[RIP] Blue, Mixed Breed, 5Dog Talks

I haven't used reddit in quite some time and I'm not quite sure why I'm writing this but my wife and I are having a very hard time dealing with the loss of our wonderful dog, his name was Blue.

Blue was more than just our companion, he was our best friend and we did just about everything with him. Blue was a mixed breed dog of unknown genetics, he was the kindest little soul I've ever known. Blue loved everything good in life: food, people, the outdoors, a warm fire and his dog beds. His favorite thing in the world was hiking, whenever we would pull the car up to a trailhead he would leap to the window and cry until we were outside on the trail together. He loved to play in the snow on the sand and in shallow water. He loved playing fetch with his Chuckit and chasing squirrels. He loved to sit on the couch and curl up with whomever would welcome his presence.

Blue came into our lives at four months of age when we spent two weeks with a friend of mine that had adopted him. My wife was afraid of dogs before we went on this trip and she was even afraid of Blue when we got to his house but by the next day she loved him and took him everywhere with us while we visited him. She had a special bond with him almost immediately. When we returned home at the end of those two weeks she wept as we drove away. Four months later my friend asked if we would adopt Blue as he had agreed to adopt his terminally ill Grandmother's dog and he didn't feel up to the task of caring for two dogs. A month later at ten months of age Blue became a permanent member of our family. Blue was a big presence in our lives, we walked him every day, went hiking with him, took him to the beach, took him to the mountain when we went skiing and took him with us to visit friends and relatives. He was with us when we finished graduate school, when we started our jobs, when we moved and when we bought our first home. When we went on long trips he would stay at my mother's house.

Early this year we were gifted with an opportunity to move to Austria. We sold our house and moved to my mother's house while we waited to receive our residence permits, the process was delayed several times due to the covid-19 pandemic but we finally received our visas 3 weeks ago. We were elated. After receiving our visas we purchased flights we had carefully selected to make the journey with the minimum amount of stress possible for Blue.

Two days after purchasing our plane tickets was a Tuesday like any other, we had been working from home for several months and we were both in the midst of a busy day. Blue sat at the back door early in the afternoon and cried because he wanted to go chase a squirrel, I went and let him out the backdoor and he flew out as fast as his legs could carry him. I didn't see exactly what happened in the next moment but Blue stumbled as he went down the stairs from the deck, he was an occasionally clumsy dog. He came up limping on his back leg and we thought he may have broken his foot, the symptoms gradually got worse and it soon became apparent he had suffered from a back injury. By the middle of the night Blue was unable to walk and we took him to an emergency veterinarian the next morning. The diagnosis was not great, we were told he would need to see a specialist and he probably needed surgery to repair a herniated disc. We took him to a specialist straight from the emergency and their initial diagnosis agreed, he likely had a herniated disc and his lack of feeling in his back feet meant his chances of walking again could be as low as 50%. They needed to do a CT scan and myelogram to confirm the preliminary diagnosis, we said a tearful goodbye and begged our boy to come back to us. Five slow, painful hours later the veterinarian called. Blue did not have a herniated disc, he most likely had suffered from a brief stoppage of blood flow in the spinal cord. It is a long road to recovery including weeks or months of paralysis and months of rehabilitation but she said a full recovery was virtually 100% certain for our beloved friend. They would keep him overnight and wait for the results of another test to determine the medication he needed for his recovery. We were overjoyed. The anxiousness, nausea, lack of appetite and stress evaporated. We celebrated and cried tears of joy repeatedly listening to the recording of the phone call with the veterinarian, it felt like a miracle.

Getting Blue back on Thursday afternoon was one of the happiest moments of our lives. He was in a lot of pain and still unable to move his back legs but with his prognosis, proper medication and instructions from the veterinarian we were prepared to get through a difficult recovery with him. We bought him some new treats and puppy pads for emptying his bladder on our way home and getting him back into our home made our lives feel complete again. The next few days and sleepless nights were all about caring for him. We turned him over so he wouldn't get uncomfortable or get bed sores, fed him, offered him water, emptied his bladder, cleaned up his feces, gave him his medicine and comforted him. He showed what we thought were positive signs of recovery including some faint movement in his back legs and at one point a strong reflex reaction when I pulled up his tail to allow him to defecate. I cried tears of joy when I felt his tail pull down reflexively and felt like he was on the road to a relatively speedy recovery. On Saturday afternoon his discomfort increased and we began to stagger his pain medication to help manage the pain better. That evening his pain got much worse and he cried most of the night, the ER told me I could double the frequency of one of his pain medications which I did at 6 AM on Sunday. An hour later he calmed down and began to sleep and I slept with him for just over an hour. When I woke up Blue was very calm and seemed relaxed, I tried to empty his bladder and nothing came out which was odd. Then I noticed he gave no reaction when I touched his front legs and when I gave a little pinch to his paw he didn't move. I realized he was completely paralyzed and my heart sank. Had I given him an overdose of pain medication? I called the ER again and they recommended I take him back to another specialist that was nearby.

After waking my wife we drove as fast as we safely could to a 24 hour specialist and they took Blue away for evaluation. We waited for what seemed like an eternity and finally called us with the worst news we could have imagined. Blue was struggling to breathe, his heartbeat was irregular, he had a fever and he had developed an uncommon and fatal complication of a spinal cord injury called myelomalacia. We were allowed inside to see Blue and the veterinarian that had evaluated him, she told us he had 1-2 days to live and would suffer from respiratory failure when he passed. We cried, told Blue we loved him, stroked his head, made video calls with my parents to say goodbye and eventually decided to take him home to have his life end in the comfort of a familiar place with people he knew. Shortly before we had decided to leave Blue's illness progressed much faster than expected and he was gasping for air, it was time to let him go. We begged them to come as fast as they could to end his suffering and in an instant our best friend was gone, not even 6 years old.

The last twelve days since his passing have been the most painful moments of our lives. We cried for days, we couldn't eat, we couldn't get out of bed in the morning, couldn't make ourselves exercise or care about anything. We tried to go back to work the first two days after his passing but we couldn't focus and we took the week off. It felt like there were some moments of clarity for a few days: joy from his memories and gratitude that his presence blessed our lives even if it was only those five short years. The past several days have been very difficult. Feelings of loss, hopelessness, emptiness, anger, confusion, fear, sadness and despair. The hardest things are the constant reminders of his absence: food dropped on the floor isn't quickly cleaned, silence in the morning, no nudging us for attention while we work, foods we used to share with him and curling up on the couch at the end of the day to watch a movie. We're moving to Austria in three weeks and I only very occasionally feel excited about it. We even considered not going because it just feels so strange to not have him in our lives.

In the end we will eventually come to understand that Blue's presence in our lives was a profound gift and we were extremely fortunate that he ended up as a member of our family. The deep connection and unconditional love shared with him is an experience that we would not trade for anything in this world. The pain we feel is the price of the wonderful bond, friendship, understanding and experience we shared with him. We will carry our love and memory for Blue with us for the rest of our lives.

We love you Mr. Blue, you were the best friend we could have ever asked for.

Submitted October 30, 2020 at 09:36PM by hoodskier https://ift.tt/2HQyIMh