SAINTS

he has learned…

there are great pastures to snoop around in. (his owner’s daughters cried when they saw him running in the field.)

couches are comfortable to lay on and pretty easy to get up on and try not to sit on poodles when picking the right spot.

squirt is friendly and welcoming but will not let you eat out of his personal food bowl….if you must eat, go eat out of one of the other ones that do not belong to him.

jewel is very nice as long as you don’t even think of trying to mount her.

phoebe is a hag.

those other 4 legged things are cats and they are boring.

carrot cupcakes taste really good and laura brings really good cookies.

pugsy is not a statue, she is alive and actually moves once in awhile.

as soon as carol goes out the door to rescue frodo off the roof… quickly open the cupboard doors, dig around, and see what is really inside of there.

i can’t wait to see what he learns tomorrow.

he is a retriever/lab cross emma…..he is a very funny and interested in EVERYTHING kind of dog and he seems to quite like it here. he has a very great face.

alfred princeton is doing great but he wants out of that freaking cage!

but soon my adrenalin will be flowing again as i prepare for the next sorry soul.
there is a dog on his way up here. he is 15 yrs old and lives in a pen with a dog house. his owners are almost in their nineties and cannot care for him anymore. the daughter told me the dog had been depressed and rarely came out of the dog house for the past couple of years. recently he has gone a bit stir crazy and is digging out of his pen. his owner is too old to do anything about this except to chain the dog inside the kennel to keep him there.

the daughter can’t take him and she knows he shouldn’t be chained…so saints welcomes whoever he is and i hope we can give him some joy and some peace for his last bit of life…… and i really hope he isn’t too much of a pain.

god help us.

jewel had pain issues this morning, mugsy had pain issues this morning and so did i. we are just a bunch of freaking cripples who need our meds adjusted again. it was a bit of disrupted sleep last night. i had to check on the horses a few time as they were unknowingly given a bunch of fresh grass clippings. you would think it was ok cuz horses eat grass but the clippings are not only exposed to gas fumes…but my lush back yard grass is not the course, sparse grass they are used to eating. i called mo when i discovered the left overs in their feeder last night cuz i wasn’t sure but i thought it was not a great thing….she said i needed to watch them for colic…… luckily they were all ok.

it was also disrupted because not only did my neck hurt but boo decided to bite me in the middle of the night. i guess she was pissed with my up and down routine so when i moved innocently once too often in my sleep, she nailed me in retribution. she is a bad cat. she was in a better mood this morning tho and when we woke up she let me tug 2 small matts off her neck, that was a big accomplishment for us so i am no longer mad at her.
it was quite busy today with lot’s of folks around (the first one arrived at 07:30…yikes!) but i am kind of in la la land with the muscle relaxants, the lack of sleep and the recent emotional stuff so i just ineffectively tried to do my own thing…i got a few things done but nothing worth bragging about.

everyone is gone now, it is very quiet here. all the dogs and cats are resting peacefully. i think i will try to watch “silk” with pugsy, cuddles and squirt, they all like watching movies and eating popcorn with me.

oh! and the bake sale was a HUGE success….whoever heard of a bake sale making $4000?…laura and lana and the bank of nova scotia did (the bank matched the $2000 they made)…wow! thank you to everyone who baked and participated in this, life is a little bit easier now. laura is going to stage a photo op with the dogs, she will be handing them the cheque! i will try to get someone to post it on the website, i bet it will be a great picture.

because the difference between them was organic vs. behavioral. phoebe and carly are manageable because their aggression is behavioral and therefore predictable, we know what sets them off, we try to minimize that. but clyde’s aggression came from a misfiring brain, damaged beyond repair and the rage syndrome was part of his seizure disease…it was not predictable or manageable…it was random acts of uncontrolled violence. a study of american prison’s back in the 70’s showed that 98% of violent offenders, suffered a brain injury sometime in their past. the brain is a very delicate and complicated organ.
the other part of this tho, is from the dogs point of view….the others, and from clyde’s.
phoebe always gives very good warning before she is going to bite…she snarls and growls and lifts her lips and gives the other dogs and people plenty of opportunity to get out of her space. carly is pretty quick with her warnings and doesn’t give alot of notice….. BUT..carly accepts being isolated, she doesn’t like it all that much but she accepts it, and clyde could not.

