Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair With Thirty-Eight Dalmatians

by Linda Gray Sexton

  PART VI

  keeping the vigil

  {IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE}

  Gulliver

  fourteen

  AND COME IT DID, only a short eight months later, though Gulliver was a dog of gallant heart, and though he fought for every last minute of his time with us. Even as he aged, people on the street would pet him and ask how old our “puppy” was, shocked to hear that he was actually a dog well along in years. He still trotted briskly at my side, lifted his head with curiosity at every passing person, car, or dog (we had hoped age would bring toleration of other canines, but in this way, he remained as young as ever), still Lippizanered up the steep hill from my writing cottage, though perhaps more slowly than before. When we were out on the boat, even while drowsing in the sun, supremely relaxed in the way only an older dog can be, the sound of an approaching Jet Ski provoked from him the same hysterical and energetic response. In fact, Gulliver’s age was truly evident to others only in the way his muzzle had started to gray, which the Dalmatian coloration hid so well—or in the slight drag of one hind foot, as he grew a bit arthritic in his left hip.

  The winter after our wedding, however, just shy of his thirteenth birthday, he developed an intestinal disease called irritable bowel syndrome, not unlike that which plagues humans, which made him incontinent. Brad and I brought the entire arsenal of modern medicine to bear upon his case. I found a new veterinarian, one who specialized in internal medicine, and made an appointment. I liked Dr. Gleason when we met, liked her direct approach, and especially liked her obvious knowledge and intensive training.

  When I was a child, there were no such alternatives for helping a pet live a longer life. My family outlived our dogs, mourned them, and then replaced them with others. I recalled at this time, even as I made appointments with various veterinarians to seek help with Gulliver’s IBS, the way my parents had treated Daisy’s leg when it twisted in the cast and crippled her for the rest of her days. There had never been any discussion about taking her back to the vet to have it reset before it was too late: dogs were dogs, and you didn’t treat their maladies in an expensive, or intensive, manner. This was the way most people thought when it came to their animals.

  But today’s options are different, particularly when it comes to prolonging our pets’ lives, contributing perhaps to a dog lover’s greater and more extensive repertoire. These options, however, introduce a problem as great as the one they are meant to solve: when we can extend the life of our beloved and so push back the pain impending from loss, how do we recognize the right time to stop intervening and to let go? How do we have the courage to step up to this terrible dilemma and make certain that our choice is right and compassionate enough for the one who now depends on us so entirely?

  But the time for such considerations about Gulliver had not yet arrived for Brad and me, and so, without a second thought, at Dr. Gleason’s advice, we contacted a canine nutritionist from Cornell University and paid handsomely for him to prescribe a special diet for Gulliver—one with which I happily complied, baking twenty pounds of sweet potato and peeling eighty hard-boiled eggs a week. Sweet potatoes were expensive, and I drove around town looking for deals. Peeling eighty hard-boiled eggs often left me with a raw thumb that bled. I didn’t care.

  Gulliver was allowed to eat nothing else, not even dog biscuits, which we replaced with sweet potato chips that, not surprisingly, he loved. But the potato-and-egg diet was no panacea after several months, and the diarrhea continued as usual. Now, whenever he had an accident in the house, he looked at me with shame and humiliation in his eyes—even as I reassured him that I didn’t mind cleaning it up. And this was no lie. Once he had cleaned up after me. Now it was my turn.

  •••

  It was a Tuesday night, and when I had looked over to check on Gulliver in his usual place in his chair, he had thumped his tail with the energetic, whiplike action Dals use to knock over any unsecured object and perched his muzzle on the upholstered arm padded with his blanket.

  But later, when I got up from watching television to let him out and give him his late-night sweet potato chip, he was nowhere to be found. I called his name over and over. Frantically running through every room, up and down stairs, I finally skidded down to find him on the outer slope of our steep backyard. His eyes glinted green in the glare of my flashlight as he looked up from eating grass. He stood amid the bed of gravel that marked the path to my writing cottage, and his attitude was one of nonchalance. I had to call him three times to persuade him to come, he who usually came bounding to the sound of my voice. How could I have fooled myself into thinking that everything was all right?

