Thursday, July 30, 2009

A Good Dog



A Good Dog


My family lost a good friend and steadfast companion on Monday night. Our little dog Bailey, our four-legged buddy for the past 12 years or so and the oldest of our two dogs, died. He was 13 years old and they say that is a long life for a miniature Schnauzer.


But it seemed too short - way, way too short.


(As an aside, I hate reading dead dog stories. They always make me sad, drippy-eyed and all choked up. I avoid them like the plague. And this is, without a doubt, another one. But the dog in this story was my dog and that makes all the difference. If you want to, you can stop here and I'll not be offended. I'll understand. But if you want to hear about a fine dog, please read on.)


Bailey gave us fair warning that the end might be approaching about a week before his passing, when he stopped eating. We realized something was awry with him and we took him to his vet for a look/see. There was nothing apparent at first glance, but an x-ray soon showed a mass in his stomach which could have been food (if he was eating, which he wasn't) or could have been a tumor. The vet was unsure at that point if this was life-threatening and proceeded to give us special soft dog food to try to get him to eat. He wouldn't touch it. She then gave us some even softer dog food that we could force-feed into him using a soft plastic syringe, but it usually came right back up. After days of his refusing to eat, my wife and I talked over our options and had sadly resigned ourselves to the fact that he would have to be put to sleep, probably early the following week.


Saturday night my wife was preparing supper and Bailey was in the kitchen, staying as near to her as he could. He had always been her dog and was the happiest when he could be nearest to her. During the supper's preparation she had tossed a few small cubes of ham toward the dog, expecting him to turn away from them as he had with most food offered to him in the previous days. To our surprise, he gobbled them down! She tossed him a few more pieces and he also ate them up. We wondered about that, so I tried tempting him with some turkey slices from the refrigerator and he ate them also. We began to wonder if he might be coming out of whatever problem he had. Perhaps it wasn't as serious as we'd originally thought? The following evening for supper we grilled steaks. Bailey was very interested in begging for some of those scraps and we fed him some. He seemed to enjoy them immensely. He seemed to be almost his old self.


We began to hope.


We forgot that dying animals, humans included, usually had a period of time just before death where they seemed to be recovering and seemed to be their old selves.


Such was the case with Bailey.


On the following day, Bailey returned to his rejection of food and became quite lethargic. I tried to force feed him some of the doggy gruel with some medicine mixed in and he threw it all up about 3 hours later. He was weak, had lost a lot of weight and had a difficult time walking. It was a hot day so I left him in our bedroom with the air conditioner turned on to help him stay comfortable when I left for work at 3 pm.


My wife came home at five o'clock from her day's work, checked on him and noticed that he was panting heavily and didn't seem to be very aware of her or of our son who was also checking on him occasionally. She left him in our cool bedroom and checked in on him from time to time during the evening. He was breathing raggedly and seemed unaware of them.


We had an appointment to take him back to the vet the following morning.


I received a call at work from her around 11:30, when she tearfully told me that Bailey was gone. She'd gone up to check with him a few minutes earlier and he wasn't breathing and had started to stiffen up.


It had been about 9 days since he'd stopped eating.


I drove home immediately and hugged my wife while we cried. It's always hard when you lose a loved one and Bailey was definitely loved by all of us. I wrapped his body in a soft blanket and placed him in the trunk of my car for safe keeping during the night. I would take him to the vets the following day to make arrangements for burial.


The loss is still fresh for my wife, our son and myself. Our other Schnauzer, Barney, is a great comfort for us during this time period. He's now the number one dog in the house and he is getting a lot of attention from the three of us. He makes his partner's death seem almost bearable by being around for us to pet and to hug.


But it's still too easy to look at Barney and to wonder where Bailey's keeping himself. When you saw one you usually saw the other one somewhere close by.


Then you realize that there's only one now when there used to be two.


I still remember how Bailey came into our lives:


We'd acquired him when he was 9-months-old from Caroline, one of my wife's girlfriends. He'd joined her household some months earlier as payment for a baby-sitting fee from a couple that was strapped for cash. He wasn't much more than a puppy at that time and was having a hard time playing second fiddle to Caroline's older dog, Shelby. Poor Bailey'd try to eat some of the dog food that Caroline had available in a bowl on the floor for the dogs and Shelby'd chase him away after he'd only got a few bites. This was an everyday affair at her house. Bailey learned early on to be quick to eat and quick to take off when the older dog came into view.


My wife and I had another dog at that time named Dusty, a mixed breed, Benji look-a-like female. We definitely weren't in the market for another pooch, but Caroline was adamant that Bailey'd be a good fit for us and that we should “try him out for a weekend.” She said that if Dusty wouldn't tolerate him, she'd take him back. She had a house full of animals already (her children were always bringing more in) and would love to give one away to a good home. We'd always liked Bailey when we'd visited Caroline, so we said OK, we'd give him a shot.


