Everybody Loved Sheila

Sheila's been gone for awhile now, but people still think about her fondly. We got home from a show the other night and found a package in our mailbox.  This was inside.

It was from Ashley and her husband Dave and is about the rainbow bridge that animals cross over when they die, waiting there to meet us when it's finally our turn. It was such a thoughtful gift.  Ashley was the SPCA person who gave us Sheila in the first place and has been her dog sitter and groomer for nearly 10 years.

And then yesterday I got this very special book from Brianna:

It's about an adventure that a dog named Sheila takes into the forest where she finds a banana tree, climbs it and eats a banana because she is hungry.  I cannot tell you how emotional this made me, not because of Sheila but because Brianna had made it for me and mailed it to me.  It made me so happy that she had a chance to meet Sheila before she died.

This morning I made a short video thanking her for the book.  I told her I liked the part about the banana because I like bananas and asked if she did too.  I sent it by text to Tom.  This evening I got a video from Bri telling me that, in truth, she does like bananas.

I love this relationship that we are forming.  She has written me a couple of things and I can only assume that will increase as she gets older, and I love writing to her every week.  This week I told her about our trip to Seattle and included a few pictures, especially of the playground near the Space Needle which has the most amazing slide that I almost wanted to go on it myself.

It is so clever.  You have to climb the spider-web looking thing to get up to a platform, and then follow that around on a swinging walkway to the big silver tube, and that is the slide.  Bri is such an athletic thing, I could just see her climbing up and sliding down over and over again!

I'd undoubtedly do great bodily harm to myself!

A Heart that is Breaking

10 a.m.

I've been pretty philosophical about Sheila's lymphoma diagnosis since the vet gave us "weeks" 27 days ago.  The medicine cured her swollen leg and perked her up.  She started behaving like her old self.  The smile was back.  She ran into the house for treats.

Maybe the meds had given her a new lease on life. 

I was still fairly philosophical about things.  She'd had a long, happy life.  We loved her a lot, but she was an old dog and it would be very sad to see her die, but I could cope. But  I never really believed she was close to dying.

That was before this morning.

Two days ago, it seemed as if she crashed.  She got up moving like...well, me, moving slowly, painfully and sank immediately into her favorite spot, outside on the patio.  She wasn't interested in her breakfast.  When I went out and gave the dogs treats before I left, she didn't come running for a treat and when I brought it to her, she took it in her mouth, then dropped it and let it lie between her feet.

She still came into the living room to sleep with me at night, but no longer by my side.  Now out on the big part of the floor.  In the middle of the night that night she was sleeping on her side and I thought she might have died.

Last night she again was not interested in her dinner, though took several big pieces of my ham steak.  When I tried to slip in a cream cheese covered pill, which she had been begging for for many days, she dropped it and then wasn't interested in anything from my hand any more.

This morning when she woke up, she went straight outside under her bush without looking at anyone.  She has been there ever since.  The other dogs had their usual pieces of my toast (which never fails to bring Sheila in), but she stayed outside.  I took her a crust of toast and a piece of egg and tossed it at her under the bush.  She picked them up and put them between her front paws, then growled when Polly tried to steal them from her.  Later, she got up and walked away and Polly got them anyway.

I had not yet made a vet appointment (I was going to go in to see about her foot, which she has been eating again), but sitting there, watching her, I thought maybe today should be the day.

That unleashed the floodgates.  I have not yet made the appointment, but I wrote to Ashley who offered to come with me.  But I know Walt would like to come, if he agrees with me that today should be the day.  I am heartbroken.

10:30 a.m.

Walt said he had been thinking the same thing, so we have an appointment for 5 p.m., for the doctor's assessment and then decisions made about what to do.  There is a spark of hope, but I'm not counting on a last minute miracle.

4 p.m.

Sheila, noble to the end, made the decision easier.  She just walked in, heavily, and stood there, head bowed just panting.  Didn't even want water. She wouldn't come when I called her.  Just seemed to try to decide what she wanted to do.  She looked so sad.  Then she walked back outside to lie down again.  It left no question about the quality of her life today.

