big black one……..well, she’s my favorite.
Her name is Coda, and those of you who have watched my tastylive program have probably heard her snoring loudly in the background. She’s a love, and a very good girl.
I’m very close to Coda, because she as always struck me as the most kind-hearted of all our dogs. When I was writing my novel, I even took the liberty of naming the large black rocket in the book after her, which I always thought was a funny inside joke just for me. Of course, the presence of three dogs throughout the book was also no accident.
We got Coda as an adult dog. As with all of our canines, she came into our lives by happenstance, only about a week after our 16-year-old yellow lab Kobe passed away (which I wrote about at length here).
In May of 2015, we found her at a dog rescue fair, and she was considered what was euphemistically described as a challenging adoption. She snapped so viciously at people that they didn’t think anyone would want her, but she was instantly a love with us. The rescue organization was so happy someone was willing to take her that they waived the $400 fee.
That was almost a decade ago, and she has been the source of much joy in our family. In spite of their relatively short lifespans, adult dogs seem more or less immortal as you become used to their daily presence, but every now and then, reality intrudes.
This is one of those times.
In recent weeks, I noticed she was lagging behind worse and worse on our 5:30 a.m. walks. I scolded her for being “lazy” (which, I assure you, is a source of agonizing guilt for me as I type this), and it got so bad a week ago that she laid down on the sidewalk and refused to go any more.
She had other symptoms as well. She was “gacking” with her throat frequently, even though nothing was coming out, and she started panting quite audibly. The breaking point for me was when I offered her a snack, and she turned her head away. That’s when I realized something was terribly wrong, and I immediately contacted an emergency veterinarian so she could be seen at once.
I drove her over there on Saturday evening, and they took her vitals and did an ultrasound. What they discovered was a large amount of fluid in her abdomen and, much worse, around her heart.
A tumor had grown next to her heart and was spitting out blood, and it was having to struggle to pump, since it was being suffocated by, ironically, a huge amount of blood trapped in the sac around her heart. She was experiencing heart failure, and she was close to death.
Over the course of two hours, the very kind staff there took immediate action. They shaved parts of her front leg, put in a catheter, sedated her, and shaved away parts of her torso so that they could insert a needle to suck out the fluid from her heart sac and her belly.
Coda is an exceptionally sweet girl and faced all of this with courage. She was kissing and nuzzling the staff as they were helping her, and they were able to extract about 100 ml of blood from around her heart and about 700 ml of fluid from her belly.
We took her back Sunday night, because even though her symptoms had abated, we felt there was more fluid to get out. The doctor agreed, and they requested a much larger needle from another facility and told us to come back Monday afternoon. We did so, and over the course of four hours, they were able to extract about four times as much blood from around her heart, which eased her situation greatly.
I wish I could tell you that was the happy ending of the story, but it isn’t. This only alleviates the symptom, and not the cause. We have no idea how quickly the bleeding tumor could re-fill her heart sac and kill her. It could be hours. It could be weeks. We are taking things one day – – one hour – – at a time. She is vastly more comfortable now, but she isn’t eating much, and what used to be her home just days ago and turned into a hospice.
I decided to take her on a walk around the block, just to give her a bit of exercise and spend a little time with her. Since I realized this might be one of her last, if not very last, walk with me, I took a few moments of video. When I watched it later, it was bathed in an eerie pink light I had never seen before.
Four dogs have already left our lives. In two cases, we came home to their bodies, since dogs often prefer to leave this world peacefully and alone. In the other two cases, the dogs had reached such a physical state that it was kinder to have them put down instead of letting them suffer any longer. In every instance, there were tears and memories, but no regrets. They all had very good lives.
This is the first instance I’ve ever had of actually living out an unknown amount of time with someone I cherish. I can already feel the ache of her absence, wrapped around me like an ever-tightening gauze. Anticipating her absence is alloyed with still being able to squish her ears and rub her belly.
All we can do at this point is embrace every moment that we have remaining and know that her spirit will never cease to be intertwined with our own. I only want her to know how loved she is.
There isn’t much time.
