Our baby girl has left the building

Butthead has always been our little girl. Not little in the sense that she’s smol (she has been at the 100lb mark for quite some time), just that she came to us at 18 months old and we really see her as the energetic, happy girl. After Le Moo died, Butthead changed. Not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. She became a senior dog almost overnight…grumpy, moody, needy, and her body began to show her age. Her backend became weakened, she started showing signs of advanced arthritis, and she limped more often than not.

Ignore my legs.

It was like she waited until after Le Moo had passed to need us. Not that she wasn’t attached to us and wanted our attention all the time, but it was not health-attention, it was happy attention. We called her Miss Congeniality, because she loved everyone. Even people who didn’t like dogs, she loved them despite that (we don’t have many of those types in our lives), and wanted pets from everyone. Once she made the circuit of a room, she would happily settle with someone…then do it all over again at some point.

She loved to run in the yard and chase and bark at birds. She learned this from Le Moo, and she kept up with this custom until her last week. Well, not the running so much, but the bird barking was in full force. Despite the fact that the other two dogs were not necessarily dog-dogs (none of them played together), they all got along without any issue. Even with Grumpuss (Butthead) and Golden Girl (also grumpy and still withdrawn) and Tator Tot not being playful or engaging, they were a fine pack.

Can you see Golden Girl in the background? That’s her favorite spot.

Ugh, ignore the hairy carpet!

Well, Butthead went ahead and got old. Her backend got weak, she began dragging her back feet, and her front wrist had terrible arthritis. She was on so much medication that our shelf looked like a pharmacy. Three times a day she got pills…and she hated it. She fought us every time, spitting out pills after she sucked off all the peanut butter. We had to change our routine time and again to trick her. At the end, she was just refusing altogether. She didn’t give up on life, though, and as often as she could muster, she would run out into the yard to try to keep up with Golden Girl. Sometimes she would fall, sometimes her knees would collapse and she would end up dragging herself for a short bit before we stopped her from her forward motion. I will say that her last couple of days, a week maybe, it snowed here and she was still trying to walk through to snow even though she could barely walk on her own. We had her in a harness to help her, but she was so determined to go where she wanted to that it made it hard for us to keep up. During her last week with us, she was in an assistance harness, where we could help her walk, get up, hold her up while she peed or pooped, and generally help her be mobile.

For about a week to 10 days before she left us, she was panting a lot and was extremely restless. We were worried she was in pain and so we attempted to increase her pain medication. When that didn’t help, we set an appointment at the vet’s to see what was going on. That was on a Tuesday, and the appointment was Thursday night. In between, she was panting so much and so hard that it scared me. At one point, she was asleep, breathing heavily, and we had trouble waking her up. Finally, we were at the appointment time and the vet came in for the exam. They listened to her heart and lungs, then started palpating her abdomen…and asked if they could go do xrays. Which of course we said yes, and they took her from the room, with the vet tech using the harness to help her walk.

The vet came back without Butthead, and I felt a flutter of panic. The vet said they found a mass that they believe is on her spleen, but they wanted to ultrasound to get a better idea for what was going on. They were looking to confirm the mass’s location, and also look for free fluid in her abdominal cavity. We agreed and the vet disappeared to do the ultrasound. This time they brought our baby girl back into the room, and the vet said she had a tumor on her spleen. It was 50/50 chance that it was benign or malignant…no way to know without a biopsy and that required surgery. They said the surgery was an option to remove the spleen and the mass, since they didn’t see any free fluid (blood) leaking from the tumor, and there were no other masses in her organs that they could see with an xray. That didn’t mean there weren’t any other tumors, or microscopic tumors, that would indicate malignancy and spread…it just meant they couldn’t see them (yet). The vet was ready to set up surgery for the next day, but we weren’t ready. The problem was, these types of tumors were known to rupture without warning, and that is not a good way for a dog to go. We had very little time to make our decision…and not a ton of solid information to go on.

But I had reservations, because of Butthead’s age and quality of life. So we took her home and put her on steroids in the hopes that she would have some energy to move around and do the things she needed to do until we could make our decision for surgery or not. And “not” meant this was the end for her. Hub and I talked a lot the next day about options, survival rates (if the tumor was malignant, the best we could hope for was 3 or 4 months, the worst was her dying on the table…or dying during recovery, or dying in a week), and her quality of life. Even if the tumor was benign, she would have to had gone through a major and traumatic open abdominal surgery and recovery from said surgery. At that time, she was not able to get up and stand on her own, how were we going to lift her to her feet (100lbs of her) and assist her mobility if she had stitches from chest to groin? And again, even if the tumor was benign, at 12 years old with the other issues she had that would not resolve from the surgery, how much longer would we want her to go on like that?

