The day we brought him home

We are absolutely shattered by the events of this week.

Yesterday, we said goodbye to our year old puppy due to the discovery of a huge, invasive abdominal tumor. We went from “I think there might be something wrong with the puppy” to “he has an inoperable tumor with a grim prognosis and no good treatment options” so fast we’re still reeling from it. 

The puppy who had just had his first birthday. Who was still eating, and playing, and barking at the neighbor’s dog across the street, albeit not quite like the Tasmanian devil he’d been a few weeks earlier. Who’d started off strong in his agility class but then began showing less enthusiasm as the weeks went by. I chalked some of it up to my own training skills, but the red light warning flashed in my mind.

Then I noticed he was peeing more than the senior dog in the house, and took him in for tests. The vast majority of his lab work was normal, and the things that weren’t were only slightly off. But my gut kept telling me there was something wrong, seriously wrong. Earlier this week, I requested an abdominal ultrasound and they discovered a massive tumor. We proceeded straight to a CT scan, only to learn the lesion had already invaded major blood vessels, including the aorta. The surgeon was astonished he was still walking, let alone eating, playing, and barking like a normal puppy.

But he wasn’t normal. With each passing day, I saw a little of his spark diminish. When you’re blazing like a comet, it’s hard for anyone to notice when your light becomes a little dimmer, but I could sense it. The ultrasound diagnosis still came as a shock. No one was expecting that. The CT report was a nightmare to read, with the stark implication that at any moment, the tumor could dissect one of his major blood vessels and he could bleed out.

And so we made the terrible, hard decision to put him to sleep on a beautiful autumn day when he was a little uncomfortable but still happy. Before we were faced with making the same decision on an emergency basis because he was in great distress.

I am gutted. I’m struggling to make sense of this, to understand why such a young dog would develop such an aggressive tumor. We’re following up with the pathologist to find out what we were dealing with, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that we must have done something wrong, something we overlooked. Something to explain this additional and unfair horribleness in a world that seems determined to crush us right now.

My place of work has been incredibly kind, giving me time off to process this. But the house is too empty, and I’d almost rather be elbows deep in someone else’s problems so that I can do what I’ve done with every other major loss in the past decade: suck it up, shrug it off, and move on. Maybe that’s why I’m falling apart now because I didn’t allow myself to feel those other losses in any meaningful way. I’ve treated grief like an unwelcome guest who wants to sucker punch me and knock me down. Perhaps I need to look at it differently. In the form of a translucent brown and white collie trotting along ahead of me on the trail, occasionally looking back to see if I’m coming.

I promised myself that if there was any lesson to be learned here, it was to appreciate every single moment that I get with my loved ones from now on. To stop giving so much of myself to everything else that I have nothing left to give at the end of the day to those I love most. To be present with them here and now, and not when I finally put the phone down, turn off the TV, or get off the computer. To make sure they realize how much they are loved every day that I share with them. 

It’s a bitter lesson to learn.

The house is far too quiet today. There have been times in the past year when I could have wished for a little peace and quiet. Now I would give anything to have my little Tasmanian devil back again. But for now, he’ll be ghosting my steps as a constant reminder of how precious the time you have now is.

the day we said goodbye