PREFACE: I got the idea for naming my dog "Chuy" from Jessica SAVITCH's dog, "Chewy."
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http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,299157,00.html.... Off the air she was ruled by tantrums, suicide attempts, and drug use. Her colleagues despised her insistence on a limo and a hairdresser and felt her reporting lacked substance. ....
The car fell 15 feet and landed upside down in the muddy canal. Savitch, Fischbein, and the dog drowned. A cynical co-worker told another: "I have the worst news -- Chewy's dead."
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He first got sick about 5 years ago. The vet was not exactly indulging. He said (back then), "Tests will run about a thousand dollars. Why don't you just put him to sleep." Chuy, on the examining table, gave out something that sounded like, "Oh-nooo," and buried his head on my stomach and I pressed it to me and said no. The vet said he could GUESS (without the tests) and prescribe some thyroid pills. The pills seemed to work. He didn't complain of pain again. He had a good appetite, could run and bark when his interest sufficiently overcame the been-there-done-that of his age (17 yrs), and knew all the words he ever did.
After 5 or so years of passing thoughts and many months of intense agonizing, I decided to take the step for Chuy and put him to sleep. He had been on thyroid pills those 5 years, his hair had fallen out except for the head, and his skin had turned black and was oily-gooey and foul smelling.
The decision jelled this week and Saturday morning I woke up with all the steps clarified: I needed to call the Humane Society for their weekend hours, bathe and feed and spend time with him, then go in the afternoon.
If he knew about the bath, he wouldn't come inside, so I didn't announce it as I usually did and left the door open "by mistake" and he sneaked in, as usual, to munch on the dog food in the bowl. Aha! I closed the door, gave him an extra portion and took him to the shower. His last bath. I've done this all his 17 years, including five of opening his muzzle and sticking the thyroid pill down his throat, besides following this up with a turkey weiner, holding it for him to chomp in three separate bites. If I gave it to him whole, he would gobble it down WHOLE. So I said, "Shake!" from behind the shower curtain and he SHOOK as always, and I said (again), "Shake AGAIN!" And he did. Then I said with contagious excitement, "Let's go OUTSIDE! Outside!" And he ran out to shake himself dry out there.
So I washed his collar bright red. And on top of the dog food gave him his last unneeded pill and last weiner. And he spent the next three hours or so on one of his chairs on the porch.
I put his clean collar on and the leash and said, "We're going in the CAR!" "Car" and "chicken" are among his 15 or 20 favorite words. So we got to that place and it smelled foul, and the poor employees were all young adults in their 20s, several morbidly obese, some with gang tatoos, doing a miserable job but making an honest living, at least during the 40 working hours.
And the big dude in charge was sympathetic in outward manner, but we both knew this was nothing but ROUTINE for him and the others, and he said, "Just fill out this form. It'll just take two seconds for the medication to kick in and he won't feel any pain. Can he walk?" There were three kinds of form to choose from. The other two were for "Cats" and "Lost & Found." The one he gave me was for "UNWANTED Animals" and it warned that the UNWANTED animal would be evaluated for POTENTIAL, and if not suitable for adoption would be euthanized. Conversation and an emotional display were not wanted, but just for the heck of it I said, "He's not unwanted." He said he knew.
Yes, he could walk from the car, but he's been running free inside the fence without a leash for 17 years and isn't used to a leash and therefore resists walking on a leash. So for the last time I picked him up and carried him in my arms, and I didn't care about the oily goo on his hairless, black stomach. The big dude stood in front of me as I held and petted him and the dude started to pet him and asked whether he bites. Neh, this innocent little thing, who was neutered in his first year so that I suspect he stayed immature with arrested development, didn't even recognize the concept of hostility out there in our world that would make biting appropriate. So the big dude petted him.
And they took him to the back, expecting me to leave. I said I'd wait. The dude came back and said it would take another five minutes because the crew was just coming back from lunch. Fine. So after about 15 minutes, the dude checked in the back and came back and gave a THUMBS UP(!) and said it was done. I asked to see him. He said that, in that case, I'd have to wait another 10 minutes. One of the crew corrected him to say, TWENTY minutes. I suspect they had already dumped him on a pile and had to retrieve him.
So when the 20 minutes were over, the dude called me to go to the back, and they had laid him him out on a tarp, like for a viewing at a funeral home, and he was lying on his side with the legs together in the the two pairs, and his head was pointed up like a show dog, and his tongue was sticking out a little between his teeth. I said to the dude, "I know you know what it's like, so thank you." He said, "That's O.K. HAVE A NICE DAY!"
So back home, I added his dog tag to the 50 or so dog tags going back 30 years or so, emptied out his thyroid pills into the trash, put the prescription label into the shredding container, and washed his outside drinking bowl. Next will be to throw away the plastic/resin chairs on the porch that only he sat on and to throw away the cushion on the lawnchair that he used in cool weather.
Left to right: Bandit (sire), Molly (dam), Chuy (their kid).
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