Father's Day Weekend

This past weekend was very bittersweet for me. It was awesome to make it home and visit with my parents, it is always something I look forward to. The familiar house, the familiar bed. When I am there, it's so routine like I never left. And I got to do what I wanted, which was visit my mom for Mother's Day and then visit my dad for Father's Day. Though, everytime I visit, it seems to get harder and harder for me to leave. The evening after I get back to Fullerton, I am always bummed out and sad.

The bitter part of the weekend was having to put our dog DJ to sleep. He had been having trouble with his hips. He was an Akita, most bigger breeds have a predisposition to hip dysplasia, which is where the hips and the sockets don't quite meet up anymore. Anyway, he had been having trouble and when I was home for Mother's Day, he was still perky DJ, though having trouble walking. He met me in the garage while I was doing laundry and he was nudging me for attention and I noticed how bad his hips/legs were. I started crying while petting him, knowing he didn't look good. He was still mobile, but it's hard to see your pet that way. At that time I gained composure, but then I walked into the house and lost it again.

This time, a month later, he was not looking good. He would bark, cry and had started having some incontinence issues. When you went outside, there was no greeting you and nudging your had for a pat on the head, he just laid there. My parents were giving him glucosamine/chondroitin and aspirin to try and help, but I think the pain had gone beyond that.

On Saturday, he had fallen into a hole and could not get out. My dad went out to help him and he bit my dad, which meant he was in pain. He was the sweetest dog ever, a big teddy bear, so for him to react that way, he must have been in pain. We then decided that the best thing to do was to see about putting him to sleep. It was a tough decision, but it was really the best for him because his quality of life wasn't very good. We loaded him into the car (quite difficult to do with a 80 pound dog that couldn't walk) and took him the SPCA in Visalia.

We decided to get him cremated, since it would have been hard to bring him back home and dig a hole for him in one, hot afternoon. This way he can come home and he can be buried. Or sit on a shelf if my parents so desire.

This whole thing has hit be pretty hard. We got DJ from a friend in 1999, when he was about 1 1/2 years old. And, like I said, he was a teddy bear. I was always playing fetch or tug of war with him. When I would sit on a patio chair, he would come up and try to jump in my lap...he only got his front paws up, though. I loved him dearly. And the last few days I have been feeling this immense guilt for not telling him bye. The last image I have of him alive was him being strapped to a stretcher and I had to turn around as they took him away. After they put him down, we went back to say goodbye one last time and that was really hard. I wasn't going to do it at first, but decided to. I'm glad I did, but it was very hard to see.

My friend just told me that the good thing with animals is that they don't know that their lives are ending. They only remember the lives they had with you and how much you loved them and the last 5 minutes don't really matter to them. I thought that was a nice way to think about it.

DJ