April 29, 2020, was perhaps the worst day of my life.
Chloe was scheduled to die.
I had made an appointment for her to be euthanized by our veterinarian, Dr. R, who had been treating Chloe for most of her life. Chloe trusted her.
COVID hit Rhinebeck and most of the United States in early March of 2020. The veterinary practice in which Dr. R worked now prohibited pet owners from coming into the facility with their pets. The usual procedure was for owners to call from the parking lot to say they were outside. One of the vet techs would find you, ask the purpose of the visit, and take the animal inside. The vet called you after your pet had been evaluated. Any decisions regarding treatment were made over the phone.
Euthanasia was different, of course. No conversation would generally be needed, but I had told Dr. R that I wanted to be with Chloe when she died. Dr. R was okay with that, but she said that each veterinarian in the animal hospital could, at least for the moment, decide whether to allow an exception to the usual euthanasia protocol. This mattered because Dr. R was working every other week as part of the practice's COVID staffing pattern and if Chloe began to have more pain than she or we could bear and we needed to schedule quickly I might not be able to get an appointment on short notice. I was also concerned that if Dr. R herself got COVID I might not be able to be with Chloe during the procedure at all. I did not know most vets in the practice and some might not want to deal with a potentially hysterical owner.
Chloe had been sick for a long time. She had Cushing’s disease and the symptoms had been getting worse for more than a year. She had two cancerous lumps in her throat and one on her liver. The ones in her throat made it hard for her to swallow. She was a standard size labradoodle who had been 52 pounds at a good weight. By April 2020 she weighed only 37 pounds. Sometimes when I walked her she could not go more than a few hundred feet and I had to carry her back to our home. It was not difficult. With so little muscle tissue it was like lifting a bag of bones. Sometimes the pain contorted her face, unmistakable as crying.
 |
| Courtesy John Eastcott |
Most of our friends and my wife felt that it was time. Dr. R felt that it was time.
Yet she would rally. There were mornings when we would walk around the circle of our neighborhood and prance for a while as she once had. She would sniff her human and canine friends and even drop a few inches into the play stance. It was as if she wanted the other dogs to know she was still one of them, still part of the neighborhood pack. She would watch other dogs play and make slight gestures as if remembering what it was like to run without cares. But she knew her own limitations. After a minute she would look at me. She wanted to go home and lie down. Things might be different tomorrow. She would soon run and pounce again, chase a ball, bark at a squirrel.
Most dogs after puppyhood stand while eating, but Chloe ate lying on her stomach, her food bowl between her paws. This continued most of her life. Only when she started to get sick, at about twelve years old, did she begin to eat standing up. Perhaps it was the cancer in her throat, a standing position making it easier to get the food past the irritating lumps as they began to grow. Dr. R said that the tumors were deep, not just on the surface, and reached into major veins and arteries and likely into the spinal column. Surgery might provide temporary relief but not for long and in any case would not be a cure. The only thing we could do was to make her as comfortable as possible. There was no hope. It was just a question of time. She was in hospice. Joan and I would wake to hear her gasping and coughing and Joan would look at me. How much longer was I going to make Chloe live?
I had made one earlier euthanasia appointment but had canceled. When I made the appointment for April 29, Dr. R told me that I could still cancel at any time, even when we got to the animal hospital. “But it is time,” she emphasized. She said this again during an appointment several days before the final one. Joan begged me to listen to her.
“She’s ready,” Joan assured me.
But I wasn’t. I could not let go.
I was lucky that on the morning of the procedure I was able to reach my friend Gene in Cincinnati, the only person I really trusted to tell me if I was doing the right thing. I do not remember if I asked or he answered that specific question, but he did tell me what I could do to make Chloe’s last moments as pleasant as they could be. He said I should keep physical contact and that I should talk to her through the procedure. Even when she lost sight she might still hear and smell me, and she could feel my touch.