Bailey and Dusty hit it off pretty well and, after a couple days in our house, we had a second dog. We'd always been dog people and Bailey was an easy dog to love.


Bailey, being a Schnauzer, had some advantages over a lot of other dogs. Schnauzers do not have fur, but hair. So they don't shed. That's good. On the flip side, since they don't shed they have to get haircuts, just like people. So we gained a groomer and a groomer's bill when we added Bailey to our household. They also, due to the hair instead of fur, don't get that intense doggy aroma if you don't bathe them often. Bailey got his share of baths, but the need for them wasn't as critical as it was for Dusty.


As time passed, Dusty grew old and her bodily functions slowly deteriorated. We had a terrible time having to clean up after her “mistakes” and we knew she was approaching her end. We were concerned about Bailey after Dusty was gone, as he had always had a canine companion in the house. So we purchased another Schnauzer pup to be his new friend. We named the new one Barney. I thought it was appropriate – Barney & Bailey/Barnum and Bailey Circus? They hit it off pretty well and, for a short period of time, we had three dogs. Soon Dusty's day came and we had her put to sleep and it was back to two dogs again. We found out from our groomer an interesting fact about that point in time. She'd told us that Bailey, from his pedigree papers, was an offspring of one of her stud Schnauzers, Rap Dancer. And after we got Barney we found out from his papers that he had the same papa also. Barney and Bailey were actually brothers! The older dog had silver and black markings where the younger one had what was called a salt-and-pepper. But in a dim room you still had a hard time telling them apart.


About two years ago the younger dog grew ill and was diagnosed with diabetes which is, unfortunately, not uncommon with Schnauzers. By the time the vet and us got his glucose under control, he'd developed cataracts in his eyes and had become almost sightless. His disease is now controlled by a strict diet and twice-daily insulin injections and he's as healthy a dog as you'll ever see, barring his blindness. And we just love Barney's independence and his feisty disposition. He's definitely his own dog and not anything like a carbon copy of his brother.


And so here we are. It's been a couple days since Bailey left us and we're still grieving some. We still find ourselves thinking of our old friend from time to time and our tears are still close to the surface. We can, if we listen closely, still hear his soft padding footsteps going up and down the stairway, his lapping at the water bowl, his contented sighs as we scratched in those special spots behind his ears. If we close our eyes we can still see the soft shine in his eyes as he gazed at his beloved masters and can still feel his warm, living body as he settled down close to us when he slept.


If there is a just and merciful God, Bailey will be waiting for us when it's time for us to bid adieu to this vale of tears. He'll be waiting to join us and be our loving companion again.


I like to think that's going to happen. I pray that it will. It gives me comfort.


But in the meantime, if you're visiting us at home and if you happen to catch a quick glimpse out of the corner of your eye of a particularly good-looking dog ducking into another room just out of sight, don't be alarmed. That's just our old pal keeping a watchful eye on all of us.


We're gonna miss him. We're gonna miss him a lot. But our memories will soften over time and the sharp ache of his absence will also fade.


But we'll remember him the rest of our lives.


He was a good, good dog.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Fire in the Sky



Fire in the Sky


It was just this past Saturday night and my wife and I were sitting in our folding chairs overlooking the field where my city shoots off its fireworks. We were watching the firemen and the shooters as they walked around the launch tubes and did mysterious things to the explosives under their care. We had quite a bit of time ahead of us to wait for the show as we'd come early, and I was sitting there thinking. Now when I start thinking, I realize that one of two results will eventually happen. The first one is that I'll probably fall asleep. That's not so bad. Especially this year as I was just starting to get over the flu and a snooze would have been welcome. (Hate that summertime flu!) The second result is that I'll remember some old-time stuff relating to the present circumstances and I'll have the unstoppable urge to share it with kith and kin. (What exactly is a kith?) So prepare yourself. It's time for a trip down memory lane with yours truly.


(Pardon the digressions in parenthesis. It's that kind of day.)


As I sat there at the end of the day contemplating the upcoming show, I came to the realization that people mark their lives by certain events. Birthdays. New Year's Eves. Births. Deaths. Vacations and Holidays. They are the inch and foot marks on the tape measures of our lives. And the passage of time for us humans doesn't go by smoothly and quietly, at least most of the time. It seems to proceed forward in jumps, spurts and twitches – first going by slowly and haltingly, then zipping by like a lightning bolt traveling from earth to sky. (Did you know that's the direction they go?) For instance, the wife and I are planning on taking a much-discussed and much-anticipated vacation next week. The time from “now” to the time we're scheduled to leave is dragging by – it's like our feet are in heavy mud and we just can h-a-r-d-l-y slog ourselves forward. But when the vacation starts? Don't blink your eyes, my friend, or it'll be over! Zip, zip, zip.


Anyhow, I was sitting at the field waiting for the fireworks to start when I started reminiscing about previous year's Independence Day celebrations in my town and how different they were in the past. How much of a difference, I wondered, was caused by time passed and not circumstances? I'll probably never know.