the other animals are therefore somewhat protected by virtue that carly is not roaming their midst and phoebe will tell them to “F” off…also both carly and phoebe are jumpers…they jump their victims and then they let them go once they have done what they felt they had to to re-establish their rules.

clyde wasn’t communicating with or disciplining personal rule breakers…he was in a red hot blind rage…which means he doesn’t stop until his rage goes away or something or someone else makes him stop.

i am sure there are many who think killing clyde was wrong and it WAS wrong for both clyde and for me. but it is not just clyde and me who happen to live here. and here is the crunch of this…i believe in the rights of one, and those are the same as the rights of many…take care of each one, individually and the many are cared for too.

except…this time it did not work that way.

how i felt about clyde, was not part of the decision i made. whether i loved him or not would have made no difference. i made a decision to sacrifice clyde because i was not willing to risk any more harm to anyone else, not ever again. and when looking at the isolation options, i was not willing to do that to him either.

all of these dogs are different…with effort, dogs like jesse, ben, carly and max can have quality of life while curtailing their freedom…but not all dogs can. and clyde could not….and emotionally traumatizing him day after day to keep him separate, was not going to give him any happiness or peace…it would have driven him completely insane. clyde was not a dog to wait patiently until someone happened to drop by and be with him…he would have fought and screamed to be rescued, he would have jumped and flung himself around to be free because that is who clyde was…a sweet and wonderful dog with a very badly physiologically damaged brain. he could not learn, he could not reason…all he could do was react.
my job is not to torment animals with no hope of ever finding release or happiness. my job is to care for them with respectful compassion and sometimes that means letting them go. i am not saying this makes ending his life right, i am saying that ending his life was necessary for his wellbeing and the others living here.

thank you to everyone for your support and kind words as i struggle thru this…they all brought tears to my eyes…the white bull poem and esp. barb’s story about her dog and her very last comment.

we are a society that hides our failures, we hide our shames. we re-write history or pretend something never happened. we do this to protect ourselves but what we end up doing is perpetuating lies. and those lies not only cripple us but they cripple others too.

how many parents struggle out there to do the very best that they can? and still their child strays into a place of danger or violence…automatically the parents are to blame. they can’t defend themselves, the judgement is made… there HAD to be something wrong with them or their parenting skills or how else did the child get to that bad place? it is always the parents fault. we all know this so we don’t share our struggles, we don’t want anyone to know, we think it is better to hide it all because maybe no one will know. and all the other parents who are sharing the very same boat, think they are alone in that vast empty ocean of personal inadequacy and parenting failure. they suffer in silence and fear because of what others will think of them. and it perpetuates the perfect lie…good people don’t have shameful things in their lives.

we do the same in rescue. good rescuers never have bad endings. we sprout this utter bullshit of happy fairy tales where everything we do is right and everything is good and we are so absolutely perfect in every single way. and we are not. it is a lie. rescue is freaking hard, it is fraught with struggle and pain and victory and defeat. it is dirty and it is bloody, it is shining and pure and it is petty…it is so freaking small minded and petty sometimes, it just makes you want to puke.

and we hide it…anything and everything that maybe someone will use to knock us down or make us feel small or somehow make us feel even more guilty. why should someone like barb be afraid to tell her dog’s story? a dog she so deeply loved.
why should i hide the true events before swinger’s death, just so someone couldn’t call me a killer? what has that misinformed opinion got to do with anything at all? it had nothing to do with swinger, it had nothing to do with me…it had everything to do with the holder of that opinion but for the rest of us it meant less than nothing.

we are humans, we make mistakes, we take the wrong roads and we royally mess things up sometimes. we do all the right things, we try our hardest and it still all falls apart. we are humans, not some magical race of gods.

