Our dog, Chester, has been ill since July 4, 2005. Somedays you'd never know it. He's happy, playful, and full of energy.
Other days, he wants to sleep or he seems lethargic, not excited about his daily walks or interested in much of anything, except food.
He has seizures. They suspect a brain tumor, but they have discouraged a brain scan since Chester is 12 and half years old. As the doctor so directly pointed out, "So, you find that he has a tumor. Are you really going to put an old dog through brain surgery and take the risk that he dies on the operating table?"
He made his point.
So we give Chester drugs every 12 hours. Phenobarbital. Just like humans with seizures.
The drugs make him ravenous. He steals food. He's never done that before. Our walks are spent with nose to the ground searching for anything the crows might have dropped or the cats left behind. He's focused. Intent. A hunger.
The drugs also make him drool. He never drooled before and, in fact, we always hated drooly dogs -- boxers, neopolitans, rottweilers. But now we have a drooly dog. We carry a towel with us at all times. He doesn't much like getting his face swiped with the towel. Much like a 2 year old who puts up a fuss when s/he sees the towel coming. Chester turns or shakes his head or saunters into the other room, drool dragging in the wind.
The drugs make him sleep hard, too. And when we have to "up" the medications, since the levels change as his body processes it quicker, he really sleeps and he really drools -- buckets of gooey-ness.
And now he wears a diaper. We call it his "Speedo" as it fits around his mid-drift like the piece of fabric Mark Spitz used to wear. When Chester sleeps he's incontinent. The Speedo (fitted with a Kotex pad because the pads they sell with the dog diaper are ridiculously small) keeps his bed dry at night. Hell, it keeps our bed dry at night since, in his old age, we've allowed him to sleep with us more and more.
The quality of life question comes up for me all the time. The internal dialogue -- is he in pain? Is he content? Are all these extra measures just prolonging the inevitable?
There's another dialogue as well. The this-is-hard dialogue. Worrying about whether or not he'll have another seizure, coming home right after work to make sure he's safe, cleaning up after his "accidents", listening to him during his nightly whines (which we can't really figure out, but someone said it was probably "sundowner syndrome" and he's anxious during the dark hours), and waiting for some sign that his quality of life has deterioated beyond what any of us could live with.
I don't like those conversations in my head. I don't like to think I'd put a dog down because it's too inconvinient or too exhausting. But the thoughts come up and I have to crawl to the end of the bed where he sleeps and look into his amber eyes and see for myself that he is glad to be here and that the time has not yet come and that he trusts me with his life.
It's a beautiful thing really.
Even if he drools.
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