I’ve grown up with dogs all my life, but Bond, my Boston Terrier, was the first dog I picked out myself after leaving the nest. I was still in college, so it probably wasn’t the best idea I had at the time, but I was told these made good apartment dogs so not much was going to stop me. That was back in 2000. Since then, he has lived with me in two different apartments and three houses. He has outlived two other dogs I owned since getting him, and he was the boss of my two German Shepherd puppy monsters. He had also attempted suicide at least 3 times that I can recall off the top of my head: picked a fight with an entire wasps’ nest, ate rat poison, and nearly drowned. I swore he was going to survive a nuclear holocaust with the roaches.
Unfortunately, this, of course, was not the case.
Earlier this year, we got the sad news that he had over ten ruptured disks in his back. We never knew he even had back problems or was in any pain until that one day he cried out in his sleep and couldn’t lay back down again. Most of these ruptures were old at the time of their discovery, proving this dog was tougher than really any human I had ever known.
From that point on, he was never really the same. He was obviously in pain a lot of the time and occasionally had trouble walking and/or standing. I honestly thought his time had come the weekend we moved to our current house in Dallas, when he hurt his back so badly, his back legs were temporarily paralyzed. I had given him some doggie morphine and an anti-inflammatory and told my aunt that if he couldn’t move his legs in a couple of hours, we were taking him to the emergency vet and making the difficult call. In typical Bond fashion, he was up and about within an hour like nothing had happened.
We knew that he was one bad fall away from death’s door. I prepared myself daily for finding him in the closet, his latest favorite place to nap, dead in his sleep. However, knowing that doesn’t fully prepare you for having to make the decision yourself.
When I was in the hospital after Zack’s delivery, Bond stayed with my aunt since we knew his old man bladder wouldn’t be able to handle the extended time Shawn was away from the house. He hurt his eye somehow, which wasn’t that unusual because he always hurts one of his eyes. We watched it, and it seemed to get better, so we didn’t take him to the vet. This past Friday, it suddenly got bad all over again. His face was puffy on that side, the eye appeared to be discharging a little, etc. etc., so we made plans to take him to the vet on Monday. On Saturday, within literally an hour’s time, I watched his eye go from slightly cloudy to completely gray with a disgusting, lumpy film over his eye. I tried to wipe some of the discharge away with a Kleenex, but he screamed when I barely touched him. Of course Shawn had drill this past weekend so he couldn’t help, leaving me to call my aunt and beg her to take Bond to the emergency vet for me, as I couldn’t take Zack out in public yet.
She gladly took him, and it wasn’t long before I got the call from the vet telling me my options. The injury was more severe than I could have anticipated; what I was seeing was actually his exposed eyeball, as the cornea had completely separated from the eye. I could either find an ophthalmologist who would perform surgery to correct the eye, the veterinarian could remove the eye, or I could opt to put him down. Yeah, I kind of burst into tears on the phone. I told her I had to talk it over and I would call them back. My aunt said she wouldn’t tell me what to do, but if it was her, she would put him down. Why put a 13-year-old dog through that kind of surgery with all of the other health problems he already had? The likelihood he would even survive it were slim, and if he did, he would probably live out his days in more pain, recovering from whatever surgery I decided. I called Shawn, and he voiced the same opinion. I flat out said I couldn’t make this decision, I was too upset. Shawn quietly said it was time to let Bond go, to free him from all of the pain he’s been under for the last several months.
What kills me the most about this is that I wasn’t there. I couldn’t be there with him during his last moments, but I’m so thankful I have an aunt, whom he loved, who was willing to be there and hold him. At least he wasn’t alone with no one he knew.
Unlike Mufasa’s death, I haven’t been too sad over Bond’s passing. It’s partly because I have seen this coming for a long time, partly because he was getting really difficult to take care of with a new baby, and partly because he really was in a lot of pain that we couldn’t help him with. It was his time, and as horrible as this probably makes me sound, it’s a bit of a relief that it’s over. I’ll always miss what he was, when he was healthy, but I won’t miss what he’s been since the beginning of this year.
I’ve had my trifecta for this year, God…please nothing else until at least 2014.
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