The writer's 14-year-old Australian cattle dog mix, Darcy, seemed unbreakable. But on a recent Sunday, she started having severe seizures, and his family started wondering if it was time to put her down. Photos: TNS
We woke up to some sort of weird commotion in the middle of the night, coming from the dog bed that was pushed up against the wall. Sproing, sproing, sproing. And a rustling, almost like the sound of papers being shuffled around.
At first, we thought maybe one of our three dogs was having a bad dream, as they sometimes do. Or that the two smaller ones were having a little dust-up over space, as happens occasionally. But it quickly became clear that this was something different, and when my wife sprang up to throw on the light, there she was...
Darcy, our oldest and largest – an Australian cattle dog mix we rescued over 12 years ago but who the whole family feels like has been with us our entire life – convulsing on her side, with gooey, gummy foam oozing from her mouth onto the floor.
The sproing sound we’d heard was from her head jerking against the doorstop spring.
It took a minute to realise she probably wasn’t dying but was having a seizure; another minute later, the seizure started to subside. Once the initial shock wore off, and once Darcy was capable of getting up without falling down, my wife took her outside, brought her back in, watched her lap up mouthfuls of water, then got her settled back into bed. We hoped she would be OK till morning, and she was.
In some ways, Darcy seemed unbreakable.
We adopted her from the Humane Society in 2011 when she was roughly two. In all that time since, I’m not sure we ever took her to the vet for anything other than annual checkups, vaccinations and other preventative care – besides a copperhead bite she sustained while rooting around the yard of our old house.
As she aged, she developed a disgusting habit that involved eating, um, “deposits” made in the backyard by our other dogs. And grass. And dirt. And bugs. Yeah, pretty much anything.
In old age, she had gone 90% deaf and maybe 50% blind.
But she otherwise seemed to have made it through life without debilitating health conditions or illnesses.
Even in recent months, she would leap off the 4ft (1.2m) retaining wall in our backyard like a teenager, or up the 3ft (0.9m) onto our bed.
On top of that, Darcy was – and I know most dog owners would say this, but – quite possibly the sweetest dog on Earth.
We called her a “love pig”, because she was greedy for affection almost to a fault. Anyone who entered our home became her instant new best friend, and all of our guests sat down on the couch at their own peril. If and when they did, she was on them, shoving anything out of her way to get to their lap and coaxing caresses out of people by using puppy-dog eyes as if she’d invented the concept.
In December, we did notice she started literally putting herself to bed earlier. We’d be up in our bonus room watching TV, and where she’d almost always join us, she’d taken to sneaking off to our bedroom to be by herself.
And a couple of times, we had a fair amount of trouble waking her up from what seemed like extraordinarily deep slumbers.
We now are confident they were very small seizures.
Then on Sunday afternoon, just over 12 hours after the middle-of-the-night incident, Darcy had a very big one. She was sleeping on a chair in front of the fireplace when she began to thrash uncontrollably. Within seconds, her mouth was yawning open and snapping violently shut. She must have bitten a gum or a cheek, because there was blood.
Our 22-year-old daughter had seen Darcy seizing from the upstairs balcony and rushed down to try to help. My wife was there again, too. There was drool and pee on the chair, there was convulsing, and after it was over, there was unsteadiness and disorientation.
There were also lots of tears. Because there was also little doubt, that it was probably time.
As dog owners, we have been lucky to go so long without a loss. We had a Jack Russell terrier two decades ago, but he became aggressive as our daughter became a toddler, and we regrettably had to give him up to a friend who had older children. We moved far away from there a couple years later, and by the time we heard he’d died – years after that – it felt more like hearing about an old friend’s passing. We’d never, as a family, had to put a beloved pet to sleep.
The timing, as it turned out, was at least somewhat fortuitous. Our daughter, who no longer lives in Charlotte (in North Carolina, the United States), had fretted for years about the prospect of not being able to be present at the end of one of our dogs’ lives. On Sunday, she was an hour from heading home when Darcy had that big seizure. Our daughter was able to stick around to head to the animal hospital with us.
Plus, our daughter just so happened to be home because, for the four preceding days, my entire family was here. A houseful of 10 people, meaning a houseful of laps for Darcy to climb onto, and a houseful of hands to stroke her head, or rub her belly.
It was like she’d died and gone to doggy heaven.
But on Sunday afternoon, we found ourselves wrestling – as so many dog owners eventually do – with the fleeting, nagging, heart-wrenching doubts about whether it was indeed time to send her there for real.
Darcy got to snack on several pieces of chocolate, because 'every dog should get to try them', moments before she passed away.
We wrestled with those doubts even after the veterinary nurse brought that big jar of mini-chocolates into the room and pointed out that “every dog should get to try them”.
Even after Darcy snacked on one, then two, then three, then another four more after that. Especially after Darcy surprised us by climbing to her feet, despite the sedative flowing through her bloodstream, so she could beg for yet more chocolate.
As we gave her another, then another, laughing through tears at her piggishness, before she finally collapsed into our daughter’s arms and settled back into the blanket on the floor.
Not until Darcy started seizing again while drifting off to sleep (though mercifully less violently than before, due to the medication) did we feel 100% certain that we were doing the right thing by letting her go now.
My daughter stroked her back, my wife stroked her head, I stroked her paw. We said as many soothing words as we could.
And so it was that in the final moments before her passing, Darcy was able to enjoy – one last time – two of the things she’d grown to love most during her full, healthy, wonderful life: Gleefully eating stuff she wasn’t supposed to, and blissfully feeling showered with our affection.
We will miss her terribly. – Tribune News Service/The Charlotte Observer/Theoden Janes
