Archive for category dogs
Crappy mobile video of Frances and Mickey
It’s crappy. I’m warning you. Looks much better in a small 2-inch screen. but I’m adding it here, just for prosperity. I took this video with my old Treo in July 2007. I had just given Fran and Mick a bath and they did their trademark running around the house. If you look closely, you can see that the “toy” in Mickey’s mouth is Shelly’s slipper. Keep in mind, that when this was taken, Frances was 6 and Mickey was probably 14.
Hopefully, this is my last Mickey-specific post. It’s been harder than we could have imagined. Watching this is the last time I get to say “hey bubba” (one of the many nicknames we had for him). I wish we had taken more videos of the little guy. He was so much fun to watch.
Mickey under the fig tree
We just finished burying Mickey’s ashes under our fig tree. I’m glad we’ve come full circle. It’s been nearly three weeks since we lost him and I couldn’t possibly go another week without finishing things.
Mickey loved the fig tree. Well, he loved the figs. During the summer and early fall, he became obsessed with the fig tree. He’d wait patiently by the back door hoping that someone would notice him and carry him downstairs to the backyard. We used to think his fig love was a phase, something cute to watch. He’d race outside and start smelling figs that had fallen on the ground. Then he’d carry the perfect one back to a corner of the lawn, his chest puffed out, and almost ceremoniously, eat the fig. And then he’d go back and perform the ritual. He would eat until we took him inside. If left to his own devices, he’d eat figs until he popped or turned green, or both. And don’t get me started about the choke cherry tree.
He became such a fig hog that we’d have to first go outside, clean up all the downed figs, let him out, and then give him a hand-picked fresh fig. Talk about spoiled. During the day, when we were home, and left our bedroom window open, he’d plunk himself down on Shelly’s pillow and gaze out at the fig tree. Was he counting the figs on the ground, those still on the tree, or silently cursing the many birds that got to the figs before him? He’d sit there and sniff and smell, and then look at us with his brown eyes, begging us to take him to his beloved tree.
So, that’s now where he rests. Among his figs.
Our life now has a big hole in it. We miss his talking, crying, spinning 360 degrees in the air, chasing his tail, chasing his sister, play fighting, leaping off our bed, racing around the house, hanging out on the couch, leg hanging over the edge, watching the world go by. His insistence that 9pm was the exact time he needed to go out on his nightly before bed walk. Who cares if we were in the middle of a movie or TV show. He’d cry and throw himself onto our chests, daring us to ignore him. Padding back and forth on the couch, he’d cry at each of us until we agreed.
We miss him begging for food, delighting in romaine lettuce, carrots, red cabbage, and anything that fell on the floor. We miss him greeting us at the front door, hopping with delight. We miss him shaking his cloth toys, the legless bunny, the green bear, hollowed out shells of toys. We miss him sauntering around with nylabones and throwing them into the air. He actually threw a lot of his toys into the air … and caught them. We’ll miss him playing kitchen soccer with himself and batting his rubber balls back and forth.
We miss the way he snuggled into bed with us, keeping us warm through the night. His bed-hogging and desire to have breakfast and get up and start the day around 6am even on weekends, however, are not missed.
We miss his ability to coax Frances to eat dinner every night. He’d stare at her, beg, clean up after her, and generally made getting her to eat that much easier.
We’ll miss the way he’d love to ride shotgun on roadtrips. He’d be on alert for nearly an entire six-hour cruise down Interstate 5, jonesing to pee at every pit stop, making his mark, crying as we drove up to Shelly’s mom’s house in LA, running gleefully through her house and into the backyard.
And, like this morning, we miss taking him on walks, or rather him taking us on walks, walking purposefully throughout the neighborhood, knowing when it was the Saturday walk, the evening walk, the regular weekday morning walk.
Anyway, that’s that. Mickey is now a wonderful (and still painful) memory. He’s set the bar pretty high for our future dog children.
Enjoy the fig tree, mister.
Losing a dog
We lost Mickey on Tuesday. After a torturous decision, we decided it was the right thing to do and we put him down. Losing a dog like Mickey is one of the hardest, most emotional things that I have ever experienced.
His pancreatitis came back with a vengeance and last Monday morning he began to get sicker than he’d been two months earlier. A trip to the vet on the Thursday prior and a quick ultrasound turned up nothing, but we were sent home with antibiotics to combat a potential urinary tract infection. (Ever since his first pancreatitis and gall bladder attack in June, he developed a nearly insatiable thirst for water. And although he became a prodigious pee-er, he never went in the house.) A Monday afternoon appointment got him a camel back of fluids and some pills for back pain by the #2 vet at the office whose bedside manner was like a scolding nursery school teacher. A few hours later, after not eating, throwing up twice, he barely moved. Hardly the Mickey we know. He didn’t want to go on a walk. I struggled to get him to walk a half a block, and after he went to the bathroom, I had to carry him home. And then he followed us wherever we where and flattened his body against the cool surface of the floor. Poor little guy, so profoundly uncomfortable.
Shelly took him to the emergency vet in the evening. She left him in their care for tests, more ultrasounds, and a date with the specialist. He had become so nauseated that he was drooling. Tests the next day uncovered nothing but bad news. His pancreatitis was back and his gall bladder problem had gotten much worse, even with his new diet and all the meds he was on. And as an aside, they don’t know why they hadn’t caught it before, but they had discovered a heart murmur. A mild one, a two on a scale of ten, but a heart murmur in any case. So, they wanted to remove his gall bladder before it literally burst. An option that we had discussed back in June with the doctor, but because of his age, around 15, and his other internal infections she didn’t recommend it. So, here we were two months later, with a different doctor and opinion who told us that she would have had it removed then and his chance of making it through the surgery even now was about 80% because he was such a strong dog. However, the surgery was no guarantee that the very painful pancreatitis might return. So, quality of life, logic, gut instinct, and everything else raced through our minds. The price tag for the surgery, between $5,000 and $8,000, was also a concern.