i feel no guilt because i couldn’t save clyde, i knew this all along….i tried my very best to give him as much time and happiness that i could and i think i was fairly successful in this. my guilt comes very simply from taking his life which was not mine to take.

i feel alot of guilt because cuddles got hurt…i left him the back area and he scaled the gate. i SHOULD have left him in the cat room where he would have been safe. i did not mess up with clyde, i messed up with cuddles, i made another mistake.

and i share all of this life here, not so someone can judge me, who wants to suffer that? i tell you so that when you make a mistake or have to take a life, or suffer a failure, or do something stupid…you don’t feel so very alone. so you aren’t afraid to keep trying even if it doesn’t always end with a happily after……sometimes it ends with a “this freaking sucks.” and if you keep going even tho it freaking sucks, then you are a real rescuer or a real parent or a real whatever because you have what it takes to keep moving on.
maybe you will share your story with someone to help them like barb did. endings that suck happen in rescue, they happen in families, they happen in life…they happen to all of us…we are never alone. i hate the perfect lies. it cripples me, it cripples others. it hurts the animals in the long run because if you really truly can only do this if you are perfect, who the hell will be there for them when they are not?

i hauled around several hundred pounds of stuff from point A to point B and back again…long story but basically i just moved crap in and out of my van so i could do the dump run and now have to move it over to its final destination, the barn….. maybe tonight, maybe in the morning. my neck is quite sore, sparkles gave me whip lash last night when i stood between her and the barn. i took some muscle relaxants but they are wearing off again and i am not sure if going to work as a competent nurse tomorrow with or without pain meds on board is a very good idea either way. i might be taking a sick day.

i have this odd feeling that clyde is quietly following me around. i feel him looking at me in perplexity, wondering why he is not really here anymore. i have been pretty good about not crying unless i start talking about him. it is a combination of loss and guilt and i will just have to let it play itself thru.

jewel was an insane moron with a soccor ball in the pond today. she didn’t drown and kill herself but no one is ever allowed to toss a ball in the pond when she is around. she is sleeping now, i think she is quite tired.

jed had his vet check, he has put on 4 pounds and his heart rate is down to 140. so we keep him on the baytril, eye and cardiac meds and see how far back he can come.

cuddles the poodle was at the vets too. he was the recipient of clyde’s last rage. i didn’t want to say anything publically before because i didn’t want anyone to not like clyde before he died. cuddles will survive his wounds, he is on antibiotics and colleen just shaved around them for ease of my keeping them clean. he knows i feel really badly that he was hurt.

so today is the first day of carrying on after our world turned upside down. it was a beautiful day out and the animals had fun. and my own regret it just part of the price that all rescuers sometimes pay.

i gave him 20 mg of acevet, 30 mg of tramadol plus his regular 65 mg of phenobarb an hour before his appointment, he fell asleep on the couch with me but he woke up as soon as i put him in the carrier. he was suspicious and nervous at the vets but he did not go insane. he only tried to bite me once and then we let him stay in the crate. we fed him 2 doses of ketamine but he still would not go to sleep. he did finally lay next to me on the floor and colleen then gently without any fuss, gave him an anaesthetic and he finally fell asleep. from there he slept thru his passing. all total it took almost 2 hours to help him to go. colleen was very patient with us and let him take his time.

i almost called it off several times but she told me his violence would get worse and one of these times one of the vulnerable guys could easily lose an eye. clyde was clyde, it terrorized him to be alone or isolated, but he wasn’t safe any more as part of the group. i wish this had ended differently but it didn’t and tonight it feels very empty here.

be happy clyde, please be at peace.

my hands are shaking, and i have a giant lump in my throat and i am trying not to cry (just in case a cleaner comes in.) i am still at work so this sucks. at least i am done seeing my clients and the office is empty. oh 9 pm, please come soon, i just want to go home.

i have decided tomorrow to end clyde’s life. he had another rage episode today. it is not his fault, it is just another part of his misfiring, seizuring brain but i just cannot safely manage his sometimes violent illness anymore.