  The next morning, when he went out to potty, I saw that the projectile diarrhea that had plagued him was recurring. He could not make it to the bushes at the side of the driveway, leaving across the blacktop a telltale track of bright orange poop. I sighed, frustrated. After he came in, he vomited an enormous puddle of water onto the rug, and as I sopped it up with a bunch of rags, my mind not focusing on it, my warning radar still did not sound, which was atypical of me. I had always diagnosed my sons’ earaches before the pediatrician, had known when that hot spot on my skin was going to turn out to be a miserable case of poison ivy, even before it began to itch. And besides, I rationalized as I scrubbed, dogs often vomit after eating grass, which was what I had found him doing the night before. I blocked out the vet’s warning about aspiration pneumonia and kept working on the rug.

  Gulliver ate his bowlful of breakfast, even though he’d yakked everything up only a half hour before, something I probably shouldn’t have let him do. But he was a Dalmatian, after all, so even a rocky stomach wouldn’t have kept him from chowing down—and then he was ready to go out again. He might have moved slowly to the door, but it was nothing I remarked on. Only when I came back to let him in again did I realize something was terribly, suddenly, amiss. He was staggering, all four legs splayed for balance, barely able to stand.

  Still in my bathrobe, I half carried him to the car, all sixty-five pounds of him, virtually stuffing him onto the floor at the foot of the seat from which he ordinarily ruled with his ears pricked as he stared out the window at the passing scenery. I drove to the vet, fast, and barely managed to get him through the door before he collapsed on the floor, lifting his head only when his name was called. The staff shook their heads. They had never seen Gulliver like this before. Neither had I.

  They took him to the ICU and started an IV. Shock kept me from understanding how dire his situation was. Dr. Gleason ordered X-rays and blood panels. There were sonograms, too, but instead of being pregnant and looking eagerly for a heartbeat and all four limbs, we were searching desperately for a picture that displayed no masses, no shadows, nothing out of the ordinary. To our joy, there was nothing strange to be seen.

  But our relief was short-lived, as in a matter of hours, he developed a high fever: aspiration pneumonia had joined forces with a severe gastrointestinal upset that was trashing his body with constant vomiting and continuing diarrhea. We discussed oxygen and tracheal washes and administered IVs filled with every antibiotic that money could buy. Now we would wait. They told me there was nothing further I could do, and so, still in my bathrobe, I went home, showered, and then just sat by the phone, staring into space.

  Later that afternoon, when Brad and I went to the vet for a visit, Gulliver just barely managed to lift his head as we approached. He had vomited up a stone, they told me, and the night before burned across my vision like a light being turned on in darkness: his eyes reflecting green in the flashlight, where he stood on the crushed gravel path to my little cottage, as he ate grass. Had he picked up a rock by mistake? Should I have known, earlier on, that things were not right? Why couldn’t I remember if he had cuddled on the bed with me that night as usual? I tortured myself with question after question and had to fight off my trembling.

  I crawled into the floor-level metal cage in which he lay and put my arms around him just the way he had o
nce curled around me where I lay on my bed of depression six years before. For three hours, Brad and I sat with him on the floor, petting his head and speaking to him in soft tones, until visiting hours ended at six.

  Thursday came sunny and cool, a typical May morning. As I brushed my hair, I was certain that by the time I went to the hospital that morning, he would be better and back on the path to health. He hadn’t yet had his thirteenth birthday, and Dals could live till fifteen or sixteen.

