The Big Decision

So, I'm sitting here with my dog of nearly 14 years, Chica, who is slowly dying of renal failure.  This adventure is one I could have lived my entire life and never missed.  

Seeing Chica so thin and sickly, I can't help but remember how she's been her entire life with us.  When she came to us, she was about 6 months old and was dumped, or ran off, near a heavy equipment yard in a rural area northwest of Houston.  My horse trainer's husband found her and brought her to the barn where I boarded my horse.  We had been keeping an eye out for another rescue dog as a companion for our other mutt, Travis.  Chica fit the bill.

We figured a lot of food, vet care, and TLC would result in another "perfect" mutt just like Travis was.  Wrong!  In spite of open wounds on her nearly-broken tail and rear end (thrown from a truck perhaps?) nothing ever slowed her down.  She gladly sucked up all the attention she could get, and peed all over the house, dug up every last flower bed in the yard, chewed anything within tooth reach (including the leg on my prized piano) and generally engaged in every bad doggy behavior with true gusto.  I can say she never was malicious - just enjoyed everything life had to offer no matter what we had to say about it.

Training was another adventure in getting to know Chica.  Oddly, as soon as a collar and leash came into view, the tail went between the legs and all that personality was turned off.  Obviously, something really bad connected in her brain with that equipment.  She learned everything we asked her to, but always with the attitude of, "Don't beat me!  I'll do it right!"  Really sad.  

Chica spent years trying to tell us that she really didn't want to be the dominatrix she was forced into being, but we didn't recognize it.  It wasn't until over two years ago that I started watching The Dog Whisperer, and finally figured out some of her odder behavior.  The first day I changed my attitude, I got the leash out, hooked her up along with Maggie and off we went for a long walk.  What a difference!  As usual, she was scared to death and slinking so closely around my legs I nearly tripped over her.  We just kept right on going, and by the time we turned the corner, her head came up, the tail came up, and she really started noticing her surroundings.  It took several months to convince her she didn't need to bust through the front windows every time the pizza dude showed up, but even that finally came to an end.  What a joy to watch this unsocialized dog get a new lease on life.  And now it's almost over.

This past summer, Chica began to slow down.  She wasn't able to walk as long on our daily walks and they got shorter and shorter and finally ended in October.  We figured it was the severe arthritis in her right rear leg after TPLO surgery 5 years ago.  Then the vomiting and loss of urine control started.  Off to the vet to discover her kidneys had probably been failing all summer.  By the time we had it diagnosed, the damage was too great, and she's spiralled downward quickly since November.  

My heart breaks for anyone who has to watch their dog die knowing there is nothing to be done.  We've done our level best to keep her comfortable in these last weeks, and now we're down to the last days.  After slowly eating less and less, and now 20 pounds less than her ideal 60, Chica stopped eating yesterday, and isn't drinking much at all today.  The hard part is that she has short periods of nearly-normal behavior.  Quick play periods with Maggie, wagging her tail at the door when she hears the keys, snugging up with me and my husband.  It's so dam difficult to know when it's officially Time.  We have a call in to the vet to see if he can give us some tranquilizers for her before we bring her in for the last visit.  With so many trips to the vet and needle sticks lately, she gets traumatized when we take her there now.  I don't want that to be her final experience.

It's close.  It's so close.