i love this dog, he sleeps in my arms most nights, he lays on me as we watch tv, he trusts me as much as he can trust anyone, which is not entirely, but almost. i wonder if i am the very first person that really loved him, and if i might be the first person he loved back again?….he is such a little frankenstein… but i hope he loved someone else before he got sick and his brain went ballistic… and i really hope that they loved him back too. maybe then i won’t feel so bad, if for a time, he had a normal life with a real family who adored him and he felt it too.

there is a bond here that i am breaking, consciously, to keep the others safe. i am sick inside not only at the thought of losing him but ultimately, because i don’t want to betray him this way.

i had hoped if this was how it was going to end, with his disease winning the war, that he would be seizuring and we would lose while still fighting, not with my surrendering because i am afraid.

i don’t want to do this. and i am going to be sick. but i am going to do it because i just can’t see any other way. there is no way to pretend that there is anything noble or good in this. it is just something horrible that has to be done because i am afraid of what will happen next time…. his life for their safety.

i am so sorry clyde.

i work my ass off on afternoon shift days…i squeeze in 4 hours of work before i go to work…today i am giving myself a half an hour to write and take the dogs for a quick run before i leave. that is only because the 11 o’clock tour i was planning for has not arrived, i bet they are lost in mission somewhere but i still have to go at noon.

it was an interesting phone day yesterday..i talked to all of my kids, they wanted everything from trying to suck me into going out for breakfast to arranging a classroom tour to discussing mortgage options. i also spoke to a nice woman in florida who was doing an article on seniors adopting seniors. i gave her both sides of it, the plus’s and the minus’s and the stuff in between. in theory it sounds like a great idea and it can be but there has to be a strong, dedicated and intelligent program of ongoing support in place or it is just a good idea with a whole bunch of nasty pitfalls.

jewel continues to do well, she is playing with toys and balls now. what an utter relief to have her pain under good control finally. i honestly was thinking we were not going to get there. today is her first patchless day, we will see what happens now.

alfred princeton is eating on his own a bit so i am cutting his tube feeds back…that is a relief for me cuz it eases my workload and i am all for that!

we are starting preperations to get ready to move the barn guys down to the bottom pasture within the next week or so. then we can start repairing the upper pasture and give it a chance to recoup. i think we are getting the hang of pasture management, i hope we are anyway.

ok gotta get moving, hope everyone has a good day!

the past week or so has sucked..tons of crap going on, i am quite stressed which just attracts more….it is a negative magnetic thing.
yesterday after i left for work, renee cut her finger while opening a food can. she needed stitches so there went her shift and a good portion of trina’s while they went to the hospital. at last report she got her stitches, she felt really bad about not getting her work done and i still needed to clean the big dog rooms, the americats, rabbits and the barns when i got home last night. shit happens.

but then eva and tammy came running and everything was caught up by late afternoon. by the time i got home from work, there was just the usual bedtime, feedings and meds stuff to do. so shit happens and sometimes the calvary arrives to save the day…thank you guys!

jewel is feeling better…so much better that yesterday as she RAN to the fields she grabbed the soccor ball along the way. she then proceeded to FLY into the pond (5 different times) so i’d say her med regime is working for her. clyde is untwisting a bit. last night as he waited eagerly for his lift on the bed, he wagged his little tail and did not try to bite me even once. i did encourage him to find somewhere else to sleep the third time i awoke with him snarling somewhere around my face. once i woke him up, he didn’t want to leave so i got up and opened the fridge. he hopped down and trotted into the kitchen and i left him in there.

alfred princeton did very well at the vet, his feeding tube is in the right place. he is sporting a hot pink neck bandage which looks good against his white coat. i picked him up at the clinic just before closing and he had to stay in the crate in my car while i finished seeing my clients. luckily he is a good little traveler and wasn’t the least bit upset at all.

well i better move my butt here, i have a bunch of stuff to get done before my shift starts at noon. i am ever hopeful for a decrease in over all stress sometime soon, if all good things come to an end, crappy things should too.