How did we know Sig was ready to go? We didn't. We'd been told we would know. We kept waiting for him to stop eating which would have been a sure sign in a dog whose daily highlight was a meal. Or perhaps he'd no longer be able to get up, just stay in bed and refuse to face another day. But that didn't happen either. Instead, he kept tottering around on two and a half good legs, hauling himself to whatever room I was in, trying to keep up when I moved about. He'd stopped sleeping much in the daytime and waited anxiously from one treat morsel or one meal to the next. He was a couple weeks shy of his nineteenth birthday. A grand old age for a canine, and he looked it. He lost weight, was just a skeleton of himself. His hair was coarse and dull. He'd had cataracts for years and hearing loss had eliminated much of the sound from his world. A neurological disorder along his spinal column was probably the cause for the loss of mobility in his hind legs. Old age just caught up with him.
But who's to say he wouldn't have liked one more day on earth. If he were human, would he have had one more joke to tell, one more story to relate to his grandchildren? We'll never know. All we knew was, at the rate he was progressing, it would be a couple weeks before both hind legs were unusable. Last week he had diarrhea, I tried rice to remedy it. Several days later, when his stool turned to soup, my husband and I talked. We could medically treat this, but it would require a stay at the vets for intravenous fluids. Neither one of us wanted his final days to be spent that way. So, I spent one last morning with him curled up in a chair next to me. My husband Scott came home at noon and he held him while I drove to the vet. We drove around for awhile, giving ourselves one last chance to change our mind. Car rides used to be such a treat for Sig, but he was no longer aware enough to enjoy them. He looked so tired. When the vet gave him the injection that took his life and his body relaxed, I realized how much tension it had taken to hold himself upright. His body in the last several months had never felt relaxed. Even my petting had ceased to have an affect.
Many people had an opportunity to meet Sig. But what they didn't know about him was how much he taught us. He was a cheerful guy, and never met a person he didn't like. He enjoyed every day, tolerated change, and complained very little. Still, he wasn't "my kind of dog." I believe when you adopt a dog, you have them for life, with very few exceptions. I treated Sig the same way I treated my other dogs, but I didn't feel attached to him. I found some of his traits annoying. He paced when I tried to work at home, his toenails tapping a constant rhythm on the wood floors. He was terrified of thunderstorms and could not be calmed, even with tranquilizers. He had skin allergies and would go through continuous cycles of itching and treatment, with many nights spent waiting for him to settle down. And he loved to bark. At everything.
When Sig turned five, something made me try a different approach. I decided to try to understand what Sig wanted. What did I learn? That what Sig wanted most was to be noticed. I gave him a job while I worked. I'd tell him to get to work and he'd go get his latex barbell and trot back in the room. Every time I spoke to him, he'd make a low laughing rumble in his throat and trot back out of the room, his tail wagging the entire way. Eventually he'd drop his toy and settle down in a patch of sun on the rug to take a nap. When he itched, I would put him beside me on the sofa and stroke him until he calmed enough to fall asleep. The sleep would break his urge to itch and give medications time to work. During thunderstorms, my husband discovered that picking Sig up and walking with him in his arms, calmed him almost to the point of total relaxation. He also found that taking Sig for a car ride would distract him from any type of anxiety he might be experiencing. When Sig got older, one of the symptoms of his dementia was steady, monotonous barking. In his last year, he would bark non stop for long periods. I finally realized that the barking was usually set off by anxiety. When I tracked the source of his anxiety, I could remove it, or at the least, hold him and stroke him until he felt safe.
During the process of deciphering Sig, I came to cherish him. Seeing to his needs made me slow down and take moments to sit outside in the sun with an old dog. I laughed more, enjoying every bit of comedy that Sig performed. Ultimately, I learned to be a more understanding and compassionate person because of him. As life lessons go, they don't get any bigger than that. Sometimes, God sends teachers in little packages to deliver them. I will miss every toenail tap and every bark.
