No Miracle for Tony

I wrote most of the following on December 10, 2009, but I haven’t posted it until now because I was trying to come up with something that would cover all that I was feeling. I’m not sure that’s possible now, after trying again and again to do it.  Grief is not just an emotion; it's a process.



I’m sorry to report that Tony died on Wednesday, December 2. I haven’t been able to write about it until now, but I’m hoping that doing so will help me sort out how I feel. Despite everything that was going on with him, it was sudden, almost unexpected. On Tuesday, I took him to the vet for the follow up on his abscess. He had refused his breakfast, but other than that, he seemed perfectly normal. Dr. Kroll was amazed by how well the abscess had healed, which I was pleased to hear. I had them trim his nails, and I picked up a fresh bottle of insulin. When we got home, he still didn’t want to eat, but he took his usual late afternoon nap, waking briefly to bark with the other dogs every time one of them heard something outside.

He didn’t want his dinner, but he’d done that before from time to time, so I wasn’t too worried. When we went to bed, I couldn’t sleep until I heard his tags clink against his water bowl as he drank. He got me up about an hour later. I took him out, he did what he had to do, and then we came in. But he didn’t want to go back to bed. He went up his steps to his favorite spot on a loveseat. I sat next to him and rubbed his back. After about half an hour of that, he was willing for me to carry him back to the bedroom. I remember being surprised at how light he felt. Before he developed diabetes, he had weighed as much as 15 pounds (my brother Alex was prone to call him “Pomzilla” at the time), and he had lost 5 pounds before he went on insulin. His weight stabilized at 10.5 pounds for over two years, but he had been losing weight steadily since his bladder infection developed. He was down to 8 pounds.



The big change came in the morning. I got up to get ready for my 8AM class, but he didn’t follow me out of the room as he usually did. At 7:15, I took him outside, carrying him to the edge of the patio, since he seemed kind of out of it. Instead of taking a couple of steps off the patio and whizzing, however, he walked a few steps out and made a sharp left turn. He just kept walking, and he was headed toward the pool. The pool is covered, but it hadn’t been drained down for the winter yet, so the water was almost to the top. I went around on the concrete toward the pool, but I’ve been having a truly horrendous year arthritis-wise, and I couldn’t move very fast. I heard a splash just as I rounded a bush. Tony had walked right onto the pool cover, and the water was up to his knees. He was just standing there when I reached him. I managed to grab his collar and pulled him toward me enough to be able to pick him up. He was not reacting to anything; his eyes were open, but he just didn’t seem aware. I took him in and dried him off, setting him on the floor in the den. He lay down and appeared to go to sleep. By this time, I was pretty worried, but my mother assured me that she could watch him for the hour or so that I would be gone.



I have never prepped a class for their final exam as quickly as I did that morning, but as I was driving back home, I found myself slowing down a couple of times. I was dreading what I was going to find there. Tony had never acted that way before, not even close to that. As I came through the door (no Tony barking to greet me), my mother told me that he hadn’t moved but had vomited a bit. I checked and found only a small spot, about the size of a quarter, on the carpet. I went to call the vet.


We’ve been going to the Animal Medical Clinic of St. Charles for so long that everyone there knows Tony. When I identified myself to Nada, the receptionist, she immediately asked about Tony. I said the first thing that came to mind: “I think he’s dying.” She told me to bring him right in, they’d be waiting for me. And they were. I had had to cram Tony into his travel kennel (this normally involves a lot of activity on his part, but this time he just let me put him in), and one of the techs took it from me as soon as I got there. They left me in an examining room for a couple of minutes while they looked at him in the back area. Dr. Kroll came in from the back, and I knew from the look on her face that this was it.




In the weeks since this happened, I’ve been thinking about how different it is when a beloved pet dies as opposed to a human being. It seems that only people who have had pets accept that this is a significant loss, which is difficult to deal with, for me, at least. I just lost my best friend.