The End: Part Two

November 18, 2011: Molly's Party

On the last night of Molly's life, Spencer Harrison, Jennifer Backler, Sylvia Davis, Jay Gemmil, John Hutchison, Jane Saracino and Debra Appleton all came by to say goodbye.

Spencer brought people food (chicken and cheese sauce) and Molly believed she had already died and gone to heaven. We watched for signs of barfing, but there were none.

Molly always liked Jay best, and settled next to him...

... when she wasn't trying to get to the food on the coffee table.

Then she grew weary of the festivities and went to bed as a bit of a hint to the guests.

November 19, 2011: Molly's Last Day

I felt conflicted at the vets the week before when he told me Molly could live another year or two. That conflict raged anew on several fronts the day we put her down.

There were two tough moments for me before we even got to the vet. Getting ready to go, I was coming down the stairs to the dining room and felt a powerful aversion to carrying through what we'd decided to do. "Don't do it!" said something inside of me. And something else said, "No, she's not going to get better, she's not going to suddenly start having fun again. Do it."

The other moment was when I tugged on her bed to bring it closer so I could get her into her harness.  Molly leaned back - she didn't want to go. That just killed me.

Brent, reliable to the very last walk, arrived at 8:15 on the dot. He carried Molly, and Bruce and I walked on either side of him, the two blocks to the vet's. Twenty feet from the door, he put Molly down on the ground. She had a light-coloured goopy poo thanks to the rich food she'd had the night before.

For the last time in my life, I cleaned up after my dog with a plastic baggie.

Molly hung back at the door to the vet's office and one of us - I can't recall who - picked her up and carried her in.

At the counter was a middle aged couple with a nice little dog. They saw Molly and smiled and said "aw..." and then they saw our faces and they didn't say anything more.

The vet ushered us into a small, comfortably appointed room. He explained what he was going to do, something about a catheter. I wasn't really paying attention because I was worried about whose lap Molly should be in when it happened. I thought Bruce's lap would be better than mine because she liked him best and I wanted her to be most comfortable and least anxious at the moment when it happened and I got tangled up in the blanket the vet had given me and I was having trouble standing up and handing Molly to Bruce and I felt a little dizzy and had to lean against the wall and oh god I just wanted this to be over but oh god I didn't want it to happen at all.

I finally settled down standing across from the small couch where Bruce and Brent were seated, with Molly on Bruce's lap. The vet uncapped the syringe and I wanted to yell "stop!" For sixteen years I had protected Molly's life. Part of me reeled in disbelief and horror that I could possibly have ordered her death.

I know the moment when Molly died because I felt it in my own body. I watched the vet's hands and saw the plunger on the syringe move and felt a little separated from what was going on because Brent had bent his head down to be close to Molly so I couldn't see her at all and then I felt a pain in my heart as though something that had been there for a long time was suddenly gone. 

And then I started to cry.

*******

I knew from the first "look at the cute doggie" commotion Molly caused that we had to share her. 

This is Molly's last gift to the world.

Thanks for reading this short tale about my small dog. I have another blog, This Week's Picture, that started in 2004 as emails about Molly. In 2012, after Molly was gone, I began posting weekly, not about Molly, but kind of in memory of her. You can find it here.

Review: Favourite Things

I need a little more time before I describe Molly's very last day. Let's review the basics of Molly's favourite things.

She enjoyed her meals (with thanks to the Internet, Gary Larson, this anonymous woman and the two JRTs in the background for this perfect rendition of her most favourite thing).

Molly loved to play.

She loved a big basket of dryer-fresh laundry. She'd dive into it to soak up the heat. She'd get so warm she'd start to pant.

She loved sitting in the sun.

She loved sleeping in our bed. 

She loved hunting squirrels in the tree tops from the comfort of Bruce's lap. 

She was always up for a nap.

Now, back to the end.

