Goodbye, Baby Girl

Last night, we said goodbye to Junebug. It has been almost 13 years since we made the decision to let foster dog Howie go, almost 15 years since we said goodbye to Smokey. I want to start by acknowledging exactly how blessed we are that it has been so long since we have been in this place, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re here again within a year.

This was one of those cases of an easy hard decision. I wish it would have been different. I wish we would have known it was coming so that we could have given her a best last day. Instead, we were in the place where there were going to be no more good days, and we couldn’t do that to her.

She had recently stopped eating as much, but she still got excited by dinner time. She pulled on walkies. We were fine. She was good on Sunday. She was good on Monday.

Tuesday, she was off. When we went on our walkie, she was the slow one. But when the Golden Retriever went past us, she perked up, barked to play, and acted like herself for about half a block before slowing back down. She wasn’t interested in dinner Tuesday night until C put a bowl of chicken soup down for her. She happily ate that, even defended it from Larry.

But she didn’t drink or eat at all on Wednesday. I got home from work, and C said if she didn’t drink, we should get her in to the vet today. I called the vet office to see about getting an appointment. Their response was that we shouldn’t wait until today. She should get in as soon as possible.

So off to an animal ER we went (and that’s a story in and of itself). What we found out was that her gall bladder, pancreas, and liver were all in very bad shape. One of her liver levels as at almost 5000, when normal was 100-200. While none of the others were quire that bad, they were all very high.

But more than that, her fever was high, and her lactic acid levels were high. And neither of those went down with the meds. No matter what the actual issue was, there was not a quick fix and none of them had a better chance than 50/50 of actually making her better.

Based on her white blood cell count, we had caught this early. She had not been suffering for long, but she was suffering, and she was not going to get better.

Junebug was 3 months shy of being 17 years old. She had been with us since she was 6 months old. She was our “come to the dark side, we have cookies” dog – a force of chaos and destruction wrapped in adorableness and genuine sweetness. She was always too good at being a dog to be a “good dog”, but she loved people and other dogs. She was too curious and adventurous for her own good.

She destroyed cell phones, glasses, put holes in all the blankets in our house, and perfected the art of executing a pen. She could reach things on a counter that you swore were out of her reach. We had to replace Smokey’s collar shortly after we got her because she chewed through the plastic clasp. One time, put outside with Larry and Howie, each on their own leash attached to a chain tie-out, she decided she had been ignored too long and chewed through her leash to come to the back door (the yard was not fenced) to find out why we abandoned her.

For over 16 years, she brightened our lives. Her snuggles and snores are already sorely missed. There is an empty space on the bed and in our hearts. In time it will feel less cavernous. For the moment, there are tears, a collar to be placed in the memory box with along with those from Moree, Smokey, and Howie. And a Larry, curled next to me in the spot Junebug would have been in.