4:30 p.m. 

I feel like I used to feel going to the dentist's office, before I met Cindy.  Butterflies that won't quit, and that sick "I want to throw up" / "I don't want to do this" feeling, yet knowing I must do it.  She has been a good and faithful companion for 11 years. I owe her a painless end to her life.

4:45 p.m.

We loaded Sheila in the car.  Sheila has always loved riding in the car.  She stands up at the window and just sticks her nose out.  She did that on a 2-3 hour drive once.  When we went to the vet last time, she sat by the window, but didn't lift her nose.  When we put her in the car today, she lay down on the floor.  Walt and I petted her on the brief drive.

When we got out she peed copious amounts on the clinic greenery in the parking lot, then we went inside.  There was a woman with a cat in a carrier.  Sheila stood right next to the carrier and displayed no interest in the cat whatsoever.

They are very solicitous.  They put down a blanket for her on the floor of the exam room (though she preferred to lie on the cool floor).  They brought all the financial stuff to us, so we could pay before it was done and leave without having to talk to anybody.  Considering that I was crying, that was probably best, though kind of a "Loved One" sort of touch.

The vet came in with a tranquilizer to relax her.  He started to explain the process and we told him she was about the 8th dog we had put to sleep at that clinic.  "We were here before you, in fact," I told him. He arrived in 1974, we arrived in 1973.  The vet before him was the one who put our first dog, Mutt, to sleep.  Mutt had so many medical problems toward the end of his life and when it came time to put him down, they didn't charge us for it.  Today they charged us $180.  Death isn't cheap, even for dogs.

The vet left us with her while she fell asleep.  I took off her collar (Walt had earlier removed her leash).  We both told her good bye and what a good dog she was.  There is a reason they keep a box of tissues in the exam room.

Then came the final injection.  "This part goes quickly," he told us, unnecessarily.  By the time the syringe was empty she was gone.  When we had Toby put to sleep, he was on the exam table and I had my hands on him.  I could feel his spirit leaving.  With Sheila on the floor and me unable to get onto the floor, I didn't have that experience.  We said our last goodbyes to her lifeless body and quickly left the office. The staff averted their eyes when we walked past.  As I said, they are very solicitous.

We talked about Sheila and all our former dogs on the drive home, then greeted Lizzie and Polly, who don't know that Sheila is gone.  I put a picture of Sheila on my iPhone Wallpaper.

6:15 p.m.

Ned arrived with a ham.

So How is Sheila?

It was a week or so ago that I reported that the doctor says Sheila has lymphoma and he felt we were looking at "weeks."

He put her on an antibiotic for her swollen leg and Prednisone for the lymphoma, warning that it might make her thirsty.

In all honesty, without medical expertise, I don't know how she is physically, but there is a noticeable difference in her since she started on the medications.

For one thing, the swelling is gone and she is walking just fine.

But for another, she seems happy these days.

She is definitely more thirsty and now goes through 2-3 bowls of water a day and she is panting almost all the time (which Ashley, who just spent nearly a week with her, tells me is also a side effect of the Prednisone, since it prevents her from being able to regulate her body temperature).

But she is perky.  She now comes for treats (before she just lay where she was, knowing I would bring her treat to her).  She seems eager at  mealtime and bolts her food down in seconds.  She loves her medicine (since she gets it in a ball of cream cheese).  In fact, I haven't kept careful track, but she seems to be waiting for Polly and Lizzie to leave their dinner bowls so she can finish up, if they don't.

I don't have a clue how long she has, but it's nice to see her looking so happy right now...happier than I have seen her in a long time.  As Ashley added, "if at some point it seems the drug is causing more discomfort than Sheila can handle, then it will be time to decide what her quality of life is, but right now I would say other than wanting to drink a lot more and pee more she seems to be doing really well."