  I was on my way in when the vet called me on my cell phone. I pulled over to the side of the road. She told me that his heart had stopped, and that they had managed to resuscitate him. She couldn’t tell me if it would stop again. My breath came now in a ragged rhythm and the blood pounded in my head as I crashed over the rough potholed roads of the shortest route, avoiding the highway’s morning rush hour, hoping for no red lights, no backed-up traffic at the stop signs. How many times had I promised him I would always be there for him at the end, my arms surrounding him?

  When I arrived, the vets were all in their morning conference. In desperation, I pounded the counter until someone came out. In a minute, I was in an exam room, and he was being wheeled in on a sheet-covered gurney. He was still alive. But he didn’t even need to be strapped down to make certain he didn’t shift himself or fall off. He barely acknowledged me. He tried to raise his head and failed. At one time, he had licked away my tears, but my own now fell on his cheek as I bent my head to his.

  I put my hand on his soft black-and-white coat. Under my hand, his breathing was labored and his eyes were at half-mast, without focus. I pressed my palm against his ribs to reassure both of us.

  I called Brad.

  When he came in a half hour later, Gulliver was still breathing, his eyes still half-open.

  “There’s a shadow over his pancreas,” the vet explained to us. “We took a new X-ray this morning.”

  “What does that mean?” I could taste my fear.

  “We don’t know.”

  “What should we do?”

  “There is the possibility of surgery,” she said.

  “Surgery?”

  “Yes.”

  With that one word, she gave me hope for a miracle.

  I repeated her words. “Surgery.” I kept my hand on Gulliver’s side, stroking the fur in the direction it ran. As always, it felt like velvet under my fingers. That had not changed.

  “What kind of surgery?”

  “Exploratory. It’s a long shot,” she said. “But I have to give you all your options.”

  “Why is it a long shot?” I didn’t want to speak of anything negative now. We had a possibility here, and I wanted only to hear that it might work. I looked down at him.

  “He could die on the table,” she continued. “He could survive the surgery but die afterward. He could make it, but be in a lot of pain.”

  “What should we do?”

  “You have to decide, soon. The surgeon needs to make up her schedule, and if she’s going to put Gulliver in, she needs to know right away.” She hesitated a moment and then left us, alone with the decision.

  Brad and I sat back down and just looked at each other. I started to cry and couldn’t stop.

  “What should we do?” I asked as I blew my nose. “Should we just wait and see what happens?”

  “But if he has the surgery we might know—something.”

  “But it might kill him.”

  Brad looked down at Gulliver, who lay panting now, his sides heaving with heavy effort, the IV in his arm, the tubes dangling.

  “Well, he can’t stay this way very long.”

  We sat and thought for a while. Cried harder.

  “If we don’t do it, you’re always going to wonder,” Brad said.

  “He might just get well, you know. He might just heal himself.”

  “He might.”

  Silence again.

  The vet put her head back in the door.

  “We haven’t made up our minds yet,” I said. “But, if we don’t do the surgery and just decide to wait, what do we do instead? Some alternative kind of treatment? Maybe with the antibiotics, all this could pass with time.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think that would be fair. To him.” She came and sat beside me. “If you don’t go with the surgery, then I think,” she paused, perhaps hoping that I would come up with the word on my own. I just kept staring at her, not understanding, or perhaps not allowing myself to understand, what she was driving at.

  “If you don’t go with the surgery, then you should be talking about euthanasia.”

  I felt as if I had been slapped. My hands went numb, and my vision black. Her words had sucked all the regular sounds out of the room. All I could hear was silence. And then a buzz started in my ears like a hive of angry bees. Looking back, I would realize that I had been less shocked the night I was told my mother had killed herself.

  How many times had I promised Gulliver that when his time came, I would not let him be in pain? How many times had I promised that I would be there to hold him in my arms and rock him out? I had never envisioned that I would be the one to initiate his slide out of this world. In my fantasy, something else was responsible. Never me.

  I wasn’t ready, and I never would be. I remembered my promise, but I was weak in the face of it.

