From Behind the Lens
My Uncomplicated Friend
By Colleen Swartz
July 22, 2007
This month’s article has nothing whatsoever to do with motorcycles. It does, however, involve dogs, love, life and pain… all things I think you can relate to.
I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren’t certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying. ~George Bird Evans, Troubles with Bird Dogs
Back when I was married and living on an 18 acre farm, we had lots of dogs. All were adopted from the humane society and these animals ran free on the farm and led the life of dogs. They relied upon each other and had a pack of their own. They were special members of our family and we mourned when they became old and passed away, but it was always their choice, sneaking off to the woods to quietly lie down and move from our lives as quickly and quietly as they had appeared. We always buried them beneath the huge mulberry tree that grew broader and larger and far beyond it’s stated life span with each passing season. I always liked to think that the strength of my beloved Bill (a black lab) and Ted (a yellow lab) and Boo Boo (a Newfoundland mix) seeped deep into its roots and gave it the strength to continue filling my baskets with delicious mulberries every June. I would spend hours picking the berries and that time was marvelously spent recalling the hours spent with the dogs, walking in the woods, watching them marvel at the birth of a new human in the pack, collecting maple sap in the spring and raking leaves in the fall. Their life and death was on their own terms and I was a farm girl, comfortable with that.
When I divorced in 1999 I lived in an apartment for a year unwilling and unable to take any of those glorious farm dogs from their utopia. I did what was best for them, but I missed my canine companions terribly. In 2000 I purchased my new home and decided it was time to bring another friend into my lonely life. I went to the humane society to see who was there for adoption. I love big mutts and had my eye trained on a few of them that were jumping insanely at the kennel doors and barking loudly screaming “pick me! pick me!” from their ample enclosures. All except one little dog. A small, white, Pomeranian lay on his small carpet sample in the corner of his large kennel terrified of all of the barking. He would occasionally stand and pace in a circle, never leaving his 14” x 24” piece of carpet. I doubted if he would even leave it to walk across his kennel to the water and food dishes mounted on the cage door. My heart sank for him. He appeared so timid.
I asked the attendant to let me take him out alone into the play yard just to give him a break from the barking and confusion of the kennel house. I wanted to do this more for him than for myself. I wasn’t interested in a small breed dog or what I called an “old lady’s dog” in the least, but he looked as if he could use the break. Outside he turned into a different dog. He spun excited circles and smiled with his tartar teeth. He stood on his hind legs and stretched his little front feet as far up my leg as they could go smiling like a fool. He melted my heart but I still refused. “Oh, look how he loves you!” exclaimed the attendant to me as I stood with my arms crossed across my chest, peering over my nose down at the little shit. I looked at him and said aloud, “Don’t go getting any ideas. I need a yapping lap dog like I need a hole in my head.” But the little dog was undaunted by my coolness and continued to worship at my feet putting on a show that reminded me of a Chinese acrobat on crack.
Such was his display I asked to see his chart. This little dog had been surrendered from an old man who found himself in an uncomfortable position. He needed to either surrender his 30 dogs that he was breeding or have them taken from him and be charged with animal neglect. This little dog was one that hadn’t been put down, yet. He was an intact male (undoubtedly father to many) who had his long white hair shaved short to control and treat the infestations he had endured. His toes were still scabbed and scarred from many years of standing on the coarse wire floor of his enclosure and his health was poor. The old man had written about this dog, “His name is Buttons and he will do anything for a milk bone.” I called out “Buttons” to the little dog who although he couldn’t come because he was still standing on me, looked at me no differently when I said “Buttons” as he did when I said “Tuesday” or “Get lost”. I offered him the small Milk Bone that was proffered from the attendant’s front pocket and he sniffed right past it to lick the back of my hand instead. The chart also told me that “Buttons” was three years old. You didn’t have to be a veterinarian to know this was no 3 year old dog. He was older, but how much older I would not discover until our first vet visit.
By the time I left there, having filled out the adoption papers and needing to wait 24 hours for my application to be approved, my heart was breaking having to put “Buttons” back in his kennel that scared him into a different dog. He cowered in the corner looking at me anxiously wondering why I wouldn’t take him home after that show he had put on for me. I told him I would be back.
When I was approved and went to get “Buttons” I had a serious talk with him. I told him that if I was going to own an old lady’s dog, I sure as hell wasn’t going to call him “Buttons”. I asked him what he thought of “Scooter” and he sat at my feet panting heavily and smiling so hard his face looked like a snarling clown. Buttons, Scooter, whatever. It didn’t matter because I never had to call that dog. He was never more than 5 feet away from me at all times anyway.
I took him to the vet to have his “intact maleness” removed and have a general health exam. I picked a vet who would also board him as I had a vacation to Texas that had been planned for months that would take me out of town for 10 days. I figured it was a good time to give him the “once over”. The vet called me a few days later to discuss Scooter with me. First off, Scooter was definitely not 3 years old. “This dog is a minimum of 8-10 years old if he is a day”, she informed me and “His teeth are horrible. I can’t imagine he has eaten any of that dry food that they gave him at the humane society because his teeth were so bad. We removed 6 of them and cleaned the rest and put him on antibiotics for too many reasons to mention.”
My $50.00 adoption fee was immediately eclipsed by my $600.00 vet bill just one week into our relationship. I’m over it now.
