Wednesday, May 11, 2011

2

I haven't written in a while. A lot has happened and I just haven't felt the inspiration to write.

On April 29, we had to put Bruno to sleep. Greyhounds are infamous for their bad dental health. Most of this is a result of the high protein diet they are fed on the track; raw meat and vegetables, et al. We weren't Bruno's first family; after his career on the track ended in a horribly fixed broken foot, he was adopted by a young couple. I can only assume (and hope) that they treated him well the first year or so they had him. They soon had their first child and banished Bruno to the basement, neglecting to care for this great animal as they should. The woman who runs the greyhound adoption agency soon received a call that a big black dog with a limp was roaming the town. She went and picked him up. It is in the adoption contract that if you do not care for your greyhound, you will lose custody. These dogs are retired racers and some of them have a history of abuse. All they ask for is love, a soft place to sleep and most of all, patience.

Bruno had had four dental surgeries and about 18 more teeth than the average greyhound. The first was paid for because it was thought to be necessary as a result of the way he was treated at his first "home." By the time his fourth dental surgery took place, he had been on antibiotics for about two months before and a month after (including pain medicine, obviously) He went in for surgery on Monday, March 28 and was deemed well enough to come home on Tuesday. When my mom and I picked him up, he was a completely different dog. He seemed happy. We knew his teeth were bothering him. He now had only two teeth remaining--his lower incisors, which the vet left in for fear of a broken jaw if they were removed. His gums were almost immediately back to that healthy pink color, not bloodshot red. The vet did say that the infection had spread to his sinuses, but he would stay on the antibiotics, so he should be okay.

And for most of those three-four weeks, he was. He was getting back to himself. Bruno was such a strong presence that even though we adopted him in September 2005, it felt like we had had him forever. His internal clock wax back to work, letting him know when it was time to be fed and when to bug the hell out of us. He would get in our faces and bark like he used to--except now his breath did not smell. We would laugh and he would get angry and that would cause more laughter. Echo, the greyhound we adopted after Alex's death, would circle Bruno, looking thrilled just to simply be included.

On Tuesday, April 26, Bruno had to be encouraged to eat lunch and then refused to eat dinner. He had a corn that resulted from the shit-fix he received on the track after breaking his foot that seemed to be irking him that night, and I was able to get a pain pill down him through wet food. On Wednesday, all he would eat was grounded chicken in broth. I looked at his gums and his left side was inflamed, though not as red as they had been. That night, he became lethargic and felt increasingly hot. We took him to the emergency vet, where we were told that he had a temperature of 105; they gave him a shot to help bring it down. I stayed up with him most of that night because I was worried but also because we were under tornado watches and my paranoia would not let me fall asleep. My mom took him to the vet on Thursday morning and later texted me that the vet thought maybe a piece of food had become caught in his still unclosed holes which previously housed his upper incisors. His creatine was 6.8 and his temperature was still hovering around 105. He was hooked up to IV fluids and antibiotics throughout the day and albeit he would have to repeat the process on Friday, my mom wanted him home because no one would be there to check on him throughout the night. Throughout the night, we were encouraged; though he refused to eat, he drank about a half gallon of water and even woke me up in the middle of the night to ask to go outside and when he returned inside, he found the energy to jump onto the couch. On Friday, his kidneys did not look any better, he still had a fever and worse, his heart had enlarged 25-30% overnight; the infection had spread to his heart. My mom said we were probably going to lose Bruno. The vet said the only dog she had seen survive this received thousands of dollars of surgery and had a pacemaker implanted. My mom and I made the decision that afternoon to put Bruno to sleep.

Bruno knew. While he was still able to stand, he nuzzled me and I kissed his head three times; he then walked over to my mom and licked her face (this was out of character for him, he was not a kiss-giving dog). Then, his legs gave out and the vet injected the fatal dose. I watched him take his last breaths as I watched Alex do the same almost six months to the day before.

We have our theories. Maybe he and Alex were so codependent that one simply could not survive without the other, no matter what world they were currently occupying. I do think Alex needed Bruno. And I like to think they are together, somewhere though the events of November 2010 through now have really shattered whatever belief I had left in God. In reality, though, the infection growing in Bruno's body was just too great and we would have lost him no matter what. Had his teeth still been in, he would have certainly suffered more. Whatever antibiotics, the infection would have still returned with a vengeance and taken him away from us.

It doesn't seem right that I will never call him "Bucky" or "Rooster" or one the other nicknames I had for him. It doesn't seem right that he will never follow me to my room one weekday afternoon to sleep on my bed while I browse the Internet. It doesn't seem right that I'll never see him running through the snow again, or running at all. It doesn't seem right that he and Quizzie will never sleep together again; he was the one animal to accept her when we adopted her in September 2008. Here, he was this 85 pound big dog and she, this 14 ounce kitten, not even the size of his head. It was that great acceptance and calm for which I will always be grateful.

All the words I have are not enough to describe how much I will miss that dog, or how truly thankful I am for the time we had together, however short.