Coz's Journal: Goodbye, Puppydawg

Da puppydawg is dead.

Goliath, the miniature pinscher. Almost 13 years old. Diabetic. Heart murmur. Unhappy about not being able to eat people-food anymore. Long-time form of birth control ("If we don't kill the dog in the first four years, we'll consider kids."). Guardian of the home. Protector and companion to the Wif while I was on travel. Nagging pain in the tuckus when his tummy got upset because of something he'd eaten (like a dead bunny the mover hit). Only pet the kidlings have had.

Katy has known this was coming for a while, and it upset her. He got really sick back at Christmas, when we left him with friends and he just laid around - I think the change in diet at their house triggered the initial diabetes. We had him at the vet's for a week, while they diagnosed, regulated his food, administered insulin, and got his blood sugar under control.

For the last 7 months he had to have an insulin shot (human insulin - funny thing that, eh?) before his evening meal. No more scraps or begged things. No more changes in dog food. No more doggy treats. A uniform, bland diet that he came to hate.

He'd lost a lot of agility. Mini-pins are generally pretty agile, but about 2 years ago he lost the ability to jump onto our bed. 6 months later he couldn't make it up onto the kids' beds. Last week, we had to help him up onto the futon. He had bad gas almost all the time.

We had friends over Saturday all day. Their littlest let Goliath get hold of some food. Not good - he didn't want to eat his own supper that night. There'd been cheesecake, and the remains went into the trash. Around 2 am, Goliath managed to push the can over. He ate about half the cheesecake, and rolled in the rest.

At 5 am, he came up and begged the Wif to go out. She let him out, and noticed the mess he'd made - and hosed him off outside. By church time, he'd started with diareah. When we got back (and he'd been left outside for a couple of hours), he was contrite, and seemed to feel better, but his tummy was bulging - he'd really gorged himself.

As the afternoon went on, he got worse. By the time I put on steaks that evening, he was having trouble walking. The girls were upset. He came up on the deck, and they covered him with a towel as he lay there, panting slowly. His belly was distended. We called the vet - he said there was nothing much he could do, just give the dog all the water he wanted and no more food until Tuesday (this was Sunday - yike!). A few minutes later, as I was turning over the steaks, the girls got upset - something was wrong. I sent them inside and checked. Puppydawg was gone.

In a way, this was a releif for Katy. She handled it very well. There were tears all around, and the Wif is still upset, but the girls handled it very well - they've been expecting it. It's the first death they've had to be around for.

Goliath is buried in the back yard, where they can see it from Katy's room. He was as good a dog as I could hope for. I'll miss ya, dawg. Have fun chasing wabbits up there in Doggy Heaven.