bd
Story, painting and photograph by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
Vale to my old dog, old dog, old dog bd, who died yesterday, pretty old but not as old as I would have liked him to be. And this is for him, this consideration of euthanasia.
A year and a half ago we went together to the animal doctor, me crying and him grimacing, and I asked the doctor to euthenize him. The doctor said no, he was still in pretty good shape, and he was right, it wasn’t an end ailment he had, not a spiralling sickness, it was temporary and he got over it. The doctor didn’t give me medication, he gave me some painkillers because I asked for them, and I put them away.
But on Monday we went there again, walking the kilometre or so along the road. Bd’s tumour had grown immense, and it was now changed, and it was damaging, nasty, impossible to heal. I had received a second opinion about removing the tumour, it was the same as the first, it was too big to remove. I took a plastic box with the last piece of my birthday cake in it, chocolate gateau, because I wanted the doctor to euthanize bd, and I wanted him to have that cake before he died.
But the doctor refused. Refused to euthanize him and refused to treat him. I suppose he had a particular line, at which he would euthanize, and we had not yet crossed that line. And I had already told him I had received some ointment from another doctor, so I suppose he felt he could also refuse treatment. Also, I suppose that he hastened the line, and in his own way that was treatment.
And so we came home and the next four days were kind of like a horror movie, and I was a bit frozen, a bit slow, as I went over options, went over possibilities, tried to figure out how to do this, how to do that. On Thursday I gave bd a painkiller. Painkillers are essentially useless for this kind of thing because once you start them you are going to have to continue them, the pain will be much worse when you come back to it. So okay, I thought, I can do this if bd can have painkillers, and if I can have antidepressants. Because the pain of this is going to kill me too. But with those two things it’s doable.
The other doctor came on Friday afternoon. We didn’t talk about it in advance. He brought the drugs. He described the situation, the options. I held bd, and we ended his life.
A year and a half ago I thought it was simply my judgement, that I was not capable of knowing, because I am not an experienced doctor, when is the time for ending the life of something. Now I think that is only half of the story. It is also that the doctor treating the patient is not capable of knowing, because they are not close to the patient, when is the time for ending their life. And that, I think is the fundamental difficulty.
I, here, was thrown into the dark ages.
He didn’t get his chocolate cake, in the end, he didn’t get any chocolate. The pound said they would collect his body and they came pretty soon. They said they would also take some flowers or food if I wanted. While I waited for the pound to come and collect his old body, I made him a brown felt lions collar, I put it in a little pouch with a block of chocolate.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
I know how sad you are, Lehan. I lost mine on Jan 17. He was 15-years old and had cancer – had to be euthanatized. I was with him until the last second. He had exactly the same expression as yours in the painting. He went to sleep gracefully. ….15 years together……
LikeLike
Wow. That’s a lot of companionship years we’ve lost recently. You guys all have my sympathies too.
LikeLike
Lehan I’ve read this 3 times and can’t get through it without sobbing -my heart goes out to you . I had my poor old cat euthanised in November -the 24th -at 4pm. She was my companion for 15 years..Now I still can’t walk down the pet food aisle in the supermarket. I have her ashes , still unable to scatter them . I think they may stay with me.
She was Scarlet Scumbag -Scummy for short . A cat will answer to anything as long as you sing it !!!
Take care Lehan -I wish you happier times down the track.
LikeLike
Lindy, maybe take the ashes with you to the supermarket and wander down that aisle imagining her running down and knocking all the cans off onto the floor. Empowerment.
LikeLike
That’s the thing em. He was a healthy dog. He ate better food than the other dogs around. So he didn’t look wasted. So that vet, who appeared to have forgotten what a dog who eats real food looks like, just kept sending him home. But that’s not the only thing I think. Euthanasia is still in part an economic debate. People will pay for an operation. People didn’t have that kind of money thirty years ago. And that means that everyone has to, it’s a terrible thing not to. So euthanasia is further away from the debate than it even was the last time it was really debated. But bd’s tumour wasn’t operable, not just the huge one on his leg, also the really big one in his stomach, on his neck, under his arm, and that I double checked.