  “If we go for the surgery, would I be able to be in there with him?” I asked, thinking of holding him as he lay on the operating table, unconscious. I pictured how his legs would be strapped down, the tube down his throat, his tongue taped to the side. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be with him.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. No.”

  This meant I couldn’t keep my promise if I chose surgery.

  His eyes were barely open, just a tiny slit. I wasn’t even sure he could see us. I called his name, but he no longer even tried to raise his head.

  Brad and I sat holding hands for a long time as I continued to stroke his muzzle. It seemed there was no answer to the question of putting him to sleep. Periodically, the vet put her head in the door to see if we had come to a decision. We looked at her mutely.

  I would rock him out, I had said. There will be no pain, I had said.

  Left up to me, I would have sat for hours, signed a consent form for surgery, waited and waited—anything but give the signal for him to die. But he needed me to make a choice for him. The choice he would have made had he possessed a real voice, and spoken a language we could understand. This was the very first time I was unable to hear the voice I had created for him guiding me, and so it was up to me to make the decision now. I owed him this, not only because I had promised, but also because this was part of the covenant between him as my dog and me as his keeper. I would do for him what he could not do for himself. This time it was my turn to bear the pain in order to alleviate it.

  “We’ll never know if we don’t do the surgery,” Brad said.

  “Will it matter? Will anything matter once he’s gone?”

  Brad didn’t answer.

  We just sat. An hour passed. Two hours. I kept talking to my love, but he did nothing except breathe in a shallow fashion, with great effort.

  “We have to let him go,” I said at last. “I think he’s in pain.” He reminded me of my own children, young and sick with the flu, only Gulliver couldn’t tell me where it hurt.

  Brad dropped his head.

  I went to the door of the room and called out. After a minute, the vet put her head in the door.

  “We’ve decided to let him go.” I could barely speak.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  I don’t know how much time passed then. I just sat there, calling to him, trying to make him see me, but he I wasn’t sure he could.

  She returned with two syringes in hand.

  Quickly, sensing how hard this was for us, she sat down on the bench beside me. Brad stood on the other side of the stretcher.

  “I have one shot for tranquilizing him, which will make
it easier on him, but it may make him feel strange, so he might stir, try to move,” she explained. “And then I’ll inject the other, which will stop his heart.”

  I wanted to cry out, “Wait!” But I just wrapped my arms around him, as I had promised. I began to rock him, just a little, the way a mother would her child.

  The vet picked up the first needle and injected it into the IV line. Sure enough, Gulliver stirred and tried to rise. “It feels strange, doesn’t it, old boy?” she comforted him. “Relax.”

  I pulled my arms tighter around his neck.

  “Easy, easy,” I crooned. He pulled himself up onto his elbows and looked around. I hoped he could see that I was there. I hoped he recognized me. And then he sank back down, into my arms once again, and his eyes closed.

  She injected the second syringe. I continued to hold him, my arms a cradle around his head. And after a few seconds his breathing stopped and he went totally still. Suddenly, he felt soft, and he relaxed in my arms. I looked into his eyes then and saw that he was gone.

  “So fast!” Brad cried. “It’s over so fast?”

  I nodded. I was sobbing now. I couldn’t speak at all.

  “I should have warned you how quick it could go,” said the vet.

  I kept sobbing. I didn’t let go of him.

  “Could I clean him up?” I asked, after a while. “I’d like to clean him up before you take him away.”

  She nodded, as if this weren’t an unusual request. “I’ll get some solution and some cloths.”

  She returned quickly and then left us with our sorrow.

  The cries came out of me on their own accord. I did something I had never done before, not even at my mother’s funeral: I keened. It was a deeper sort of hurt, unexpected in a way hers hadn’t been because she had danced with death so often. Gulliver had been valiant, had tried so hard, despite the discomfort, despite the humiliations of his body, to lead a good and vibrant life. And then, too, he had taken care of me, whereas I had taken care of my mother, and that made all the difference now.