* * *

I am now officially the fourth theater reviewer for the Sacramento News and Review.  I have cleared it with The Davis Enterprise and they are OK with it, as long as I don't duplicate the Enterprise review in the other newspaper.

I know all three of the other reviewers and have known them from chatting at shows for several years, so there will be no "getting to know you" period.  I just need to settle into how things are done there.  I will probably see more shows than I do now, since I don't review many Sacramento theaters and SNR reviews them all, I think, so I will significantly increase the number of shows I see each year (currently ~50).  

But I'm excited about it and a second salary is a nice perk too!

Catastrophe Day

The morning started taking Sheila to the vet.  Her back leg was swollen and she had some lumps I'd found.  She also needed an annual exam (about 2 years late).  She has been panting a lot lately, which I figured was at least partly caused by the rising temperatures lately.

She's such a perfect dog to take anywhere.  She loves sitting in the back seat and looking out the window.  I usually open the window a crack and she sticks her nose out.  Today, she was happy to just sit there and look--didn't get up to stick her nose out the widow.  I attributed it to the bum leg.  And she loves everybody.  That stump of a tail just wagged a mile a minute whenever anybody came into the vet's waiting room.

She weighs 51 lbs, up about 5 lbs from last time she was weighed.  Then the doctor looked at her leg and said he would give me some antibiotics and see if that helped.

Then he checked the lumps I'd noted and asked if he could take some aspirates and see if he could figure out what was going on.  He listed a few possibilities, the last of which was "lymphoma" (why does nobody say "cancer" any more?  Is lymphoma a less painful word to use?).  But he was encouraging because he said that if it was lymphoma, we had caught it early.  This was a good thing.

He took the samples and said that he would call me later, and if I had not heard from him by 5 p.m., to give him a call.  He also told me he always reads my reviews.

The word "lymphoma" hung heavy in my head and I decided to take Sheila to Jack in the Box to share a cheeseburger with her.  She ate half of it and I was going to split the second half with her, but she wasn't interested.

We came home to wait for the call.  At 5 p.m., I called him.  I could tell just by the way he said "hello" that the news was not good.  "It's lymphoma," he said, "...and we're probably talking weeks..."  Weeks?  What happened to "lucky that we caught it early" ??  So now there are decisions to be made.  We've decided against chemo, which would be around $2,500, which, much as we love her, seems extravagant for a 12-13 year old dog.  We're going to start Prednisone and see if that will slow things down.  Ashley tells me there are lymphoma trials at the vet school, but they seem to involve week-long stays there and injections and tests.  If Sheila is in her last weeks, I don't want her to spend them confused about why we've sent her to some place where she has to live in a cage and be hurt regularly.

Needless to say I'm a bit emotional right now, which may explain the second catastrophe of the day...distracted brain function.  I baked chicken thighs for dinner and when it came time to get them out of the oven, the pan they were in kind of tilted, spilling a whole bunch juice on the oven floor.

Thinking I would take care of it right away,  turned on the self-clean oven feature.  In a matter of seconds, there was thick smoke pouring out of the top of the stove, every room was filled with smoke, and every smoke alarm was going off (this lasted for half an hour and not a single neighbor came to check on us!)  

This is after about 20 minutes, when the smoke was starting to clear...
I didn't get the real dramatic scenes!

Walt had every fan we have blowing, and I tried to turn off the cleaning feature, but the smoke was so thick that I couldn't see the controls on top of the stove to find the right button (but I sure did get a taste of what it must be like to die of smoke inhalation!)

I was finally able to turn off the self-cleaning feature, but then I discovered that there was a fire in the oven.

I thought the liquid was on fire but after the oven door finally unlocked, Walt discovered a charred chicken thigh that had burned to a crisp.

The house was so smoky, we couldn't eat inside, so decided to eat on the patio.  Sheila, uncharacteristically, was sleeping somewhere and not begging for food.  

 

I feel like shit.  I love this dog.  She's the first dog we've ever had who is really mine more than anyone else's.  They are all ours, of course, but Sheila was mine first.

