If unconditional love really exists in the world, it must be dogs who give it.
We lost our sweet girl late Monday night. We took her to an emergency vet, where they said we’d have to wait our turn—about an hour—so ok, we did. 2.5 hours later, she died in our arms in the back seat of the car, never having seen the vet. So there’s an "insult upon injury"aspect to the grief process for us.
Her moaning and stomach contractions make us think she ate something she shouldn’t have. We wouldn’t have put her through surgery at her age, but putting her down would have at least spared her the pain. I think COVID was partly to blame—if we’d been sitting in a waiting room, her moaning would have been harder for them to ignore. Instead, we were in the car, her suffering only audible to us.
The dog in the photo looks like our girl. Mrs. L took a whole day off work so she could cry; although I’ve tried to be strong for her, I’ve had a few moments myself.
I’m so sorry. My dog died while waiting to be seen at the emergency vet, but he had cancer and I knew he was dying. Still, it was not the way I wanted him to go.
When you’re ready, another dog will be there for you.
Thanks for the kind words, all. I started typing this and had a bit of a crying jag, a welcome catharsis.
I’m resisting the impulse to detail the mystery behind cause of death too much. Suffice it to say that we had her in a (different) vet’s office a week before and she got a very clean bill of health (for her age) Because they ran $500 worth of blood tests, we hesitated a bit more than we might have, because old dogs have a bunch of problems and we’re not made of money.
She was fine…not fine…fine…not fine…that night. We think something was probably moving through her intestines, blocking and unblocking. Six hours before she died, I walked her and there was no blood in her poop. Hmm.
We got her surgery ($3500) when her stomach flipped in 2017, and we know how hard that was on her. Put her through another one? I mention dollar amounts because it is a bit of cold water in the face—if surgery were free, maybe you’d agree without thinking it through. Someday if I get really sick and my wife has to spend our life savings to fix me only to keep me alive with a horrible quality of life, I’ll say to her, “Just don’t.” Mother Nature is going to win, so let’s not delay the checkmate.
By the way, the same vet’s office that saved her life with the stomach surgery? She died in their parking lot. We hadn’t used them since but their level of care has declined, obviously.
Essentially I think saving her just wasn’t in the cards.
So sorry you had to go through that. But don’t be so hard on the vet. They’re all doing their best, in these times when they can’t have a waiting room full of customers.
@panache45 That’s a fair point. Mrs. L dealt with them on the phone and said they didn’t seem very concerned.
Going into the clinic’s ratings on yelp after the death, I found that in the first 3 pages (30 reviews), 15 gave them only 1 star out of 5 and in 7 or 8 of those there were complaints about long waits. But they average 3.5 overall, which seems to confirm that they used to be really good.
I just think it was fate…when the time comes, there’s no avoiding it.
I’m sure she’d rather have died with you than in the back at the vet’s, even if they were trying to help her. And with Covid making you wait in the car, it makes triage that much harder. They can’t assess a patient very well by phone.
In the end, you can only do the best you can do. You did your best by her, be at peace with that.
Thanks. Mrs. L was furious with them at the time and I tried to calm her. Now I think now she was more right than I initially thought. Looking at it now I think they overpromised and under delivered. One hour waiting vs. two and a half hours is a big difference in an emergency and some of the negative yelp accuse these people of greed. So did they just not want to lose a customer, stringing us along? From our point of view it was an emergency and that’s “any port in a storm” but this wasn’t a true port.
Mrs L waited 24 hours, then wrote a strongly worded email and vowed never to return. Maybe for her it’s asserting their responsilibity for the dog, so to speak. No it won’t bring her back but maybe it’ll save one in the future. I know we both feel guilty, like we failed our loved one. I keep using a sort of rational talk with myself and it helps me. She felt like there was an account to settle, though. They haven’t replied.
Seriously. So much for the concept of triage. Frankly, it’s bizarre for an emergency medical provider to NOT use such criteria to decide which patient to treat first. Isn’t that like the very first thing they go over with you when discussing emergency treatment?
Blockquote
Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.—Sigmund Freud
The more I read about them, the more I realize how far downhill they’ve gone. In fact, some claim that after posting negative things on social media, the clinic said they wouldn’t work with them any more. I guess there’s two sides to every story, though.
When we adopted her in 2014, we were told that she belonged to a family with kids, and she must have had a lot of attention. Then there was a divorce. Then someone with a cat adopted her, but the cat vetoed the deal. She came to us, her third owners, with a bit of a complex.
To be honest, I don’t know that she ever totally “belonged” to us—I think she pined for the children she lost when she was a puppy. But with time, maybe she realized that life goes on. We tried getting another dog for to give her company, but dog #2 insisted that one of them be the alpha and ultimately some blood was spilled, so back that one went. We found other enjoyable things for her (Uncle Gary, a local dog whisperer, for instance, and swimming at a friend’s house). She visited 16 states with us in our camper, checking pee mail wherever we went.
Mrs. L had a dog before we married. When that dog died, she was really hurting and said she never wanted another dog. “You don’t mean that,” I told her. And in six months we had another one. Yesterday she must have blown a circuit…we’re scheduling a home visit and taking two (count 'em, two!) littermate pups for a week to see if they’re a good fit.
Thanks again for the support, all…and wish us luck!