The End: Part One

By the end of September 2011, Molly's cough, her diminished senses, and the impending winter weighed heavily on me. I was genuinely worried about how she might fare through another four or five months of snow and sub-zero temperatures. Her cough was not getting better and never would. She didn't seem to be suffering, but dogs don't let on.

On the other side of the exact same coin, I was happy with how otherwise healthy Molly still seemed to be at her tremendous age (112 people years). Long ago I'd met a man who had an eighteen-year-old dachshund. It was fresh out of teeth, but otherwise seemed like a pretty OK little dog. One small part of me then formed the ambition that my dog could probably live that long and have a few more teeth left to boot.

I'm happy to say that ambition carried no weight whatsoever in the events related here.

With her cough as the ostensible reason, I took Molly to the veterinarian on Remembrance Day, 2011. As a civil servant, I get the day off and it has, over the years, become the day when I do important things, such as meet with my financial advisor or start to make the decision to put my dog down.

I was completely dissatisfied with the care Molly was getting from the vets we'd used since we'd brought her home as a puppy. I went to a new place on the ground level of the old Sears warehouse - long since converted to condos - on Mutual Street. 

The vet was a nice young man. I told him about Molly's cough. While we talked, Molly walked around and around and around the perimeter of the small office, nose down, seemingly oblivious.

I still remember feeling ridiculously pleased when the vet said that we must have taken very good care of Molly.

When I asked him about whether he thought she might be at that point, he said her heart and lungs sounded healthy and strong and that she could probably live another year or two.

I still remember feeling deeply conflicted when he said that. 

The vet seemed to notice. He said, "Write up a list of all the things she liked to do and that made her happy - and write a list of what she does now. That might help you decide."

Then we talked some more about the cough. There was no cure, but there was a treatment. It was $60 for a week's worth and had to be administered three times a day, forever. He would also have to make a special order to have it brought in.

I said, sure, order some in.

I hooked my blind, deaf, little dog - still circling the vet's office - back onto her leash.

The vet said, "You know, the literature's still not very strong on this, but there's a growing hypothesis about dementia in dogs - and Molly might be showing some signs of that."

Right. So I left the vet's office with my blind, deaf, demented little dog and went home to mull things over.

I never physically wrote down the list of things the dog liked to do, but this blog has mentioned many of them. Molly loved to play, chase squirrels up trees in parks, go for long walks, attack the vacuum cleaner, meet new people, sleep on Bruce's lap, boss around other dogs, make a giant fuss over myriad things like changing the dining room table cloth and generally just be that high energy little super hero / 'toon we welcomed into our home so long ago and that she had been until, it seemed, just minutes before.

After more than sixteen years of life, Molly didn't play, couldn't hear, wouldn't go for long walks and lived a muffled, circumspect life with a cough that bedevilled her. And winter was coming.

These were the things I slept on. When I woke up the morning of the 12th, I said to Bruce, "I think we should put the dog down."

Bruce said OK.

I called the vet, cancelled the order for the treatment for the cough, and booked an appointment for first thing in the morning on Saturday, November 19, 2011.

I sent an e-mail out to all of Molly's friends and admirers, inviting them to one last visit before Molly went on to her next reward.

Finally, I called Brent, Molly's walker, and asked him if he would like to come with us that day. He said yes.

Before Molly's very last day, I like to remember some of the things she really enjoyed. 

Decline

I made myself many solemn promises about my dog. The one I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep was about not forcing her to live too long. My parents had done that with their dogs and some had lived far past the point where they were enjoying their lives. I remember scolding my father about the condition of our first dachshund Moxie, who was fourteen, had a broken back and couldn't use her back legs, but who was still dragging herself around the house, the picture of misery. Not long after that, Dad finally found the resolve to do the right thing for his pet.

Would I Have To Do That?

After Molly's sixteenth birthday on August 16, 2011, I did start wondering aloud to Bruce, if we transported the dog back seven years, would our 2004 selves be dismayed by what they saw.
  

Molly in 2007 - Post-bath crazy mode

The photo record I've scoured to build this blog shows a nimble and active Molly who could clearly both see and hear right up to around 2009, when she turned fourteen. After that, there are many photos of the dog sleeping, none of her running around.

