Dogless Is Not a Quiet I'm Used To

I called the vet to move the appointment up from Thursday. The dog's condition has declined precipitously in just a day. He can no longer get himself up and I need to hold him by his diaper so he can walk down the hall. He has no interest in outside and lies on his bed with his back to the glass storm door. He wolfs down a half cup of turkey and rice, then has uncontrollable diarrhea all over the kitchen floor while I'm cooking dinner. He stumbles backward onto his bed and cries because he can't get up again. He cried every two hours last night, each whimper a call for help to get him to his feet. I slept in the living room again. He pants uncontrollably even though the house is fairly cool. By morning we are both exhausted. I change his diaper and drive my son to school. I go to the gym, then Kmart to buy my son new underwear. The local news has announced that this store will be shuttered by the Holidays, as will the Sears in the nearby mall. Sigh.

At the gym, I decide to wear my new Nightmare Before Christmas tank top because Jack has a bony little dog. I do my first Norwegian 4 x 4 in months. My heart rate starts off very high, then tapers down as I acclimatize. I get my lowest reading of 101 bpm just as I finish the first minute of the last 4-minute peak. That makes me chuckle. Cardio was hard but not crazy impossible hard. I'm sore from yesterday and that surprises me. My lower abs especially, and from just one set of crunches! I'm not ready for Smith RDLs yet, but I can do some other auxiliary movements, like T-bar Rows and Lat Pull Downs. I swap out the straight handle for a shoulder-width neutral grip, but I manage to puncture my thumb while doing it. It's the peeling chrome finish that gets me. (Yes, I'm the princess who gets a splinter trying to break apart those disposable chopsticks at the sushi house.) It bleeds profusely. Luckily, the front desk has a band-aid. I finish my set, then stretch out and shower. I don't even tape my eye shut anymore. The eye, however, still feels like there's sand under my eyelid. I can't wait until that goes away!

When I get home, I see a huge pool of foamy yellow fluid on the kitchen floor. He often vomits bile when his stomach is empty. Poor pup. The dog is sprawled in the hallway, as if he had tried to get into his crate in the bedroom but had just given up. His diaper is soaked through. After I clean everything up, I put him on his bed and offer him a dab of his favorite yogurt, Strawberry-Banana, on the tip of my finger. He laps it up so I offer him a teaspoon more. It's not going to hurt him, and maybe it'll make his tum feel better. I feed him a slice of white bread in small strips. The noises in his stomach quiet down. I brush him and rub his head. He makes no attempt to move. I know it's time. I tell him how much I love him but I'm not sure he can hear me. He's lost some hearing and probably has cataracts at this age. Still, I know he knows how I feel about him. 

The vet takes time to let my pup settle down. He doesn't like new faces, new smells, new people. Because we're just chatting, he relaxes. She administers a sedative with anti-anxiety medication, injecting it in a back muscle just under his diaper. He moves unexpectedly because he thinks we mean for him to stand up, but we assure him that everything is okay. He falls asleep with me stroking his head. The vet then administers what she says is basically an anesthesia overdose. He's asleep. I know because I can stroke his paws and he wouldn't tolerate that if he were awake. I watch his chest rise and fall, deeper then slower, then faster, then slower, then not at all. This is so much better than the way I saw my best dog die, with basically just an injection to stop her heart. That was so awful. 

I've had dogs continuously since 1985 and the house feels oddly quiet. When I moved here, I had two dogs, and as one passed away, I adopted another in an overlap of ages. Now there are no dogs, and even my son, who has always known a home with at least one or two dogs, tells me that it's too quiet. 

Doomsday Tuesday

Norwegian 4x4
5 min w/u (4 min on / 3 min off) x 4
5, 9, 12, 16, 19, 23, 26, 30, 33
Calories 280
Miles 2.61
HR 101-190 (143 average)

HGPU 15

T-bar Row
Bar x 12
25lbs x 12reps x 3 sets

Lat Pull Downs
50 lbs x 12
70 x 12
85 x 12

Stretch