Appleberry

4 June 2015

This was the Photo of the Day on May 25, 2004.  Walt and I had been looking for a dog...well I had been looking for a dog and he was reluctantly letting me.  

I found this picture in the SPCA web site and I wrote this: "My new possibility for a dog.  This is a female Australian Shepard mix....I'm going to check her out some night this week." 

It was the ears that got me.  I have since seen lots of dogs with one floppy ear like this, but this was probably the first time I'd ever noticed and she just looked so cute. Her name was Appleberry, which I thought was the dumbest name...but if we adopted her we would definitely change it. 

I called the SPCA and they suggested I make an appointment to come and see the dog.  On May 29 I went to a local t-shirt place where someone who was fostering her worked.  She suggested I take the dog out for a walk.  That night I posted this photo:

It actually felt kind of weird being out walking with her, but we didn't hate each other.  I went home to talk with Walt and he agreed we could adopt her. But it wasn't that easy.  I wrote this in my journal:

"No, we still don’t have a dog. To their credit, the SPCA does a more thorough background check than the Department of Homeland Security. The future of these dogs, many of whom have not had the best of pasts, is very important to these dedicated volunteers. I understand and appreciate that. 

"The dog had kennel cough and the woman thought she would hold her for a week until she’d lost the cough and until she had been spayed. When I left her, I said that I would contact her that night (after conferring with Walt and showing him the pictures) and let her know if we wanted to take the dog.
"Up to this point things were still going well and we were still communicating.

"I checked with Walt, he agreed we could get the dog and I sent a note (it is, she tells me, more efficient to reach her by e-mail, so we did this all without telephone calls) saying that yes, we wanted the dog.  I get an e-mail from her:

We need to set up a time to meet with you and your husband and your dog. I could have someone bring her over to your house later today and we could go from there. If she gets along well with your dog and your husband likes her, then we could do the paperwork.

My assistant Ashley can brng her to PETCO today, Sunday. Call her to arrange this."

How innocuous that statement was "My assistant Ashley," who has become one of my invaluable friends and with whom we have been through so many doggie adventures!

And then, on June 3, we brought Appleberry home.  

"We went out to Woodland to check on 'The Dog.'  I liked her when I met her a week or so ago, but she had me today when I sat down and she put her head in my lap and looked up at me with those big eyes.  So I guess we've added a new member to our family.

"She seems to be a real sweetheart and our first stop was at Petco to get her a collar and toys.  Even Walt, who has been rolling his eyes at this whole idea of mine, says she's a 'real sweetie.'  She is curled up on my feet as I write this."

She even started her own blog.

 
That was 11 years ago.  We called her Sheila.  I still love her floppy ear.  She's been (and continues to be) a wonderful dog.  I'm going to get her a special treat for dinner tonight.

China Revisited

"When are you leaving?" Walt asked.

I looked up with a jerk, saw that it was 2:20 p.m., checked my calendar and saw that I was supposed to have Sheila at the vet's office at 2:40. I was still in my pajamas.

It's been that kind of day. A week or so ago, I put in some time and got half of the pictures from China up on Flickr, but I OD on that stuff quickly. What with putting a journal book together, and doing a bunch of other things with the photos, including a slide show to show to a friend at lunch this week, I really was sick of looking at our photos, to tell you the truth.

But I heard from the woman who runs the Internet Users Group here in town. Shortly before we left for China (and she left for England), I worked with her and the group teaching them how to make slide shows. This is the follow-up meeting and she has invited people to come and bring their slide shows.

I told her that if she didn't have enough shows, I could bring China pictures to show. She said that she had her own trip pictures and if nobody else volunteered, we could both run our slides.

But to put together a slide show of a small percentage of the pictures, I had to finish sorting them and getting the good ones up on Flickr.

I pretty much worked the entire day and managed to get up another 4 days worth of photos. I have two more days to go and will get that all done tomorrow.

