She was my girl, my first dog, my special one. Dolly died in the early hours on Saturday morning. She was 13 years old. You can read her story that I posted on the blog last summer here.
Over the past couple of weeks Dolly started getting finicky about eating … some meals she would skip, others she would wolf down. Sometimes she would eat just a little, and the next meal she’d clean her bowl. Every now and then she’d throw up a little something … not a lot. And then she’d seem fine for days. She had diarrhea a few times, so we’d treat her for that and it would clear up. But last Tuesday, when Alayne and I took her out for an evening walk, we watched Dolly pee in the snow and realized her urine was bright orange. Uh oh. Then, as we headed down the drive, she seemed tired and didn’t want to continue. This was very unlike her. In the setting sun, the light suddenly made her look like she’d lost weight. Alayne and I looked at each other with a sinking feeling. What was going on?
On Wednesday morning I called our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, and scheduled an appointment for Thursday morning. On Wednesday, though, Dolly seemed her usual self again, bounding out the door, tail wagging. She barked for her dinner, and ate everything in sight. Still, we knew she had to be sick.
On Thursday I nervously watched the ultrasound screen as Dave ran the probe over her abdomen, checking her organs. When the probe reached Dolly’s liver, I could immediately tell something was terribly wrong. There were huge growths or nodules all over the liver. It was hard to actually discern the outline of the liver for all the growths.
I said to Dave, "That doesn’t look good." He said, "It’s not." Dave explained that we were seeing one of two possible things. The first was that those were tumors. The second was that the growths were actually "nodules of regeneration," in which the liver was trying to grow new parts of itself in order to deal with chronic inflammation. This would mean cirrhosis of the liver.
If those were tumors, there wasn’t anything we could do because they had essentially consumed the liver already. If she had cirrhosis of the liver, we could treat her with steroids to reduce the inflammation, but she would only have months to live at the most.
I held Dolly still as Dave used the ultrasound to guide a needle into her liver to get a biopsy sample. The biopsy would tell us whether it was cancer or cirrhosis. It would take 24 hours to get the results. Dave also sent in her blood work.
I asked Dave how much time we had with Dolly. He said we might have three days … or three months. There was no way to know. He explained that by the time you start seeing the symptoms of liver failure, it’s often too late. And usually the symptoms are as vague and fleeting as what we’d seen … some inappetance, vomiting, and diarrhea … which can be and often are attributed to other causes.
The liver — just like the kidneys — can do an incredible job of compensating for various "insults." It uses up all of its reserves to deal with cancer or chronic inflammation … and when it finally reaches the tipping point, there are no reserves left, and the liver is spent. From there it goes downhill rapidly.
How rapidly we were about to find out.
So as I headed over to Missoula Animal Control to pick up the little old blind Cocker mix, Lady, I was still trying to come to grips with Dolly’s diagnosis. I had already called Alayne to let her know.
I had stopped at the Good Food Store in Missoula to pick up some groceries, and on the way back to the ranch Dolly happily ate the freshly baked oatmeal cookies I had just bought for her.
But she wouldn’t eat her dinner Thursday night. On Friday morning, she wasn’t interested in eating but she did drink water, and when we let her out in the morning she walked around the yard exploring like she always did. But she threw up a little on her bed later that morning. At noon she came out of my office to the kitchen to drink some more, and her tail was up. We were encouraged. But early that afternoon as I petted her, she felt warm, so I took her temperature … and it was 103.5. Oh, no.
I called Dave, and he had me give her an injection of Baytril. By late afternoon she didn’t look good … she was lethargic, and she started drooling … clear slimy stuff. I was wiping her mouth with tissue when I looked over and realized she had just pooped out some orange, icky stuff. Not poop at all. I couldn’t even tell what it was. She looked at me with sorrowful brown eyes, and I just started crying. I knew what was happening. Alayne came in and joined me on the floor next to Dolly.
I called Dave at home, and it was about 6:20 p.m. I said, "I don’t think she’s going to make it through the weekend. What else can we do?" He had just received the biopsy results … and it was a liver carcinoma. Dave told me to go ahead and give Dolly an injection of dexamethasone, a steroid, because some cancers can be temporarily responsive to steroid therapy, but he didn’t hold out much hope that this would really help.
We couldn’t get Dolly to eat or drink Friday night. I cooked up some spaghetti, her favorite food in the world, but she turned her head away when I brought it in to her. She lay on the bed in my office, aware of what was going on but looking very tired. Alayne and I sat there with her, and whenever I would get up to leave, she would lift her head and watch and wait for me to return. Once I did, she would put her head back down on the bed. I took the photo at the top of this post that night.
Alayne and I stayed with her until midnight. We tucked her in and kissed her goodnight, and then went to bed.
I woke up at 4 a.m. to check on her. I opened the office door and she didn’t move. I bent down, put my hand on her, and I realized she was gone. Oh, my sweet beautiful Dolly. I walked back to the bedroom, woke Alayne up, and said, "She died." Alayne started to cry. She got out of bed and we both went back to my office to be with Dolly. We cried and cried as we petted her and held her ears and stroked her legs. We just couldn’t believe we could lose her this fast. We were as much in shock as we were in grief. But we were just relieved that she had died at home, peacefully, in her bed.
As Saturday morning dawned, Alayne and I held ourselves together as best we could. We had a full day ahead with volunteers and groomers coming. If there was ever a day we wanted to hide under the covers, this was it. But we went about with brave faces on, trying not to let our emotions show.
We knew we had one final goodbye ahead. Jayme J., a vet tech from our Helena vet clinic, was coming out to groom, and she was going to be able to take Dolly’s body back with her to the clinic for cremation. At about 4:30 p.m., Alayne and I spent a few more minutes alone with Dolly in my office, and then we wrapped her in a thick fleece blanket. I carried her out to Jayme’s Tahoe and laid her in the back. Alayne and I kissed Dolly goodbye one more time, and then we held onto each other and cried as Jayme drove off.
Jayme was also taking back to the clinic the two old blind girls who had recently arrived, Duchess and Lady, who needed dentals, blood work, eye exams and other medical care. And inside the vehicle was our deaf boy, Tyler, off to a new home with Jayme’s Mom (see next post.)
I wasn’t thinking of this at the time … all we could think about was Dolly. But today I realized what an interesting collection of lives were in that vehicle yesterday … one beloved dog whose life just ended, and three dogs starting new lives.
Here’s what my beautiful girl looked like back in 1998 when we lived in Seattle, a few years after we adopted her:
Goodbye, honey. We will always love you.
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