Bye, sweetie.

I just had my last Shiba Inu put down this morning.  I hate this part of having pets.  I’ve been through it many times now, three times just in the past five years, and it doesn’t get any easier with experience.  But this one was particularly hard.  Partly because I’ve been anticipating it so long–I started thinking she might have only weeks left last fall, somewhere in the neighborhood of Thanksgiving.  She kept fooling me–she’d do worse for awhile, or suffer a new decline, or stop eating, and I’d think maybe a week, maybe a few days, and start trying to figure out how I’d schedule it.  It felt cold-blooded to me to even think that way, but I need at least a day for these things, I can’t just have a critter put down and head straight in to the office and be OK to work and teach.  

The winter was hard–she needed to go out several times every night, and it was too cold for me to feel OK about leaving her out, but she needed some time to take care of things–20-30 minutes.  So I’d get up and put her out, set my alarm for 20-30 minutes, and get up again and go out and get her.  2-4 times/night.  It screwed with my sleep cycle, and when she had a particularly bad night, I often didn’t handle it well.  

But things got better as the weather warmed up.  Not only did she seem to be doing better in general, I was more comfortable leaving her out for an hour or two or three, and would just bring her back in when I woke up again in my own natural time.  And she seemed to level out–that gradual decline seemed to stop, and we got into a new routine, and I adjusted to a new “normal”.  

So I stopped trying to predict when it would be time.  I even re-arranged my moving plans for this summer to accommodate the possibility that she might make it that long and I’d be taking her with me.  I got used to the fact that I couldn’t do any overnight trips, because she just got too anxious whenever I tried taking her anywhere–even a mile or two–in car or van.  I got used to  feeding the dogs being a 15 minute process so I could mix some canned food (the pricey kind) into her kibble and hand feed her and hold the water dish for her afterwards.  Twice a day.  I’d ask myself–and her, I do talk to my animals (but do not yet expect them to answer me back, at least not in English)–I’d ask myself from time to time why I was doing this, why I was keeping her going, it wasn’t like she was going to recover and it wasn’t like she was having much fun, mostly sleeping. But neither did she seem to be suffering most of the time, and when I held her to feed and water her–she made a nice warm, live, furry armful (and mostly had a good appetite), so I just kept on doing it.  Even though I knew that things would be easier with her gone (and they will be, but I’m not ready for that yet.)

In some ways lately she seemed to be doing even better.  She spent more time awake and on her feet during the day.  She started noticing me when I was in the back yard and following me around (as best she could, she could hardly see and had a lot of trouble travelling in a straight line.)  She responded more to my voice.  It was almost like the cataracts and deafness let up a bit.  

So I probably wasn’t as ready for the end as I might otherwise have been.  She had a kinda rough night Friday, but nothing worse than she had had several times over the past few months, and she’d recovered those times, so I didn’t think too much about it.  And I had a busy day yesterday (will probably post about that another time); I left the house early and didn’t get back until around 4.  She had gotten herself stuck by the fence in the back yard and I heard her doing her distress bark, so I hurried back and rescued her, and she took off doing her little hopping move around the yard.  Within an hour I knew we were in for a hard night, because she just wouldn’t/couldn’t settle down for more than a few minutes; then she’d cry, I’d help her up, and she’d be off again.  I finally figured out she was trying to lick her twat and couldn’t reach it, so I brought her in and used a warm wet cloth to try to clean and soothe it.  Which did seem to help, but in the process I realized she probably had a bladder infection.

I tried giving her tranquilizers, and that helped enough that she could sleep up to an hour at a time, but then she’d do her distress call, and I’d try to do something to help.  In between I’d try to sleep, and I must have dozed, but I don’t think I ever got properly to sleep.  By the middle of the night, I was pretty sure this was it, but was still thinking in terms of getting her through to Monday morning, when our regular vet would be available.  But I gave her several times the dose of tranquilizer that had zonked her for all night a few previous bad nights we’d had, and it still wasn’t keeping her out for more than an hour at a time.  

When she got me up at 5:30 and again at 5:40 and again at 5:50, I decided to be up for the day, and gave her some more tranquilizer.  At which point my brain started cranking over, and I realized that not only did we REALLY not want to be doing this for 27 more hours, we didn’t have to.  I called my vet’s phone # and got the # for the emergency vet, and arranged to bring her in to be put down.  I’m recording this for myself to have later on, but I think I”ll skip the details of that trip.  Suffice it to say that it’s done.

I left the body at the emergency vet’s.  Tomorrow I’ll find someone to do the cremation, and then pick her body up, bring it home so CJ can sniff it and know what happened to Mika,  get Mika cremated, and add her remains to my growing collection.  Then I can begin adjusting to life without her.  

The timing is so perfect for me (except maybe for how fast I had to adjust from disposing of all my teaching materials to dealing with her final hours) that I almost feel guilty.  No, I do feel guilty.  I feel guilty that I didn’t do it sooner and made her work so hard to stay alive for all these weeks and months, and I feel guilty that I couldn’t/didn’t keep her alive longer.   It’s not rational, and I know it’s not rational, but then–it isn’t rational.  

But in some ways, the timing was right for her too.  She was born about 6-7 weeks after I moved down here–and it’s about 6-7 weeks before I move to Oregon.  That feels fitting to me.  If she had survived to do the move, the move itself would have been traumatic for her.  Except for trips (some of the quite long), she spent her whole life here, so this was home to her, and Oregon was not going to be home in the same way.  She didn’t have to suffer through being ripped away from her home and asked to adjust to a new place right at the end of her life.  

So altogether, I don’t think it could have been done much better.  And it’s still hard, hard, hard, and I hate it.  

Here’s a picture or two from better days.  

She was the best hunter of the pack, at least since her mother died.  This was her last kill.  If I remember correctly, CJ had caught it, but CJ seems to be missing the gene that provides the instinct to do the killing head-snap.  She doesn’t catch things very often, but when she does, she doesn’t seem to know what to do with the prey once she has it in her mouth.  So Mika would take it away from her and kill it.  That happened several times over the years–this was the last time.  At least it wasn’t a bunny.  

 

 

Below, there she is out in front, taking point, on one of the last good walks she ever took.  This was last August or September.  We walked about an hour and a half, and she kept up really well.  The Shiba girls, both Mika and her mother, always ranged ahead on our walks–I think it’s part of the breed’s hunting psyche.  CJ used to run back and forth between me and Mika out on point–since we’ve been down to just me and CJ on the walks, CJ doesn’t quite know what to do.  Unless she has a critter to chase, she just sticks by my side.

 

 

 

 

 

OK, that’s enough, or I”m gonna start crying again.  Goodbye sweetie, and I’ll see you on the other side if that’s the way things work.

 

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