E Tyler Photography

A week ago today, I came home to find that our Basset Hound, Daisy, wouldn’t eat her dinner. Any other dog or any other time and I wouldn’t have been worried, but Daisy *always* eats. In fact, she eats *everything*. I took her in to our vet (where I used to work), Friendship Hospital for Animals, and they checked her out. Even after the x-rays and other things, it was pretty ambiguous. I was faced with a decision- do exploratory surgery now or take her to the emergency vet for observation and if she is not better in a few hours, do surgery then. What made it even harder was my husband was out of town on a (rare) business trip and was pretty much unreachable.

I chose to have her go into surgery there, with people I know and trust. I normally would have waited, but my gut, my mother’s intuition, or something else, was telling me this was really bad. She went in to surgery and it took a while. Eventually, I got a call updating me… they had found two pieces of decking in her: one in her stomach and the other lodged in her intestines (we had to have our deck replaced because it was defective- when they were cutting pieces, they never picked them up and we were finding pieces all over the place for a week afterwards). It was not good. But if we had not done surgery right then, she wouldn’t have made it through the night.

A few hours later, after getting her fixed up as much as possible, I met Daisy (and her doctors) at the doors of the emergency animal hospital. She didn’t look good. But I gave her a lot of love and prayed for the best. We did not think she would make it through the night. Yet the next morning she was still holding on and I spent the next few days going back and forth between Friendship, the animal hospital, and home. Everyone was willing to help out, especially when they learned I was on my own with three kids, a dog & cat at home and a sick dog.

Each day she improved in some small way. But she was not bouncing back as much as we hoped. There was nothing to tell us she wouldn’t get better, she was obviously fighting as hard as she could. She wagged her tail at my oldest the one evening and she was up and walking and going outside to potty, but she was still not eating. If we could only get her to eat she could come home and recouperate there.

Thursday night she went back to the emergency hospital and we gave her some more plasma and some good pain meds. My mom came into town that night (she had been planning to for Emma’s birthday). Jeremy got home from his trip around midnight. On Friday morning, we went to transport her back to Friendship and she looked so much better. She wiggled and wagged when she saw Jeremy. So we were finally getting hopeful she would get to come home that night.

Friday afternoon she still hadn’t eaten and it was becoming harder to keep on top of her pain. We decided we would bring her home and try to get her to eat there, that maybe she was just too anxious at the vet. They showed me how to give her a pain injection and to keep her iv line clear. We got home and she was so happy. There are some who claim dogs don’t have emotions, but Daisy was happy. She explored as much as she could of the backyard and our house. Once she was satisfied, she lay down on the deck (her favorite spot) and rested. We could tell she was relieved to be home with her family.

That night we slept in the living room and took care of her. She slept well. But she wouldn’t eat or drink. I could tell the pain meds were not working as well as they had been. On Saturday morning she looked worse. I took her in and our options weren’t good. She had fought long and hard and lasted longer than we had thought possible given how bad she had been after surgery. We decided to end her pain that afternoon.

We brought her home and we all sat out on the deck and loved her. But she couldn’t get comfortable, even the best pain meds weren’t helping and I couldn’t stand to see her suffer, so we decided to take her in early. On a crisp, sunny fall Saturday, our Daisy felt no more pain. She had done all she could to not give me a reason to even have to make that decision until after Jeremy came home. I truly feel she waited for him. She wanted to make sure we were all home and she had had a chance to come home and rest for a night before leaving us.

Nothing, no other pet can ever replace her. She was not the world’s best dog, nor was she the worst. She just was always there. With her long ears, big feet, drooly lips. With her sad eyes, her happy tail, and her ability to eat anything and everything. She was older (and bossier) sister to Molly, our yellow lab, who let her boss her around, even though she was twenty pounds smaller.  She looked out for the kids, tolerated the cat and loved us for who we were. She could forgive us or yelling at her when she whined at three in the morning, she would lick us and smell us when we came home from vacations. She was a beloved dog. A member of our family.

She & Molly had a game they would play… just a simple game of chase, but it always started with Molly grabbing something (usually her football) and getting into Daisy’s face. Then the butt wiggles and a dance and the chase would start. We have trails in our backyard from this game. She could eat a box of crayons in ten seconds. She has eaten just about everything possible, from toys, mulch and even a bouquet of daisies once. I would bring them home a new toy just to watch her tear it apart in an hour (and she enjoyed every minute of it until I had to take it away).

She will be missed.