Angel on a Leash (25 page)

The doctors told us that Teigh might not even make it out of surgery if we chose that option (our only other option was euthanasia). It was our second grim outlook of the week. After a long afternoon of tests, counsel from the vets, discussion, and lots of tears and prayers, we decided to do the surgery.

We waited at AMC until the surgery was over, and they reported back at 11:30 p.m. that everything had gone according to plan, with no complications. Teigh was slow to wake up and have the breathing tube removed because he had been sedated for several hours before the surgery. The doctors were very guarded about his prognosis at this point, but we got a good report from the overnight attending veterinarian at 4 a.m.

The next afternoon, we went to visit Teigh. He was still a little groggy (so were we), but he recognized us and acknowledged us and then went peacefully to sleep again. We stayed with him for about an hour. During that time, we spoke to the doctors who had done the surgery. They said two things: that the surgery had been a success and that Teigh's recovery so far had been “miraculous”—so much so that they considered letting him come home at that point. They decided, however, that with the aspirate pneumonia that had resulted from his initial collapse on the street, and other factors, they would keep him for one more day.

Teigh was not out of danger by any means. There were lots of things going on here, keeping in mind the reasons that he was not a good candidate for the surgery in the first place. In his favor was that he was in relatively good shape for a thirteen-year-old, his weight was good, and he had a minimum of other issues. He was going blind, but that was not a factor.

This surgery consisted of taking the arytenoid cartilage (the flap that covers the windpipe) and suturing it in a permanently open position. (The
PetEducation.com
website has a good description of the surgery and all considerations.) Fixing the airway into a permanently open position made it possible for him to breathe, but it complicated things by creating a constant risk that food or water would get into the lungs and cause pneumonia. We would have to slow down his eating, feed him only soft foods, prohibit strenuous activities and excitement, avoid hot weather, keep him from swimming at the farm (he would drown), and have him wear a chest harness, among other precautions.

It was a long, hard week with lots of tears, lots of prayers, and not much sleep. At one point, it looked like we were going to lose both dogs rather quickly.

The next day, Teigh came home and looked pretty darn good for all that he had been through. He had a funny haircut from his surgery and a long, sutured-up incision down the front of his throat, but he was happy to be home. The doctors were very happy about everything, but they made no promises; Teigh still had a long road ahead. The first adventure came later when we gave him his first meal of meatballs—slowly!

In spite of having to learn how to eat again and all of the other restrictions, Teigh was happy and enjoying life. He sounded as of he had been debarked, but that was no surprise and was a bit entertaining when we first heard him (he didn't bark that much anyway). We felt like he was going to be around for a while.

At about this time, we got a not-so-encouraging report for Belle. Nothing showed up in the EKG, which resigned us to the fact that it was liver failure, and we were dealing with palliative care only at this point.

Amid all of these challenges, it was interesting to watch Angel, our Cavalier. She seemed to sense that something was going on with each of other dogs and was being very respectful about space, lying quietly next to them on their beds instead of being her normal sassy little self.

For the next few weeks, Teigh's recovery and Belle's battle continued. By the end of May, one month after her original diagnosis, we were convinced that Belle was getting a little better every day, one day at a time. Her appetite was voracious, we were feeding her four or five times a day, and she was always looking for food. Her ascites seemed to have gone away, and she did not seem to have the discomfort that she had been fighting from the beginning.

She was happy and trotting down the hall, even breaking into a gallop occasionally. She would go to her toy box and find something to play with. She could be a little wobbly on her feet and was losing some muscle mass; this was especially evident in the rear legs. She couldn't jump up onto the couch like she once did, but we got some of those doggy stairs for her, and she learned to use them.

She would occasionally have some upswings, once perking up a bit after a visit to AMC in the afternoon. We walked (very slowly) the ten blocks home, and she was out at the end of the lead.

“We're gonna keep battling,” I wrote to her veterinarian. “She had a good morning, and I want to believe that she is going to have a little better morning tomorrow … one day at a time is fine with us.”

As it turned out, one day at a time was all that we got.

On Tuesday, a couple of days after our AMC visit, Belle suddenly stopped eating. She couldn't keep any of her medications down. We tried everything, but when I carried her out to relieve herself that Saturday night, it was evident that the end was coming.

Belle passed on peacefully early Sunday morning, June 7, 2009. I had slept on the floor next to her that night, and I had followed her around on the floor as she had moved a couple of times during the night; the last time was at around 5:30 a.m., when she moved to a position behind the chair where Cheri was sleeping. I think Belle probably wanted to say goodbye to her. I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to find that she had left us. We took her to Cheri's parents' farm in New Jersey that afternoon and buried her there on a beautiful country day. It was devastating, as we had believed that she had been getting a little bit better every day for the past month.

What a wonderful life Belle had lived! Cheri had brought Belle and Teigh to me, and Belle was my first therapy dog—there would certainly be no Angel On A Leash if not for her. She did so much for so many and taught me so much in her nine years of visiting Ronald McDonald House, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, homeless people on the streets, all here in New York City; Bailey-Bouchay AIDS Hospice in Seattle; and many more facilities and individuals.

Along the way, Belle had a few adventures. She broke her jaw and almost died when she was hit by a train as a puppy in Washington. She lived through an earthquake with me in Seattle as things were crashing down all around us in the apartment (Teigh and Cheri were out visiting somewhere). She ran off the dock into Lake Union chasing ducks and attended Mass at New York City's famous St. Patrick's Cathedral. She got sprayed by a skunk on the move from Seattle to New York. And she captured her AKC Junior Hunter and Canine Good Citizen titles, finally getting around to finishing her conformation championship at the grand age of six.