But he was a healthy dog. Perhaps the problem is me, I’m an old person.
LikeLike
Perhaps that’s the real change in the state of medicine, it’s beginning to obfucate, mystify itself, to sneak past our common sense. If the dog was healthy, the tumour was healthier.
LikeLike
He got roundabouts the same level of treatment that I do these days when I go to the doctor. That’s considerably less than a younger fitter more attractive human gets. But I suspect it’s still substandard for that younger fitter more attractive human.
LikeLike
Take yesterday for example. I thought I’d go try to do something about the inner ear infection and the vertigo, because the cold medicine clearly hasn’t worked and it has been a few months now. I walk into the ENT doctors at 1 and it’s empty. Oh, they say, we stop registering patients at 12, you’ll have to come back for our evening session, 4:30 to 7:30. So I go back at 5:30 after work, the place is packed, about 30 people. How long is the waiting time? I ask. Oh they say, there are 67 people on the waiting list. Now correct me if I’m wrong but could that little waiting list be lessened a little, is there some simple way that could happen, if I think it through? Oh yes, I’ll just go home and hope it gets better.
LikeLike
How was it “helpful” to my dog that his life should be extended. How did it help him. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t just wander out on to the road and sit in the sunshine. His life was heavily controlled, restricted, and he couldn’t walk a long way, he couldn’t stand a long time, he couldn’t do anything he wanted. That’s not the kind of medicine that I think is medicine. Medicine has become something else.
LikeLike
The only thing I could have done for him was to get rich, buy him a farm. And I’m not capable.
LikeLike
It’s always sad.
LikeLike
My thoughts are with you, Lehan. Our pup had an anterior cruciate ligament repair last year (at great cost). When the second knee went there were some discussions about not repairing/waiting for the knee to heal by itself and develop arthritis/euthanasing him.
Of course we coughed up the money and he’s still with us. Here’s Seasick Steve singing about his dog:
LikeLike
Big, if you play this backwards he gets his dog back. And if you play the track before this one backwards, his runaway wife comes back and if you play the track before THAT backwards, he gets back all the money he wasted on liquor and gambling.
The cure for the blues ? Reverse audio 🙂
LikeLike
I thought that all secular music played backwards praised Satan, or encouraged non-missionary position sex. How wrong have I been?
LikeLike
Gotta get one of them backwards o’phones. Just testing’ a theory, you understand…
LikeLiked by 1 person
How sad Lehan, my thoughts are with you. I had to do something similar with our blue healer, Zeberdee, fantastic dog.
LikeLike
I figured, Hung, as this is Japan and he’s now floating around in the in-between lifes and in need of comfort that we should revisit all the places we used to go to. The sea mostly, where he could dig holes and chase seagulls and bark a lot. So that’s where we are right now, we’re up in the sky.
LikeLike
And that Norah Jones, she used to come with us in the car as we drove up the road and drove back again.
LikeLike
Lehan, please accept my sympathy for the loss of your great friend. We had to say goodbye to Kali our 14 year old Shar-Pei – “Goddess of Destruction” – by euthanasia – a few months ago. She had her third seizure in a few weeks and it was too cruel to nurse her go through another. Every time we walk down the pet food aisle at Coles (because we still have the cats George and Tasha), we fee a pang of sadness for Kali.
But ….. Emmlett 1 said “I can just see Kali walking around wagging her tail (which was Kali’s constant activity in life) in doggy heaven. And so it is.
LikeLike
He was a dog who knew exactly when to go to the kitchen and cause me to get up and get some food. He was singlehandedly responsible for some of the most delicious snacks of my life. Amply did we both prosper.
LikeLike
It has been a long time since I ended a sandwich. The end of a sandwich always makes me cry.
LikeLike
How about remembering how much he loved those sandwich ends. And think of all the curly hair you gave him as a result ! They were good times, mate. And if you can remember the good times, you can imagine that good times will come around again. Different good times, but good times none-the-less.
LikeLike
I want my dog back.
LikeLike