Unequivocally it was one of the single hardest acts to participate in, and, come to terms with.
The “act” is the surrendering of hope. The abandonment of responsibility and the letting go of a strong-willed fiercely determined soul full of so much life it was blinding. The front half of Bentley was solid, foreboding and always smiling, The back half was a re-arranged anatomical list of deficiencies that made his life as a pet impossible.
Bentley was a tyrant for attention and a brute of force too dangerous to contemplate if he felt that his needs weren’t being met. And, yet, for all of his deficiencies it was impossible to not fall in love with him. He had this charming way of falling into to you so trustingly that you couldn't reprimand him for it. He would come tumbling towards you, mouth gaping open, cheeks grinning ear to ear, and a tongue flopping with wet intent to embrace you. Just as you braced to meet the catapulting 80 pounds of sheer muscle lopping into your body he would bow his head and summersault into your lap. Wagging the whole time about being in on the joke only he knew the punchline to. He was always like that. Affable to the point of ill mannered and too childlike -a-giant to argue with.
He came to me about a year ago. I remember every tiny clue as to how hard his case would be. I remember listening to the medical reports, second, third and even forth hand, from all of the people he had been to visit, and telling myself secretly to stop listening. There is an inverse relationship to prognosis and the number of medical opinions. The less medical opinions I have at presentation the better the prognosis. Bentley had already been to numerous vets, and numerous veterinary specialists. The more he went to see the longer his list of burdens became. I was now being called. I am sure I was so low down on the list his fate was almost sealed. I remember his phone call vividly. I was standing in the breezeway of a hotel in Sanibel Island Fla. for a vet conference in late January 2020. My mom was at home suffering from the early stages of her terminal breast cancer. Losing her ability for any kind of life day by day and I had selfishly taken 4 days to attend a conference and take a break from the dismal life unfolding before us. The rescue had emailed all of Bentley's information, asking if I could review it and possibly even help? Could I do the $6,000 surgery he needed? Could I find him a more affordable treatment option? His owner had exhausted all financial and conservative options. It was me or death. He was growing fast and he was unable to stay in his home.
I felt cornered. Why I don’t just reason myself into the obvious answer and back down I don’t know?
I remember hearing myself say out loud in that breezeway; “well, if you get to the place where you are euthanizing we will take him.” I cannot swallow these words right now without a goiter-sized lump of grief, remorse, and turmoil.
Yesterday, after about 8 months of procrastinating, praying, and hoping I had to euthanize him. It feels more like kill, euthanize is our packaged with a bow term to settle the reflux such an act elicits.
It took months to come to terms with even trying to set the day. It took every member of the staff of 20 who care for him day to day to say that they agreed it was the only answer. Truth is he is so lovable when he wants to be that you forgive him too quickly for the times he is dangerous. It took multiple episodes of us, the women who run this veterinary practice to feel as if he held their lives in his whim, his mood, his determined anger to get his way that we had to either keep him so sedated him might doe overnight, the “safe” doses had become increasingly less reliable.
As the months passed we abandoned hopes to 'cure' his urinary issues. Every medication failed. Every recheck, retest, diagnostic yielded worsening progression of a congenital defect that spiraled into being the "40% that never resolve with favorable outcomes." At every option he failed to find a break. He would never regain control of the bladder or his urinary system to be able to hold his urine to be housebroken. He leaked urine all day all the time. He smelled like urine all day, all the time. And you couldn't keep him clean. He required loads of laundry with bed changes daily. Daily, if not more often, bathing. And, it was never going to change. To make his bleak diagnosis more ominous without a sphincters' to hold the bladder closed, and because he was essentially always leaking he had an open conduit from the dirty floor to his bladder and up to his kidneys, Ascending infections that would ruin his kidneys were a reality. Recurrent urinary infections were also looming every single day.
He developed calcifications on his surgery site. The drainboard his urinary system had been re-routed in He was dribbling little drops of urine all over himself, his bed, his cage all the time. I had a staff member designated to caring for him, often without any other paying pets just so he could be kept dry from his non-stop urine leaking.
He, since the time he was born, had to be kept clean. He was swabbed, wiped, diapered, fooled with, every few hours of his whole life before he came here. By the time he arrived at the clinic, at 4 months old, he would not let you near his pelvis, his belly, any place below the shoulders without a shark-toothed sneer and low guttural grumble. In the last 4 months of his life I was unable to examine him without elephant sized doses of sedatives. He became, like so many other patients I have, unwilling to participate in his treatment plan. He was essentially ignored as the only peaceful compromise to our collective existence. The more latitude he took, the more we gave. The ultimatum of the resolution to his issues was pushed days-weeks- and ultimately months into the place yesterday became.
The dozen people who loved him most, spent the last year with him, made his days full of play and joy all gathered around him to say goodbye.
It took a massive amount of sedation to allow him to cuddle with us. Keep him calm enough to not feel timid in touching him. We all sobbed. I, felt a sense of regret deeper than I ever have felt before. I felt a sense of personal responsibility in a depth unknown to me before. This was mine to bear alone. I had said yes. I had committed us all to this place where grief is the only flotsam to seek refuse in. this was my act of betrayal to this soul who would have been the best boy if his emotional needs could have been attempted to have been addressed around his insurmountable medical needs.
I feel as if I am in the cross hairs of an impossible maze that I cannot live long enough to accept the failure within.
His story was public. As are all the things this clinic does. Hard, right, wrong, and most often miraculous, but, he wasn’t that ending. I posted a video yesterday confessing the pain this life leaves me with. The resounding number of responses were friends and family who have followed his story. Known his challenges and rooted for us anyway. There were a few that were nails in the coffin of despair I feel. One in particular was scathing in its burning condemnation. One comment was fueled with disappointment that we “hadn’t waited until after Christmas.” It is December 12 today. They were furious that we couldn’t have waited two more weeks, which I parlay as “endangered the lives of the staff for two more weeks. Sedated to the point of almost coma Bentley so that a magical date on the calendar could be passed. For those of you who read this, you know my mom passed away 6 months ago. I remember wondering/wishing that she would pass a few key dates, like Mothers day. Who wants to remember every mothers day as the day your mom died?
What is most hurtful is the gall-ish arrogance to say that her feeling for him, a dog she has only known through Facebook posts is so influential that her opinion, and subsequent removal from her donor list matters. If you're reading I want you to hear me say that your reprimand to those of us who spent all day sobbing over a loss we spent every day of a year tending to, trying to give some semblance of love and quality of life regardless of how much work, time, effort and yes for me significant monetary investment is hurtful to the place of irreconcilable. To be judged when you are already feeling like failure wrapped in personal betrayal is a pain no one who loved this much should feel. For all the pleas we made to try to get him the financial help he needed for his surgery, and the too numerous to count requests for a home of his own with a need such as “urinary incontinence, recurrent urinary tract infections, and a bully breed who is 80 pounds of childlike tantrums” is a big ask. Only we stepped up. Opinions are welcome within your own sacrifices,, the rest is judgement, unwanted, unneeded and unhelpful with the sorrow his loss brings us.
It is less than a day of trying to come to terms with this loss. My act of betrayal, and the damnation this voice inside me reckons with.
Right now I keep trying to remind myself to not stop being an open heart, trying to not close myself off to these phone calls which I know will never abate, and not giving up at the gate because it easier than trying.