What's That, Sonny?

Molly seemed to go deaf quite suddenly. One day she was responding to our voices, the next day not. But then she'd seem to be able to hear us the day after that, so we persuaded ourselves that perhaps she had not lost her hearing after all. 

The apparent return of her hearing I think came from Molly's own adaptations to her new circumstances. After being startled once or twice when she didn't hear us come up behind her, she compensated, and maybe paid more attention to her sense of smell to know what was going on around her.

But before long there was no real denying that she couldn't hear us. 

Our joke was then, well, she never listened to us before, either.

I Can't See You!

Molly's capacity to compensate sometimes moved faster than our powers of observation. For example, before the following incident, it did not dawn on us that Molly was blind:

During the summer of 2011, we visited friends who live in the east end of the city. They love dogs - have had several themselves over the years - and Molly was always welcome on our visits to their home. 

We were chit chatting in the kitchen shortly after our arrival. Molly was doing what dogs do, roaming the first floor of the house, nose to ground, familiarizing herself with her environs and prowling for any bits of food left forgotten on the floor.  

My eye caught Molly just as she came into view at the kitchen door, which was across a small landing from the door to the basement - which was open.

I kept my eye on the dog as she happlily nosed her way across the landing, got to the top of the stairs and flipped into the void.

I hollered her name and moved as quickly as I could to the basement door. I wasn't sure I knew what to do when I got there, but the plans forming in my head had something to do with grabbing the dog before she'd fallen more than a step or two.

Gravity works faster than that. I got to the top of the stairs in just enough time to see her tumble all the way down and land on her side on the concrete floor at the bottom.

Completely horrified, I ran down the steep, slippery stairs. It was dark down there and I had no idea what I was going to find. A broken Molly. A dead Molly. But she was getting to her feet on her own by the time I got to the bottom. She gave her head a shake so I knew she hadn't broken her neck.

I put my hands on her gently, applying slight pressure testing for sore spots. She didn't wince or whine or pull away. I hauled her up in my arms and brought her up the stairs still gently pressing her ribs and limbs for sore spots as I climbed. She was fine. No sore spots. No contusions or abrasions. I put her on her feet on the landing and she happily resumed her reconnaissance where she had left it before she fell.

Not that we were ever going to give her another chance at it, but I bet Molly would have never fallen down those stairs like that again. She was still our little evil genius. As soon as she learned that peril awaited her if she didn't change her ways, she changed.

While Molly was clever enough to adapt to her new circumstances, we couldn't ignore their effect on her quality of life. It came to the point where she really was not interested in playing with the ball anymore. I think she could still smell where it was, but she couldn't see it or hear it bounce on the floor. She also stopped reacting to the vacuum cleaner, the phone, or a knock at the door.

But, somehow, even with her shrouded senses, she was instantly aware of when I was chopping food in the kitchen and would come running to monitor for falling food. 

That facility never left her.

But the end was nigh. You can read about that here.

Health and Wellness

Aside from the occasional mishap, and her early bout with mange, Molly was a healthy little dog. We heard a lot of horror stories from other dog owners - where injuries or rare conditions resulted in thousands of dollars in vet's bills - but you can count on the fingers of one hand the times we needed to leave Molly at the vet's overnight.

Molly's first medical procedure was when she was spayed shortly after she was six months old. Our vet did not say this when we brought her in, but he used a method requiring just an inch-long incision, so Molly recovered really quickly and without complications. This was the only time we were unconditionally pleased with the care Molly received.

The Mixed Blessing of Veterinary Care

Most of the rest of Molly's health problems arose from trying to keep her healthy. We had the vet clean her teeth exactly twice. The first time was fine. The second time, when she was about seven years old, she reacted so badly to the anaesthetic she needed to spend two days at the vet to rehydrate and get her electrolytes back in balance. We never did that to her again.