My beautiful, loving, aging Grumpuss. What did we see for her future? What did we want to put her through to hold onto her for another 3 months? 6 months? Thursday night was the vet appointment, Friday afternoon we decided it wasn’t fair to her to ask her to go through this big surgery that might or might not buy her some extra time…where she would need our constant assistance to stand, move, pee, poop…and might STILL be in pain and anxious and maybe living with cancer ravaging her body. Because if this was malignant, it was likely a hemangiosarcoma, which is an aggressive tumor that spreads through the blood vessels…and would likely invade every organ. (Due to her age and the size of the tumor, I suspected it was a malignant hemangiosarcoma…this is a common cancer for large, old dogs.)

I called the in-home vet service we used for Le Moo, and at Hub’s request held off the appointment until Monday. Then we just started spending as much time with her as possible. We gave her delicious foods, people food and dog food, and hardly left her alone. But as Friday went on, and Saturday moved in…she was clearly struggling to breathe. The large tumor was moving her organs around and they were pressing on her lungs and her heart. And I feared the idea that we were keeping her alive for just an extra day or two with the potential for the mass to rupture at any time. The steroids didn’t seem to be helping, and if we were treating her anxiety enough to make her feel better then she was too doped up to go outside to potty, or even move, or even wake up. She went almost 2 days without pooping even though we were feeding her. Saturday at noon I called the vet service and they were able to reschedule for Sunday….and so we did.

We continued to spend time with her and we cried. A lot. And at some point realized that not only did this take Butthead away, but it was the final connection we had with Le Moo as well. So it felt doubly hard, and I feel we are grieving for Le Moo all over again. We watched Butthead carefully and panicked a little bit every time her breathing became extremely labored. I don’t think either of us slept Saturday night, and Sunday came too quickly and too slowly. She was clearly not feeling well and she remained restless. If she slept it was for short periods of time, then she would just start panting again.

The lovely and amazing vet arrived, and took a few minutes to ask us about Butthead, as well as Tator Tot and Golden Girl. I had already setup the room for Butthead, and Hub carried her in there. We brought in some tasty foods, and we closed the other two dogs out of the room. And we fed Butthead chocolate chip cookies (which she ate maybe 3/4 of one) and meat loaf. She devoured the meat loaf, which I had warmed up in the microwave (along with the cookies). She also ate some whipped cream, which Hub always shared with her when she was well, which she lapped up off my hand. The vet quietly and gently reminded us what she was going to do and what might happen, and while we were feeding Butthead, she injected a sedative into Butthead’s shoulder that would make her sleepy.

At this point with Le Moo, I remember her head getting very heavy and I remember her falling asleep with a long, deep sigh. Like she was finally able to relax from her dementia and her anxiety and her physical pain. Le Moo did everything with confidence, and I think she had no qualms about falling asleep. Butthead was the meeker of the two, and generally more anxious. Butthead fought the sedative…and I don’t mean that in a physical way. Every time she put her head down and closed her eyes, we thought she had drifted off. But as soon as one of us moved, she would lift her head and look at us again. Three or four times this happened, and the vet let us know that this wasn’t unusual…the sedative was really just so that Butthead wouldn’t jerk her leg away when the final medication was injected. And the vet let us know when she felt Butthead was ready, but encouraged us to take the time we wanted and needed with Butthead. Finally Hub said we would never be ready, and told her it was okay. It took much longer than with Le Moo for the vet to confirm Butthead’s heart had stopped…and again I think she fought it. I don’t know why I feel that way, but something inside me said she fought. Not that she wasn’t ready to go, just that she didn’t quite understand what was happening.

The vet gave us private time with Butthead, and we let the other dogs into the room so they could understand what was happening. Not surprisingly, Tator Tot went right to look for the food she could smell in the room and completely ignored Butthead’s body. Golden Girl seemed uninterested, but Hub says on the way out she did inspect Butthead’s body. When the vet came back in, she and Hub wrapped up Butthead with her favorite toy (Ella-phante) and the heart I crocheted for her…and they carried her away. I was alone in the room, and although I didn’t cry a lot during, at that moment I basically collapsed to the floor, sobbing. I’m pretty sure I was wailing, but my face was pressed into the carpet because I couldn’t move. I was so weighed down with the pain and the grief that I just stayed splayed on the floor. Finally, I attempted to sit up, but my body folded in half because it felt like I was being pressed to the ground with a weight that would never let up. Hub came back in to find me that way and we sat on the floor together and wept. For what felt like forever, but was probably closer to 15 minutes.

We helped each other up and went to tend to the other dogs.

I will never ever forget that day, or that dog, or how our lives changed in that moment. Because like when they come to us, we become different people…when they leave us, we are also changed forever.

Good night my girlie. Please come and visit when you can. And know that our love for you extends beyond this realm.