Friday, November 15, 2019. It's been a hard two weeks. Losing Pepper sent me to a dark, miserable place from which I am only now emerging. Terry and Mac have been supportive and very concerned, I know. I love them both for giving me the space I needed, letting me sleep as much as I needed, being supportive when I was awake but pretty much immobile.
But after sleeping pretty much 24 hours, I awoke again at 4:00 p.m. yesterday, and found I was able to look at Pepper's picture without descending into that dark place again, to actually smile at her picture and tell her how much I missed her.
Losing a pet that has meant so much to you for almost 15 years is traumatic, especially so when she has been, as your family deemed her, "Mom's therapy dog." Through much of the upheaval and sadness I experienced in recent years, Pepper was there. Until she herself became seriously ill, she would instinctively comfort me, whether I was crying or simply sad. And having to take care of her, to walk her and to feed her, gave me something that had to be done so I couldn't fall deeper into depression. She was there encouraging me to fight back from the depression that would threaten to overtake my life.
Life had several challenges in store for Pepper, too. She fought back from bladder stones which required surgery, and pancreatitis, which is often fatal in dogs. She had become deaf and had very poor eyesight.
But Pepper was resilient, a fighter, as we came to learn one evening while Terry was walking Pepper and Jenny. As they rounded the corner near our house, they were suddenly attacked by a pit bull. The “rez” dog, we learned later, had been brought to town from a northern reservation and was being kept in a fenced yard. In its frustration at being and fury to get to Pepper and Jenny, the dog broke through a 6-foot high, 6-inches wide plank of the wooden fence surrounding the yard. The owners eventually beat the dog off my family, and Terry carried a bleeding Pepper home in his arms. while his own hands were bleeding from bites he received when he tried to pull the pit bull’s jaws apart and off Pepper. My sweet little girl underwent long and extensive surgery to save her life and her leg, which the pit bull had tried to rip off, and fought back over the next weeks and months to an almost full recovery. Eventually, she was her old self, except that her leg would often bother her in the cold weather.
Finally, though, an aging Pepper met some challenges from which she couldn’t fight back. Her arthritis was so bad that she needed twice-daily pain medication. The meds had a sedative effect so that she slept a good deal of the time. Except in the evening, when she would "sundown," pacing around the kitchen and living room. Dementia had taken over her mind, and she was constantly anxious and confused. So daily "anti-anxiety" meds were prescribed, and the result of these added to the pain meds was that she slept almost round the clock.
She could no longer navigate the stairs to the bedroom; if she managed to get upstairs, she couldn't manage going down without falling several times, and usually concluded the trip with a very graceless landing. So, she slept alone downstairs in a kennel. My son is the last to go to bed in our household, and the last thing he would do every night is carry Pepper outside before placing her in her kennel for the night. Most times she made it through the night without an “accident,” but not always.
She was happiest at the trailer site. She would run and jump like she was "Tigger" when she was outside, but inside she paced with her head and tail down, like "Eeyore," overtaken with confusion and anxiety.
Some time ago she decided she wasn't going to tolerate grooming and would nip at us when we tried to clean her up. Grooming had to take place when she was sedated.
She ate well, and a lot, when she was awake, but she was still losing weight. And all her toilet training went out the open window of her mind. If we did manage to get her outside in time she would wander aimlessly as though she couldn't remember what she was there for.
The onset of winter meant no trips to the trailer, and Alberta's extreme cold would make bathroom visits to the yard at the house problematic.
When she wasn't on the meds, she was in pain and in the throes of dementia. Life on the meds was no life at all.
Does it sound as though I am trying to justify my decision to end my loving and loved pet's life? I think I am at that. It's hard not knowing if this is what she truly would have wanted and not what was just expedient for me. The vet agreed it was the right decision. My husband was very supportive of my decision even though his heart was broken, too. And yet.
I have gone on record with my family that I want no extreme measures taken to prolong my life. If I succumb to dementia I do not want them to have to visit me in a facility where I may not know them, or may lash out at them in my confusion, or have to be sedated to make me easier to deal with. In that event I would arrange my own final decision.
Pepper was my responsibility as well as my joy. I may have been projecting my feelings about such a life onto her, and that is the burden I will have to carry through my life. But, to borrow an idea from Terry, if there is a heaven, and if I get there, the first thing I am gonna say is: Where is my dog?