I used to live about five doors south of the local college's football field. I lived there for a number of years while I was a pre-teen, 8-years-old to about 13-years-old. It was a fun place to live when I was young, as most of us kids who used to live in the neighborhood would play up there by the stadium and around the college when we had a chance. Riding our bikes in the summer and our sleds in the winter, playing on the fences (they had wooden ones then, all around the field, with a ledge on the inside you could shimmy along), sneaking into during football games and watching the college players and running up and down the stadium seats when there wasn't a game.


Nobody worried about us and we, for the most part, stayed more-or-less out of trouble. Not always, of course. But let's let those memories stay quiet for the moment. I'm not sure how long the statutes of limitation are in Ohio!


They put on the local fireworks display at that stadium in those days – probably up until the late '70's or so. The crowds had increased by then so much that they had to seek another venue. I remember one year when I was about 10 or 11. Several of us kids had crawled up onto the roof of the ticket booth which served the main gate of the field. We'd procured from somewhere a fake firecracker and a number of feet of real fuse. It was a BIG sucker, too. Looked about like a half-stick of dynamite. We'd stick about 6 inches of fuse in the thing, light it and toss it down into the crowd that was waiting on the fireworks. Then we'd yell, “LOOK OUT!” And point to the huge firecracker laying on the ground who's fuse was fizzing and smoking and crackling. We'd laugh like crazy when the people would run, then one of us'd jump down, retrieve the cracker, climb back up on the ticket booth roof, wait until the crowd reformed and do it all over again.


What marvelous fun!


I would guess that those fireworks shows weren't as elaborate as they are now. Not near as many displays were launched then. But I recall the old fireworks shows as being just fine, none the less. The stadium sat in a bit of a bowl, so the echoes that bounced around multiplied the effects very nicely.


In those days they also had ground displays, something you rarely see now days. Yeah, they were a bit hokey, the “Niagara Falls”, the “Catherine's Wheels”, the red, white and blue “USA” and the faces of Washington and Lincoln. But they elongated the program and gave us all more “bang for the buck”. And, occasionally, they would give us an unexpected thrill.


I remember one year we were sitting in the grandstand watching the show. One of the ground displays was a big wheel whizzing around on a post and shooting off flames of different colors. It would spin and then go “boom”. Then spin some more and go “boom” again. Big booms! All at once that wheel became detached from the pole it was mounted on and commenced rolling toward the grandstand, flaming and hissing! Knowing that there were plenty of booms left on that wheel, you could see the crowd gasp and begin to rise to it's feet – ready to get out of the way, if possible. Fortunately (I guess) it fizzled out halfway across the field and fell over.


I still wonder what would have happened if it had rolled all the way across the field and tried to climb into the grandstand. That would have been a Fourth of July to really remember!


I recall going to the fireworks in 1976. My father had remarried that year (my mother passed in '72) and I, my brothers and my new step-brother and step-sisters attended that celebration all together. There were seven of us, plus a couple spouses by then. My younger brother had mixed up about a gallon of wine cooler and put it in a Thermos jug and we took it along. Most of us became a lot more relaxed than we might have been without the drinks, and the fireworks seemed so much better that year because of it.


So in the late '70's or early '80's they moved the fireworks to our fairgrounds and tried to display them there. It was big dud. There were too many buildings around and they blocked most of the view. Almost anywhere you sat you had an obstructed view. That experiment lasted only a couple of years.


They then moved them to their present location – a huge field in the north end of town that normally contains a couple dozen soccer fields and a marvelous walking track. They now set the launch tubes up in the center of that field and we observers crowd around in a circle a proscribed distance away. The view is unobstructed, you can sit from right up next to the yellow “do not cross” tape, clear back to some parking lots quite a long distance away to watch the display. It all depends on how close you actually want to be. My family's generally been one of the group defined as “the closer the better”. However, my wife and I have discussed this tradition (aberration?) recently and might be willing to forgo the “up front and personal” viewing position for one with a bit more distance between us and the aerial extravaganza. This discussion was initiated the last few years by the amount of ash that's been falling on us during the performances. Some years, when the wind is blowing in our faces, we've actually been covered in ashes by the end of the performance.


That's starting to seem a bit too close for us now.


As I sit here typing this I realize I'm continually amazed at how FAST the Fourth of July seems to arrive each year. It seems that we just see our last bit of snowfall, have a couple weeks of warmer weather and BANG – it's Independence Day! Summer's 1/3 over.


And I barely noticed it starting!


So, boys and girls, another milestone for the year has passed. We can now begin to mark time as before-or-after the fireworks this year. Did I read such-and-such book in June or July this year? Oh – it was before the fireworks so it had to be in June.


And so it goes. The milestones that are way, way, way up ahead through your imaginary windshield are soon dwindling rapidly in your hypothetical rear-view mirror.


Happy Fourth of July, everyone. Hang on to it as long as you can. Labor Day and the Fair will be here before you know it!