Upon bringing him home he immediately urinated on my new tile kitchen floor. I wondered if I had lost my mind, but I continued to remind myself that Scooter wasn’t raised in a normal home. I tried to crate train him which just caused him to completely freak out barking in his duck-quack voice (the vet thinks he either damaged his vocal chords from years of barking or had a botched “debark” procedure) and defecating all over crate and then spinning circles in it until he and the crate were covered in feces. I sold that crate at a rummage sale explaining to the woman who was buying it that my Pomeranian couldn’t be crate trained. She told me that she bred Pomeranians and asked to see Scooter. I let him out of the back yard and she exclaimed at his perfect white coat telling me that his puppies would have brought as much as $1,600 for his rare white coloring. It made me think of that sick old man and wonder how much he had made off of the damage that he did to my little dog. The woman asked if she could breed her bitch with him and I told her that he was neutered but that he would have a great time trying if she was up for that.
Despite a bit of separation anxiety and more vet visits than I would like, Scooter, my son Jack and I loved our life together. Scooter never needed a leash as he would always follow me without question. His whole purpose in life was to know were I was at every minute of the day and attend to my every need the best a little dog knows how to. He sleeps with me, he won’t eat unless I am present and wants to be everywhere I am. Scooter spins incessantly but always to the right. He never turns left. If he wants to go left he will simply turn right 270 degrees. He expresses joy, fear and distress by spinning, a trait thought to be from either a stoke or more likely, just being in a cage all of his young life. I haven’t tried to put him in a cage again after piecing his past together in this way.
Scooter’s remaining teeth soon had to go. His horrible breath, and the bloody bits of dry food he choked down every day convinced me it was time to take all the bad teeth out of his mouth. This left him with one tooth. I’m not sure what good it does him, but it was the only one that survived as long as he has so I didn’t want to take it away. Now he enjoys soft food and the occasional meatball.
Scooter got older and his eyes began to cloud with cataracts. His vision was getting worse, but he still could navigate especially in good light and he could hear. He followed me with his hearing listening for the click of my shoes differentiating them from the sounds of all other footsteps. Then one day he went blind. At the time the vet didn’t know what had happened. I found Scooter sitting with his face in a corner of a room shaking with fear and pain. I rushed him to the vet and she was clueless as to the cause, thinking he may have hit his face on something or had an aneurism in his eyes. The outcome was the same. He had damaged his ocular nerves and was blind. In the time since, I have done a bit of investigating and I have convinced myself that Scooter had glaucoma, a manageable disease in humans, but in dogs the sudden increase in eye pressure crushes the fragile ocular nerves.
This situation was manageable as he adapted, as all dogs do, to change. They live in the moment and he learned his environments (going to work and home with me every day) and he navigated with his other senses. Until his hearing went. Yes, Scooter is now deaf, blind and without teeth. Did I mention he started losing his hair last year? Yep, I own a blind, deaf, toothless and balding 18 year old Pomeranian.
After he started losing his coat, I took him to the vet and asked her opinion on his quality of life. She gave him a thorough examination and informed me that he was not in any pain and that his heart still sounded strong. She told me that if he were her dog, she wouldn’t put him down. She assured me that although he roams the house like a pinball in a pinball machine bouncing off of objects and backing up only to hit another, it wasn’t as disturbing to him as it is to us. I took her advice, went shopping for little doggy jackets to keep him warm through the Wisconsin winter and we trudged on together.
Now my little dog is a shadow of the dog he used to be. When I brought him home 8 years ago I called him “Rooter Scooter” from his energetic spinning and playful bows, now I call him “Little Bug” because of his slow, aimless paths through his environment not unlike an ant; searching for food and mom with only his little pink nose to guide him. He still spends most of his waking hours trying to figure out exactly where I am so he can be near to me but he is rarely awake now that he prefers to sleep up to 20 hours a day. I have to wake him to go outside to go potty, I have to wake him to feed him and even sometimes to get a drink when it is hot. His pink tongue hangs out of the left side of his mouth most of the time with no teeth to hold it in and when he sleeps his tongue dries out like a stiff, dry thumb hanging from his mouth.
He is absolutely adorable and still sleeps with me every night (now occasionally waking up to walk straight off the edge of the bed) but I wonder what kind of life he has now. The first 10 years of his life had to be hell. He can’t tell me what happened to him, but I know because I have never known this much or this kind of love and commitment from anything ever before. Why would he revere me so much if I hadn’t been the one to change everything he knew about humans? He spends a great deal of time with my parents who spoil him senseless, but still, when I come home from a trip to collect him from “Grandma and Grandpa’s” house he crawls into my lap and trembles with excitement at my return. He is laying at my feet under my desk now as I write these words.
The reason I am writing these words now is because I think Scooter had a mild stroke this weekend. I found him unable to put his left front paw on the ground and then when I checked it for wounds he put it down and was unable to put his right front paw down. I picked him up again to inspect that one and when I put him back down he stumbled sideways falling flat on the floor. He seemed to recover somewhat but when he went to poop today he lost it again crashing sideways in to the ground. He can’t seem to figure out what house he is in and fell down the stairs for the first time.
I think it is time. I cry every time I seriously consider putting him to sleep, wishing to ask him if he is ready and knowing that I’m not. I pet him extra and wonder what it will be like stepping away from the kitchen sink and not having to look so I don’t step on him sleeping at my feet. I take extra photos of him and when I see them my heart breaks seeing his useless eyes and deaf ears and empty mouth and his patchy hair but knowing the heart inside is pure gold. I feel good that I was able to nearly double his life, trying to make up for the senselessness and ignorance of the first ten years by lavishing him with attention and care these final eight, but still, I pray that one morning he just won’t wake up and I won’t have to be the one to make the decision for him, but I know that it is my responsibility and I have to make it.
Like the opening quote… “they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying.” And it is so true. I need to decide when Scooter has had enough. I don’t know if I will ever be done with him. I know I will always carry him in my heart as he has carried me in his every single day since we met.
Rest in peace my little bug. Momma will miss you.
And that is how life has forced me to see it, from behind the lens