As we waited in an enormous exam room filled with shiny silver countertops and trays, I felt…impatient, wishing more than anything that the doctor tasked with killing our dog would hurry up with it. Scamper, a female Cairn terrier two weeks shy of her 15th birthday, was about to be put out of her high blood pressure-related symptoms misery. The twenty-minute drive to the pet emergency center, on an appropriately rainy, dark and gloomy night in March, was one of the quietest car trips I had ever taken. My husband, who chose this particular breed and actual animal 14 years earlier, a replacement of sorts for a Cairn mix from his childhood, swaddled Scamper in a red tartan blanket. Our adult son, not exactly the object of this dog’s affection he was intended to be, rode along silently.
My only regret on this day, the last day of our dog’s life, was that my comments to the veterinarian who examined Scamper a few months prior during her senior well-dog check, “anchored” her, affecting her decision not to check her blood pressure, the source of her troubles and the biggest contributor to the need to be “put down,” an expression I find distasteful. Anchoring, according to Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, results in a bias one has when making a decision during which the information that he or she is first offered affects their decision, “…different starting points yield different estimates, which are biased towards the initial values. We call this phenomenon anchoring.” My statements were, “I don’t think she can see. Could she have cataracts?” and “She pants a lot when she does exercise, especially when it’s hot. Could she have heart failure?” Both conditions are common in Cairns. Neither was present in Scamper, but a silent killer was: hypertension. If I hadn’t suggested these conditions and had simply shared the symptoms, might the vet have suggested a blood pressure check? We’ll never know, but I believe so. By the time I brought her in to the local veterinary clinic in March because she’d begun bumping into things, she was experiencing glaucoma due to very high blood pressure and had a devastating lesion on one eye that looked like a dart target (her ungroomed facial fur usually obscured her eyes), which the vet made sure to share with me in its gruesome glory.
A few days after taking the prescribed medication, Scamper’s blood pressure had returned to normal; however, we learned that the lesion would lead to permanent blindness in one eye. Because this particular pooch was unfazed by anything (the sound of fireworks, thunder, or even the blare of our fire alarm going off at random times barely bothered her), we expected she’d be mostly fine, Within a week, however, she began experiencing seizures. During her last night, I carried her around our neighborhood block, still wearing a cone to prevent her from scratching the injured eyed. Halfway through, I felt verklempt, considering the letting go of a pet who had been a part of our lives for so long. Nearly home, she convulsed, experiencing a seizure and foam seeped from her mouth. Back inside, I removed the cone and handed her to my husband, who held this dog that was never supposed to be his but always was more than anyone else’s. As she lay on his lap, I cried. Her life wasn’t supposed to end like this. But then, most of our lives aren’t supposed to end the way they do. All that we can count on, is that they will end.
Nearly fourteen years before, my husband and then eleven-year-old son traveled by ferry to Friday Harbor to meet, play ball with, and put a deposit down on a purebred dog that could only really be called a rescue. Scamper failed at her breeder’s quest to succeed as a show dog. She was more interested in the craft for which the breed is named: hunting for rodents amongst the cairns. I often joked that all our son wanted was a beating heart with fur. She loved to fetch tennis balls, disarm the sound-making part of squeaky toys, dash off the deck after the squirrels that raced along the fence’s rail, and run after rabbits. Her favorite place was at the front of the pack along a line of humans, hiking along the trails in the forest, tugging with her strong legs to force us to travel faster and, when walking through the neighborhood, pulling sideways to ensure that whomever was holding the leash would do her bidding and walk in the direction she wanted. Scamper was never what a person might call a family dog, but she was our dog, and part of our family. We loved her because of her flaws, not in spite of them.
Our wait for the veterinarian felt like forever, but was likely less than ten minutes from the time the tech in navy blue scrubs brought her to the examination room after installing an indwelling catheter, secured to her leg with bright green tape which would enable easier administration of the drugs that would clear the line, sedate, and ultimately kill her. My husband held her while the dark haired stranger uncapped, inserted, and plunged saline, a sedative and finally an anti-seizure medication through the catheter and into Scamper’s vein. Although this was my third experience with pet euthanasia, it hadn’t gotten any easier, just more predictable. Our dog’s body was to be communally cremated and the ashes spread under apple trees. The choice made more sense that carrying her corpse home and standing outside in the dark during a rain storm watching as my husband dug a hole in the mud big enough for her boxed body.
Rest in peace, Scamper. We’ll miss you.
Island Unseen 