Saying Goodbye To A Pet

Animals live longer, but sometimes owners have to choose when life ends

BY BRIAN J. GAFNEY
Correspondent, Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin
November 8, 2005

Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware / Of giving your heart for a dog to tear ...
-- Rudyard Kipling, 'The Power of the Dog'

The house is quiet now, a lot quieter than it was during the 12 years, six months and 17 days Cody lived in it. He was a yellow Labrador retriever, and one of his jobs as dog of the house was that of Official Greeter.

"There's no greater comfort than coming home and knowing he's there," said Peggie Walworth, the Hallstead, Pa., woman who knew that comfort for so long. (Her husband, Richard, and her daughter, Lisa, also were in the house, but there was never a question that Cody was "Peggie's dog.")

"When you get a dog as a puppy, it's different ... you bond, like a mother," she said.

Remembrances of the day the happy little puppy arrived are now tempered by these images: A stainless steel table and the smell of alcohol, an empty collar wrapped up in a drawer and a useless leash hung on the wall. Those 12 years and change went by too fast for Cody and Peggie, ending in September when Walworth had to make the decision to have him put to sleep.

What she has left are memories of a constantly delightful companion.

So a dog's owner smiles through her tears and talks about her pet's eccentricities. Walworth recalls, for example, that her Labrador always liked to bring her a little something at the door.

"He'd bring me my shoe," she said. "He'd go in my closet when he heard me coming, and I had a rack with hooks for my shoes. I'd always be missing a left shoe ... he always took my left shoe. I don't know why he did that every time, but I think it might have been his sense of humor."

Or possibly because dogs like routine, which would explain how Cody looked for important items lost in the house. A surprising number of human adults engage in hide-and-seek around the home with their pets, and Walworth was no exception. "I'd sneak off and hide in the foyer, and Richard would call to Cody, 'Where's Mom?'" she said. "And he'd check behind the shower curtain, and then at every door, and THEN he'd find me."

"He was just a very big, loving and playful companion who was very good at taking away everyday stress," she remembered. "He used to go visiting a poodle a couple of houses down the street, and I'd see him down there, and I'd say, 'You'd better get home, Mister!' and I loved to watch him come running back."

Yet the years go by, fun and all, and if time never seems to slow down, a dog does. The strong, active Lab who could run up the hill and back twice while his owner was still on the upward hike slowed and slowed until he had trouble getting up from his Orvis bed, and the outdoors became a trial instead of a treat. "Two years ago, in the spring, Richard and a friend walked up to the pond, and Cody went in the water," Walworth said. "The cold went to his hips, and he started having trouble with them."

It's the sort of thing that happens to dogs more often nowadays because, like their owners, they live longer, leaving them open to the debilities of old age. "They definitely live longer," said Dr. Robert Sullivan Jr., owner of Southtown Veterinary Hospital in South Montrose, Pa.

"Over the last 10 years, they live at least one to two years longer, depending on the size of the dog."

On the good side, Sullivan said veterinary medicine is better able to control both pain and the progression of disease in dogs. "Dogs have healthier lives because we can give them good, preventive therapy, as well as adequate nutrition," he said.

Walworth found those improved therapies made all the difference for the last two years of her pet's life. Her veterinarian prescribed medication that took away a lot of the dog's pain. "He'd get up, and he'd cry, and I knew he was hurting," she said. But with the help of anti-arthritics and joint lubricating medicines, Cody was soon in better shape.

"It was like a magic pill for him," she said.

Unfortunately, the magic didn't last forever, and over time, the big Lab was worse than before. "He couldn't hold himself to go to the bathroom, and he would lay down to go," Walworth said.

"And it got so he couldn't hear me, but I'd reach down and rub him ...he'd startle, and then he was so glad to see me."

She said she talked to friends for advice. She said, "It wasn't fair to Cody, and I didn't want him to suffer."

That is a very tough time for a dog owner, but the decision is one she had to make on her own. "People ask me if it's time to put their dog to sleep, but I don't answer that question," Sullivan said. "I give them the best advice I can on the condition of the animal, its health, its prognosis, but the decision must be the owner's.

"I tell them, when it's time, you will know. It's sort of an epiphany. I try to present everything to the client, but this is a very difficult time. But people need closure with a pet the same as they do with a relative."

Sullivan believes it becomes a quality of life issue, rather than a quantity of life, when people ask how much longer they should maintain their pets. And they must ask themselves whether they are keeping a dog alive for the dog's benefit or only for their own.

"We have a responsibility to our pets to alleviate pain," he said. "If the quality of life is there, but the animal is in pain, you need to consider this."

Which is what Walworth did. "I knew it was never going to be an easy thing, but the time came when I knew we had to part. It used to be, he could walk forever, and then he'd walk from the back yard to the front, and lay down, and I'd have to lift him and carry him in." she said.

"So the day he was put down, I said, well, you've never had chocolate cake in your life, or sex .. and sometimes chocolate is better than sex ... and I gave him the cake, and an abundance of his special treats, and everything he liked," she said.

"And we took him to the vet, and I held him, and Richard petted him, and before he went, I said, 'C'mon, one more puppy kiss.'

"And the vet shaved his front paw, and she gave me his fur. She gave him an injection, and she said, 'He's gone.'

"He had his head on my arm all the time."

You can create an online memorial to your departed pet for free at www.ILovedMyPet.com.

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