Then I can start thinking about which photos I want to use for a coffee-table type of book. It's darn expensive coming home from one of these trips! LOL.

Sheila and I got to the vets with 1 minute to spare. I don't get a lot of one on one time with Sheila and I enjoyed reacquainting myself with her again. As she gets older, she has really taken on the role of guard dog, so she spends all of her awake time either looking out the front window, or lying on the patio, not asleep, but taking stock of all the sounds and smells that come to her. Rarely do I ever see her sleeping during the day.

But she was very excited to be going out alone with me. She sat by the car and waited until I opened it for her, and then sat in her spot in the back seat with her nose out the 2" of window that I open for her. We took her camping in the days before Lizzie came to live with us, when she was an only dog, and she took her place in that spot and didn't move for the entire 2+ hour drive into the mountains. She is a very loyal guard dog.

The appointment went well and she now has all her vaccinations up to date. She was such a good girl that I decided to buy her a hamburger. We went to Jack in the Box and I got a plain hamburger--just meat and bun. I broke it up into little pieces for her and put it on the back seat, but she wouldn't eat it because that would mean leaving her guard place at the window, so I found a place to park and fed it to her. She was thrilled. A whole hamburger all to herself.

We came back home again and I went right back to China until time for Jeopardy and then putting together a pizza for dinner. After dinner I finished off the last batch of photos I was working on and then we headed out to the theatre.

This was opening night for the Davis Musical Theater company's production of Peter Pan, a new production of the show that opened DMTC's history 29 years ago. Walt worked tech for that show and when, in his opening remarks from the stage, Director Steve Isaacson reminisced about that very first show, he called out to Walt, in the audience, to make sure he remembered too, about painting the set for the last act while the first act was going on.

When the show was over, I had a piece of opening night cake and chatted with the costumer and Walt got a tour of the rigging for all the flying scenes. Two other member of the company came to talk with me about China, so I was quickly back in China mode again.

With luck, I will have all of the photos fit to print on Flickr by tomorrow and I won't have that hanging over my head any more.

Conversations with Sheila

I talk to the dogs. Everybody talks to their dogs. Often conversation with dogs tends to be monosyllabic. "Down." "Sit." "Stay." Fuller conversations might include things like "good girl" or "treat time." Occasionally I will talk to Lizzie or Polly as I would to a person. they don't pay much attention, or look at me as if wondering what language I'm speaking.

Sheila understands me.

Sitting at night at the dinner table, when I have finished my food and have no treats to share with the dogs, I look at Sheila and say quietly, "I'm finished eating, but he's still eating." The other dogs continue to look at me, hope in their eyes. Sheila immediately looks at Walt and goes to sit next to him.

Or at breakfast after I've given them each a crust of my toast, Lizzie and Polly keep hoping for more, but when I say "that's it" and hold my hands up, Sheila immediately leaves the table and goes back to her post in the living room, protecting us from dog walkers, trash collectors, and students walking to school.

I occasionally lock the dogs in the house, when Lizzie gets a bee in her bonnet and can't be outside without barking. Sometimes I forget that the dog door is closed. And then at some point I open it, but by then, the dogs have already tried to get out and have given up. Sheila will sit in my office, looking at me, eyes crossed because she has to pee. I'll say, quietly, "you know the dog door IS open." Immediately she whirls around and goes out the dog door.

It's surprising, sometimes, how much she seems to respond appropriately when you speak to her in sentences.

Lizzie doesn't talk to me, but she reads my mind. She can be out in the back yard and I can be thinking about leaving the house and she'll be in here in a flash, ready to get the treat that I give the dogs whenever I go out, or return home. She watches me like a hawk for any movement, however slight, which might indicate that there is a possibility of a treat in her future.

For Polly, it's non-verbal. When she climbs into my lap, snuggles herself into my armpit, lays her head across my chest, then looks up and licks me on the nose before sighing and settling her head back on my chest again with a happy sigh, you don't need words to know what she's saying.

Happy Birthday, Paul (1/28 ... which is when I wrote this)