The decision was made and then the painful realization of figuring out how, when, where. Do we bring him back home? Could we get someone on short notice? Shelly called one person who made house calls like this, but her lack of, shall we say, compassion and bedside manner, ruled her out. “Where you at?” was her first question, and it was downhill from there.
We made the painful drive down to San Leandro, paid the necessary bills, and then joined our little guy in a room. The step by step here is too raw to recount, so let’s just say that his wagging tail and little cry when he saw us, didn’t help make things any easier. Shelly wanted to see him completely out of it so she could come to terms with our decision. I just wanted to see the Mickey I know. And then we did a crazy thing and had the doctor bring him some food and water. He had to be pulled away from both because by now all the pain meds had kicked in and he was feeling better. I was there until just before the final moments. Couldn’t go through watching the whole thing. Just couldn’t.
The days since have been numbing. To make matters worse, Frances has been completely unfazed. She’s almost giddy. Yes, Mickey had been the alpha. A little 25-pound tough guy to her 75-pound wuss. She’s now back to being queen bee and seemingly enjoying every minute of it.
He graced our lives for nearly five years. It would have been five years this November. Back then, Frances was still recovering from IBD and the eating problems that came as a result. Our vet told us another dog might help snap her out of not wanting to eat. And then, that summer, in our neighborhood, Mickey appeared. He showed up nearly every morning at an intersection, just around the corner from our house. He was off leash, but very cute and inquisitive, so naturally I tried to befriend him and find out his story. Over the course of a few weeks, he came to expect us, and on few occasions, crawled into my lap for a treat. Frances was excited to see him and one day he followed us around during our walk. And most important, Frances would eat treats when he was around. I figured out his name from a handwritten collar. One day, I noticed him following a woman around and asked her what kind of dog was he and how old? She said she didn’t really know because she was watching him for a friend and she was thinking of taking him to the pound because her friend had decided to move out of the state and didn’t want him back. I immediately replied, well, before you take him to the pound, bring him to my house and we’ll place him.
A few weeks later, as we were leaving the house to go see a Sunday matinee of “Lost in Translation,” up drove the woman, complete with Mickey, a dirty bathroom rug, and a huge bag of store-brand dog food. And boom, he was in our house. And boom, he was in Shelly’s lap, and boom, 15 minutes later Shelly declared him placed.
And Frances went from a timid, skinny, spoiled only dog to a more loving, sometimes fat, spoiled second-in-command dog. We later found out that we were his fourth family. He grew up in east Oakland on 82nd (I think he was named for Mickey D’s), and his first owner died and a family next door adopted him. The family then moved and left him, and the person who eventually left the state and him behind, adopted him.
Mickey changed our lives and we will miss him forever.
Mick, on the dining room table.
Sick dog, happy parents
Posted by kathybad in customer experience, dogs, family on August 3, 2008
Mickey got sick. We always said that if he ever refused food, we’ve got a problem. So, one Saturday, after a morning of not eating, we whisked him off to our neighborhood vet, Oakland Veterinary Hospital. They couldn’t find anything overtly wrong with him, but based on his symptoms, put him on antibiotics and took blood as a precaution.
He appeared to get a bit better, got his appetite back, and acted like it was just a glitch. After all the crap he tries to eat off the street, we thought this episode would pass.
Wrong. On a Monday, he started to get restless around three in the morning. He went between our bed and the couch in the other room, back and forth, little nails clicking on the floor. And he wouldn’t stop licking and licking and licking – his legs, his body, the bed. I sleepily fed him some cottage cheese for breakfast and as I was brushing my teeth, I really looked at him for the first time that morning. His face was completely swollen. His eyelids partially closed, remnants of cottage cheese stuck to his chin whiskers. I woke Shelly who thought he looked normal. Um, no. So, at 7:15, before he even got his morning walk, we headed to our emergency vet (yes, we’ve been there before) in San Leandro.
Naturally they were packed, the night shift was going off duty, the day shift coming on, and it was the usual emergency vet chaos. I finally got to the counter, explained the problem, and stat, out rushed a tech to evaluate Mickey on the spot. Unbelievably she said that he wasn’t in any distress, had a case of hives, and because they were so overwhelmed, I should take him to our regular vet.
Dr. Dorsey saw him at 9:30, had our test results from the weekend, and said his blood levels were not good. The hives indicated that his body was in major stress. She did an ultrasound right on the spot, and said that his gall bladder looked pretty bad. She admitted Mickey’s problem was getting outside of her expertise and she said we needed to get him to a specialist pronto. She’s a pretty even-keeled vet, but her sense of urgency got our attention. She called ahead to the specialist vet, explained the situation, made an appointment for us, and sent us away with the ultrasound. We headed back down to San Leandro to the same emergency vet I had visited earlier that morning. It doubles as a specialist vet during the day.
They kept him until the next day, ran more blood work, did another ultrasound, and started him on IVs. The diagnosis: pancreatitis and a gall bladder problem. Poor little guy. When we picked him up, we received four kinds of drugs, a bill for $3,500, and a glassy eyed, shaved Mickey.
A few weeks ago, our regular vet called in to check on him. Wow. Our own doctors don’t even check on us. And as far as we’re concerned, Dr. Dorsey saved Mick’s life. And the emergency vet, although very expensive, took very good care of him, and set him right again.
It’s now been about a month and Mickey is back to his old self. He’s on special food, down to two meds, and off people food. He runs around with his toys, begs his sister to play with him, jumps on and off the furniture. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell that this old guy is around 15 years old.
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