Sometime around her eighth or ninth year, Molly's blood tests came back abnormal. The vet said the results suggested kidney disease, or maybe cancer. The next words out of her mouth were that we should subject the dog to a round of chemo therapy. 

We were stunned by this, and had trouble believing it was true that our dog was so sick. We asked what would be the other symptoms besides Molly's blood levels. "Lethargy," said the vet, "and lack of appetite." "OK," we said, "you have absolutely not described our dog." The only response from the vet was to tell us to bring Molly in for more blood tests. We said we'd keep an eye on her and they could test her again when she came in for her next annual check up.

Subsequent tests were normal. The result that led the vet to believe that Molly was sick was due to lab technician error.  

Second Last Procedure

Molly's penultimate medical procedure was to have two growths removed. Here's an e-mail I wrote in January 2010:

Late last year, we had noticed Molly was worrying a small wart on her right hind leg. It was getting red and inflamed and, when we took her in for her annual shots, we asked the vet if it should be removed.

The vet took some time before she answered. "Sure," she finally said, "and you should probably remove the one on her back, too." 

So, two Fridays ago, Molly went in. 

We picked her up after work. She'd been given some hydromorphine and a sedative along with two local anaesthetics, so she was a little groggy. Consequently, she wore her "cone of shame" (thank you, Disney) without any fuss or commotion. Bruce carried her the whole way home.

When we got her home, we took the cone off to make her more comfortable, but she was anxious, unhappy, restless and, I think, really hungry. As well, the stitches on her hind leg had not really "taken" and she had bled a lot on the way home.

The blood horrified Bruce. "We should never have done this to her," he said.

A view of the shaved patch on Molly's back.

The botched stitches on Molly's ankle.

A Nagging Cough

In her last couple of years, Molly was troubled - or, probably more accurately, we were troubled - by a cough caused by her collapsing trachea. The condition is just as it sounds, due to illness or advanced age, a dog's trachea will collapse on itself, changing from a circle to a kind of half-moon shape; when the collapsed sides of the trachea touch, this creates a slight vacuum inside the dog's lungs, which causes her to cough. There's no real treatment for the condition and the medicine that treats the symptoms is very expensive. 

This was just one of the things - along with being blind and deaf and really not enjoying herself, more about which next week - that helped with the final decision and her last procedure at the vet.

More about that in the next post.

Inspirations Part Three: Works of Art

Molly provided services as a muse to more than just Bruce. Many people have made artwork of Molly-the-Dog.

Photographs

During a photo shoot so protracted that even the dog began to wonder, I got these shots of Molly. They were featured in her first Christmas card.  

Handicrafts

Bruce's Mom made a hooked rag rug with a portrait of Molly. 

Fine Art

Sherree Clark drew a pastel portrait of a giant green Molly standing astride the Allan Gardens.

Shattered Glass, Ceramic and Grout

Sudarshan Deshmukh immortalized Molly in a mosaic.

Festive Baubles

Kathy MacRow painted a Christmas ornament with the dog's portrait on it.

Posthumous

Even with all of these many representations of Molly already in hand, I commissioned this portrait from Trenton artist Mandy Bing after we sent the dog on to her next reward. The pose is taken from a photo of Molly hunting squirrels in the tree tops from the comfort of Bruce's lap. The background is from the photo I really wanted turned into a portrait (see below).

Constant Reminders

I love all of the works of Molly-art and most of them hang in my home (and some day soon, the Molly rug will, too). 

The "Look Both Ways" photos are in the second floor bathroom; I face the mosaic when I sit at the dining room table. I see Giant Green Molly every time I go down the stairs from the dining room to the kitchen. Mandy's version of the dog waits for me every morning as I come down the stairs from our bedroom.

When Molly was still alive, I'd look at the works made during her life - especially the mosaic - and think, "these will be here after Molly is gone." I wondered then how it would feel to look at them without a live little JRT roaming around at my feet.

It feels OK.

Now it's time to turn this narrative to the signs that Molly would soon stop roaming around my feet. 

