Rest In Peace: Max
We put Max down yesterday. He was little more than a bloated seal of his former self - it was the right thing to do.
When I came home from school, I found him wrapped in a blanket, snuggled up with Mom, struggling to breathe. His back half had collapsed and we had to literally drag him outside on the carpet on which he was laying because he just couldn't move, then we had to hold him up to let him go to the bathroom - and he couldn't even go. He kept looking up at us with his big brown eyes - pretty much the only part of him that still seemed to work - as though to ask, "Why are you doing this to me? Just let me be."
When the boys got home from school (they were released early because Mom scheduled the appointment for 5:30 and wanted them to have a good amount of time to say goodbye), Max tried to get up and run to the door to greet them as was his old habit, but could only lift his head and flail his back legs helplessly. It broke my heart and of course the boys, who have basically grown up with Max, were a mess. Sean, the elder, wouldn't let us see him cry, but became angry and lashed out for every little thing, while Colin, the younger, just broke down crying.
We all spent the last few hours petting him, loving him, and generally trying to make him as comfortable as possible. Then we took him to the vet and his eyes were clear for the last time before the doctor knocked him out with sedatives and gave him the overdose of barbiturates - and he was gone just like that. We all lost it - even Sean and Dad - at that point.
We took Max home, wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to the "family graveyard" where we've buried birds and hamsters - it's a little hill where Max used to love to run and sniff on his walks around our pond. Sean had dug the hole already and Dad dumped all of Max's old dog food in ("like the Egyptians," he said) before the two boys lowered him down. We laid Max's "noogie" - a favorite blanket that he's had since puppy-hood - over him and placed his rawhide bones next to him and then we all sprinkled a handful of dirt into the grave. Sean began shoveling and soon our beloved pet was buried. Just like that.
Dad, who is very good with wood, is making a rather elaborate head-board for Max, which he'll erect in a few weeks after it's finished. Then, that'll be that and all we'll have are the memories. We're also going through all of our old pictures from 1998 onward to find any of Max so we can create a photo-album just of him.
Max had congestive heart failure for the last year of his life, but we don't think that's what killed him. Autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) is the most likely culprit. He was doing quite well up until this last month, as I said in my earlier post, but then, out of the blue, his health just seemed to take a nose-dive and the vet told us he'd developed both anemia and an autoimmune disorder. Due to the speed with his he declined, my dad (an ER doc) concluded that it was probably AIHA which ravaged his body, and, with the complications with his heart and his age, Max just didn't have a chance.
We did the right thing, but I wish we hadn't needed to make the decision at all. Thankfully, we have our memories and I keep remembering things about Max in his earlier years, which I'd completely forgotten. Things like his ecstatic greetings of our piano teacher when he'd come to our house every week, always bringing along a doggy treat for his furry friend, or how he'd race ahead of me down the stairs every morning before school so I could let him out - I'm still amazed that he never tripped or fell, he took those stairs so fast. There are also the many walks around our pond when we were still training him not to run away; we'd take along a few small pieces of cheese and he'd run waaaay ahead and then come zooming back whenever we'd hold the treat baggy up and call him. We had to remember to shut the gates to the yard when we let him out, he'd chase the squirrels, dig small holes in the sand on our beach, eat the trash if we didn't put it away (once, he ate an entire bag of tootsie rolls that we'd forgotten to hide and had to drink charcoal to make him throw it up again - ick), and was just generally the perfect pet for our family. No dog my parents or I get in the future can replace Max. I'm so glad he was a part of my growing-up years and I will always remember him with utter fondness.
When I came home from school, I found him wrapped in a blanket, snuggled up with Mom, struggling to breathe. His back half had collapsed and we had to literally drag him outside on the carpet on which he was laying because he just couldn't move, then we had to hold him up to let him go to the bathroom - and he couldn't even go. He kept looking up at us with his big brown eyes - pretty much the only part of him that still seemed to work - as though to ask, "Why are you doing this to me? Just let me be."
When the boys got home from school (they were released early because Mom scheduled the appointment for 5:30 and wanted them to have a good amount of time to say goodbye), Max tried to get up and run to the door to greet them as was his old habit, but could only lift his head and flail his back legs helplessly. It broke my heart and of course the boys, who have basically grown up with Max, were a mess. Sean, the elder, wouldn't let us see him cry, but became angry and lashed out for every little thing, while Colin, the younger, just broke down crying.
We all spent the last few hours petting him, loving him, and generally trying to make him as comfortable as possible. Then we took him to the vet and his eyes were clear for the last time before the doctor knocked him out with sedatives and gave him the overdose of barbiturates - and he was gone just like that. We all lost it - even Sean and Dad - at that point.
We took Max home, wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to the "family graveyard" where we've buried birds and hamsters - it's a little hill where Max used to love to run and sniff on his walks around our pond. Sean had dug the hole already and Dad dumped all of Max's old dog food in ("like the Egyptians," he said) before the two boys lowered him down. We laid Max's "noogie" - a favorite blanket that he's had since puppy-hood - over him and placed his rawhide bones next to him and then we all sprinkled a handful of dirt into the grave. Sean began shoveling and soon our beloved pet was buried. Just like that.
Dad, who is very good with wood, is making a rather elaborate head-board for Max, which he'll erect in a few weeks after it's finished. Then, that'll be that and all we'll have are the memories. We're also going through all of our old pictures from 1998 onward to find any of Max so we can create a photo-album just of him.
Max had congestive heart failure for the last year of his life, but we don't think that's what killed him. Autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) is the most likely culprit. He was doing quite well up until this last month, as I said in my earlier post, but then, out of the blue, his health just seemed to take a nose-dive and the vet told us he'd developed both anemia and an autoimmune disorder. Due to the speed with his he declined, my dad (an ER doc) concluded that it was probably AIHA which ravaged his body, and, with the complications with his heart and his age, Max just didn't have a chance.
We did the right thing, but I wish we hadn't needed to make the decision at all. Thankfully, we have our memories and I keep remembering things about Max in his earlier years, which I'd completely forgotten. Things like his ecstatic greetings of our piano teacher when he'd come to our house every week, always bringing along a doggy treat for his furry friend, or how he'd race ahead of me down the stairs every morning before school so I could let him out - I'm still amazed that he never tripped or fell, he took those stairs so fast. There are also the many walks around our pond when we were still training him not to run away; we'd take along a few small pieces of cheese and he'd run waaaay ahead and then come zooming back whenever we'd hold the treat baggy up and call him. We had to remember to shut the gates to the yard when we let him out, he'd chase the squirrels, dig small holes in the sand on our beach, eat the trash if we didn't put it away (once, he ate an entire bag of tootsie rolls that we'd forgotten to hide and had to drink charcoal to make him throw it up again - ick), and was just generally the perfect pet for our family. No dog my parents or I get in the future can replace Max. I'm so glad he was a part of my growing-up years and I will always remember him with utter fondness.
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