We cannot put into words what it meant to Cheri and me for Belle to have allowed us to us be the ones on the other end of her leash. How blessed we have been. As we drove away from the family farm that night, the song “Calling All Angels” by Train came on the radio. We drove home through the tears.

It seemed as if I had just finally finished thanking everyone for their wonderful support for Belle and for us when the next blow landed in mid-June. At the time of his emergency surgery, the doctors of course took Teigh's blood, and they found that his liver enzymes were elevated. They said then that it could have been because he was oxygen-deprived at the time, and his liver may have been reacting to that, but we all wanted to have him checked again.

So after Belle passed, I took Teigh to AMC for an ultrasound, and unbelievably, his ultrasound showed that he, too, was in the early stages of cirrhosis. He wasn't as far along as Belle had been when she was diagnosed, and he had a larger liver at the moment, so things might be different for him, we hoped.

He had a biopsy done, via ultrasound, which we could not do with Belle because she was too far along and did not have enough liver tissue to biopsy. The biopsy came back inconclusive. His bloodwork showed everything to be normal except for elevated liver enzymes. I spoke to Dr. Jean Dodds for her counsel, and we put Teigh on Dr. Dodds's liver-cleansing diet, which Belle had been on, and milk thistle.

This was a little alarming, to say the least. Teigh and Belle were out of the same dam, but different sires (but the sires were brothers). But what if it was something environmental? We immediately got Angel checked out, and ourselves, as well. We were all fine, but we will always wonder if there was some environmental factor that caused Teigh's and Belle's liver problems.

So we found ourselves asking for prayers for Teigh. It just did not seem quite fair to him, and, once again, we set out to battle this thing with all we had.

Teigh was trotting around the halls of our apartment building and seemed in good spirits. We had to keep reminding ourselves that he was thirteen and could just be slow some days because of his age, not to mention his recent major surgery. Because Teigh's liver disease was not as far along as Belle's had been when we diagnosed it, we were being as aggressive as we could be. We were guarded about our optimism, however, after being fooled about Belle's progress in the first few weeks.

In the meantime, life went on. The two veterinarians who had worked on Teigh graduated from Animal Medical Center's Intern and Resident Class about this time. Dr. Jamie Warren, who saved Teigh's life when he came into triage that day, was named “Intern of the Year” and was heading to Oregon (in an amazing coincidence, to Eugene, my hometown); and the surgery resident, Dr. Nicole Buote, who did his surgery, was going to Los Angeles to work at the California Animal Hospital. We will always remember what they did, what they said, how they performed when we really needed it. We went to their graduation and felt like proud parents.

By late summer, Teigh's laryngeal tieback surgery was only a memory, and he seemed to be fighting off the liver issues. But then, abruptly, he hit the wall, and we thought that the end was coming. Like Belle, he seemingly had been getting a little better each day. But then, also like Belle, he suddenly stopped eating. He looked like a noodle and just seemed the same as Belle had been right before she died.

We were frantic. We got him to AMC, and they were again quite grim about the outlook. We added some medications and started feeding him baby food: beef, green beans, peas, sweet potatoes, and pasta. He loved it, and all of this helped him battle his way back. Once we adjusted his medications and got him eating, he came charging back. We found Dr. Dodds's diet in cans, and he loved it; he seemed better than he had been before his diagnosis.

We were now guardedly optimistic. Teigh was trotting down the hall, playing with Angel, eating enthusiastically, and looking just like he did six months earlier, before all of this had happened. It was unbelievable.

We had to keep reminding ourselves that Teigh just might be slowing down with age, as well as from his disease, but he was happy and in no apparent pain. He was becoming blinder, too, but that didn't bother him. The aftereffect of the throat surgery was that he did not do well in the heat, so I couldn't let him walk when the weather was hot, and I had to keep him from getting too excited in general.

We would take Teigh to Finnegan's, his favorite sidewalk restaurant in the neighborhood, pulling him in a Red Flyer wagon. I never thought I would be one of those dog owners who I perceived to be a bit wacky, but Teigh was doing great, and I promised to do whatever it took. I also promised to never again make fun of the lady who puts shoes on her Yorkie.

Angel became totally attached to Teigh. We made the decision to get another Brittany, a puppy whose paternal grandfather was Belle's litter brother. A lot of tears were still being shed for Belle, as well as in anticipation of what was happening with Teigh. A puppy would be good for all of us; we needed to get busy again in the therapy dog world. Teigh was retired, and Angel was a little better with the ladies at Sloan-Kettering than with the poking and prodding and body slams from the kids at Ronald McDonald House.

So Grace came home with us in early October, at the age of eight weeks, and we imagined her receiving Brittany wisdom from Teigh in his final days.

Teigh began a downhill slide in December. We finally took him off all of his medications in hopes that he would stop vomiting and having diarrhea, and that maybe he would have some quiet days at the end. I was afraid that we were making him sick every day with his meds. He had stopped eating his cream cheese, which we used to deliver his pills, and I thought that he may have been associating that with being sick. After all, his daily list was fourteen items long, ranging from vitamins to SAM-e to colchicine to ondansetron to Pepcid and more. I knew that each thing had a purpose, but the sum total was making him miserable.

Teigh still had an appetite, he would respond to certain things, but mostly he was lethargic and slow. He was showing some ascites, he had a racing heart from time to time, his breathing was very irregular, and he had diarrhea and concentrated urine. He was wobbly on his feet, falling occasionally into walls, and he couldn't jump on the couch when it used to be effortless for him.