Karen

Inspirations Part Two: Turns of Phrase

Bruce has a way with words. Molly was Bruce's muse. Over the years phrases entered our household through the happy confluence of Molly's preferences and Bruce's gift.

"Self-Heating Meat Cushion" -- How Bruce imagined Molly saw us. 

"Companion Animals" -- How we described our relationship with Molly.

"Mount Comfy" -- the collection of blankets and pillows at one end of the couch that were the sole dominion of the dog, unless we had company.

Three pillows, two blankets, one dog. This is Schatzi, Molly's cousin on a visit to our old condo.

And here's the gracious hostess happily surrendering her spot to her guest, but keeping an eye on it, too.

***************

On 6 February 2011, I sent out this meditation on Molly's many names.

Everyone has heard the faux factoid that “Eskimos have 200 words for snow.”

Of course this is not true, and, while Wikipedia proposes a mention in the New York Times in1984 as the factoid’s first official sighting, I know that my father, who travelled north to the land of the Eskimos many times, told us that very thing when we were kids in Edmonton. So, easily a decade or more before the New York Times mention, families were gathered around the kitchen table wisely noting the remarkable fact that Eskimos have 200 words for snow.

Why would people light on such a fanciful notion? I can’t speak for any others, but I know why it appealed to me. It allowed me to imagine that there were people in the world so connected to their surroundings that they could see such distinct differences in a thing – frozen water that has fallen from the sky for example – that they could come up with myriad words for it. The factoid connoted a human appreciation for the world that I thought I would like to emulate.

Thinking on this recently, I noticed that, in English, we have a lot of words for money and even more for being drunk. And, in this household, we have approximately 200 (give or take) words for the dog. In no particular order, here are the ones used in the last forty-eight hours:

Molly – Molly-the-Dog – Molly Dog – Bittie Bud – Bud – Bug – Bed Bug – Bed Hog – Wart Hog (she has a lot of warts) – Little Bug – Sweetie Bug – Silly – Silly Dog – Silly Old Dog – Sweetie – Stinky – Tripod (she goes up the stairs on three legs) – Eye Booger Factory – My Girl – My Little Girl – My Old Girl – My Little Old Girl – Trip Hazard – Pup – Pup Dog – Twinkle Toes.

Along with turns of phrase and fond nicknames, Molly inspired works of art, which you can see here.

Karen

 

Inspirations Part One: Christmas Greetings

As recounted elsewhere in this blog, Molly had an almost universal appeal. People loved her, would stop to make a fuss about her, would pick her up and kiss her - just like she was a baby, even when she was an old dog.

Finding it hard not to notice this, I thought I could share the wealth even more if I put the dog's image out in the world in various ways. Starting in 2004, I sent out weekly e-mails (the precursor to my other blog, This Week's Picture) with a photo of the dog attached. Even earlier than that, starting in 1998 and running all the way to 2011, I sent out handmade Christmas cards that - except for 2001 - featured the dog.

These came to be known as the Molly-the-Dog Christmas cards and, in years of peak production, more than 150 would be sent out to friends, family, business associates and other admirers of Molly.

Many people say they've kept their cards. For those not on the distribution list or not inclined to collect, here they are.

1998 - Look Both Ways

It was Bruce's idea to put Molly on our cards; the design, assembly, production and distribution of the cards was what I did. 

Molly's first card was a simple two-fold 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet, colour photocopied from artwork I assembled using origami paper and a couple of rare, lucky shots of the dog. 

The silly joke inside was "Always look both ways before crossing Santa Claus."

1999 - Simple Pleasures

This card was at the other end of the spectrum from its predecessor in terms of complexity and production values. Still made from colour photocopies of artwork made with assembled (and painstakingly cut by hand) origami paper, construction paper and a photo of the dog, this card actually featured moving parts. You could spin the wheel (see arrow) and pictures of simple pleasures would move into the cut out window: sweet treats (the bone), sweet dreams (Molly napping), new toys (a ball) and walkies (a fire hydrant). It took me about a month to make thirty-five of these.