When we arrived at the animal hospital, the vet tech came out and led us around to the back of the facility. He said that we could do it outside. There was a park bench in an area that could be seen from the backs of several houses. Someone was mowing a lawn and I rejected the idea because I did not want to talk to her over the mower.
The animal hospital has a room, far from the waiting room and the examination rooms, really a large closet in a storage area, where there was a metal laboratory table and three chairs. Joan and I waited there while they put the needles in place in another part of the facility. It took about five minutes. When Chloe was brought into the room, there was a green elastic band around her leg where the needles were inserted, the caps sticking out. She was on a leash but loose in the room for the moment. She pranced as if she were young again. She knew that something was different. She knew that this was not an ordinary visit to the veterinary hospital. I am aware of the debates, and the research, concerning what animals know about death. She knew something was going to happen that was different than anything that had happened to her before.
She was not ready, I sometimes believe. Sometimes I tell myself she was ambivalent about what was coming. I still feel guilty that I did not stop the procedure. It seemed as if she was telling me she was still alive and wanted to stay alive.
Dr. R entered the room and told us what would happen. We had been told it all before but it was more real with the chemical containers, the towels, the tubes, the medical smells, the band on Chloe’s leg.
Chloe stood passively as the vet tech picked her up. She did not struggle against his gentle cradling of her emaciated body as he lowered her onto the table. .
“I’ll be working on this end,” said Dr. R. “You have that end.”
Chloe’s head and chest were in front of me. She was looking at me. She was afraid but she was not fighting either me or the doctor, who was connecting the caps above the needles to the tubes that would bring a series of fluids into her veins.
Joan could not take it anymore. She was crying, sobbing. I was crying. The vet tech who was helping the doctor was crying. Joan left the room. The vet tech finished his responsibilities and also left.
Dr. R said she would first sedate Chloe and that she would slowly go to sleep.
“I want to talk to her,” I said.
Dr. R nodded. I began to speak.
Such things I said. She was still conscious. She was looking into my eyes. I was crying. Her face was calm. She was quiet.
I talked about the hospitals, the schools, the libraries that we had visited for ten years as a therapy dog team. When a friend was dying in a hospital in New Jersey, I had brought her with me because it had happened so quickly there was no one we could leave her with. I had presented her credentials and given them a copy of my book about therapy dogs and they instantly enrolled us in their therapy dog program so that we could take her to the room where our friend was lying.
I had taken her to a special school in Lake Katrine, New York, for many years and I reminded Chloe about the children she had visited. Perhaps I reminded her of the time a boy had clamped a hand on her back and squeezed so hard that she yelped. I had to brace her head and calm her while two teachers gradually persuaded the boy to release his tugging grip. She never tried to bite him.
I remembered many other things and kept talking. She was no longer looking at me, or at anything. Her eyes were not moving but I saw slight shifts in her ears so I hoped she was hearing me, smelling me, feeling me.
It had been difficult for her to get certified as a therapy dog. She flunked the first time we tried. One part of the test requires that the dog be led past a hot dog on the ground. The dog must leave the hot dog alone on the command to “Leave it!” That did not happen.
We worked for six months on that. I would put down hot dogs,
then give her other treats she liked even better if she left the hot dog alone.
Eventually she became dependable at this. You cannot use treats during a certification
test, but on our second try she walked past the hot dog without incident. Of
course she then expected a treat, but it was too late. She had passed. We
became a therapy dog team and worked in New York and Arizona. Joan and I were
snowbirds to Phoenix, Arizona, where we had a house in which we spent nine
winters. Arizona was where we met Dennis and Carol, whose West Highland Terrier
became Chloe’s best friend during the winters.
So I was talking to Chloe about the people who had meant the most to her in her life.
“She’s gone.”
I had to step out of my memories with Chloe and come back into the room. I looked at the doctor.
“She’s gone,” Dr. R repeated.
I breathed, then sobbed.
“She was special,” Dr. R said.
"Yes."
"Very special."
"Yes."