2000 - Christmas Carol Contest

This card was less labour intensive than the one the year before, but it featured a pop-up when you opened it, which required cutting and final assembly of the card by hand. The concept was a contest to add a thirteenth verse featuring Jack Russell Terriers to "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Bruce and I brainstormed the card one fine summer afternoon sitting on the patio of the local pub.
The contest rules were the joke. For example, entrants - in order to be eligible for the highly undesirable prize - had to recite in their proper order all of the verses to the following skill-testing carols: Good King Wenceslas, I Saw Three Ships and O Little Town of Bethlehem.

2001 - No Molly-the-Dog Christmas Card

2002 - Christmas Card Trick 

This was one of two cards to feature Molly wearing something on her head. It's supposed to be a fortune-teller's turban, but it looks more like a croissant. As the ones before it, I made this card by assembling artwork which was then colour photocopied and put together by hand.

It also featured a pop-up on the inside of the card. This was the first card to include a copyright notice on the back. By this point, Molly's cards were sufficiently widely distributed that I thought claiming copyright would be a good idea.

2003 - Election Year

Molly also got a hat for 2003's card, probably one of the least ambitious in terms of production values, concept, copy-writing and colour scheme (not quite sure what I was thinking when I picked that green). On the back it says: "Produced and Distributed under the authority of Molly-the-Dog's Committee to Improve the Christmas Holidays (CITCH). CFO Bruce Clarke, CCO Karen Clark; Maximum Generalissimo Molly-the-Dog.

The joke was that it was not an election year.

2004 - Joy

This was the last hand-assembled, colour photocopied card and the last to feature a pop-up. By 2004, I was deep in the throes of the pesticide by-law wars at the City of Toronto and getting pretty dedicated to my yoga practice. That I had time to do this at all, and cut out 150 pop-up JOYs by hand, is a source of wonder to me now.

Molly's photo on the front of the card, and on the new, improved copyright notice on the back of the card, was taken by Kevan Macrow (though I spelled his name wrong in the credits). 

2005 - Peace on Earth

Looking for a way to simplify production of the Molly-the-Dog cards, I took to creating the artwork on my computer and printing the cards myself with my colour printer. This eliminated hand-cutting and hand-assembly and made it easier to match production to demand. However, the card-weight paper and my crappy little Dell laser jet printer didn't work that well together. I lost a lot of card blanks (at a buck a pop) to misfeeds and then lost the printer when I smashed it with my fist in a fit of frustration. I suppose that detail makes it mildly funny that the theme for the card was "peace."

Molly's copyright notice included a special message this year.

2006 - Hide from the Holidays

By Christmas 2006, I had started at the Ministry of the Environment and was 'way too busy to be making my own cards, but I did anyway. I'd bought a better printer so at least that went smoothly. I compensated for the unfestive shot of the dog hiding from me under the bed by affixing Christmas ornament stickers from the dollar store. 

2007 - All Purpose Greetings

That we were almost completely out of ideas for cards was pretty clear this year. The inside featured multiple choice lists of salutations and holidays. 

2008 - Brain Buster

Without time to put together nifty gimmicks or even well-written cards, I turned my focus to at least providing Molly's fans with a good photo of her. This shot was taken on November 11, 2008. Molly was thirteen, but still chasing the ball like a puppy.

2009 - May All Your Sweaters Come with Gift Return Receipts 

I bought these three sweaters for the dog and the card concept just jumped right out at me.

2010 - Old-Timer's Nimble Noggin Festive Quiz

2010's card featured a multiple choice quiz (as did the 2008 card) and a photo of Molly warm and snug indoors superimposed on a shot of our snowy back yard. 

2011 - Comfort and Joy 

Molly had gone on to her next reward by the time Christmas 2011 came around. I deliberated back and forth about whether or not I would do a card. For her fans, I did one last one.

With this last copyright notice.

Christmas cards were just one of the many creative endeavours inspired by the dog. Here are some more.