February 8, 2010
about how do we deal with the devastating losses of so many we love?..it is easy. there is no place else for most of these animals…we either take them in, love them, and be willing to let them go when it is time or…they have no where to go and they die.
cole had 5 years here, as did buddy too..five years of being loved for exactly who they were. five years of the fullest life that they wanted to live. daffy duck dog had a chance at a real home again for awhile and then saints was here waiting with open hearts to welcome our beloved girl back home again when she needed, max was an asshole but he was our asshole, we loved him and thought most times he was funny (but we still watched his teeth!) sparkles? apollo? donny? all of the others???…these guys come here as discarded misfits and they become our cherished princes and princesses….no lines, no barriers to love, few expectations except to be happy…(never how long will they live) most of them do well with this after all of the disappointments they faced before.
we do it because they deserved to be cared for, they deserve to be loved, they deserve to feel the joy and happiness they bring to us and know without a doubt that it is a gift that they gave us..they deserve to feel our very real grief at their passing as the ultimate proof of how much they were truly loved.
they all live on here…we remember them, we talk about them now and from 5 years ago like they were still here. they are real, inside of us, even when they are physically gone.
their lives and the light inside of each of them that rocks our very cores are well worth our eventual tears…i just wish we could give them even more.
firstly…i renamed him cole because of his beautiful and heart rending wild wolf wail… after cole porter and nat king cole…legendary musical icons.
before he was cole, he had some bar room boozer kind of name. he just couldn’t be regal with a booze soaked name and so he became our cole….king of the wild world at saints.
cole was one of those unfortunate dogs belonging to stupid owners. they let him continually run all over east vancouver like he was a homeless stray dog alone in the big city. i believe he was actually hit by a few cars and he became a frequent flyer at the city pound. deb and jez and all of the staff there at the time became like a second (and much better) home to him. each time he was impounded his owner bestirred his butt down to bail him out and then let him run loose again. as long as he showed up within the holding period and paid his fine, he was free to re-claim his dog each day. (the dog/property ownership laws in this regard totally suck.)
eventually cole was severely injured…he was unable to walk, he was totally incontinent and he used to drag himself over to the neighbors who would clean him up and feed him. as far as i know, his owner did not take him to seek medical care. everyone thought he had been hit by a car again and maybe he was. but when we did xrays, 2 separate vets of ours agreed..the three inch downward displaced fracture in his sacral spine, could only have been caused by a hard downward blow of something narrow, like a 2×4 or a broom handle.
the neighbor called animal control and they took cole into their care. eventually he was able to walk again and that was when they transferred him to saints. i think the owner did eventually go looking for cole but the impound holding period was past…finally cole was forever safe from running loose on the streets and then having his medical needs ignored.
cole ate my wall about a month after coming in..he thought if i was not in the house then he shouldn’t have to be in there either. it was a freaking big hole…2 feet by 4 feet and it went right thru the gyprock, thru all of the insulation, right to the siding on the outside of the house.
i decided i could not leave him unattended and there was no way i was shutting him up in a crate so i took cole to work with me…he rode around in the van while i visited my nursing clients. for a few days he thought this was fun and then he decided it was boring. on the fourth day when i went to load him up, cole went back up to the door and sat with his back to me, clearly asking to be let back in and left at home please.
so i did…and cole never ate a wall again after that…the futon couch was way more comfortable than hanging around in my van.
cole had a few major problems initially…firstly with uncontrolled diarrhea which on an incontinent dog…totally sucks big time. and while he was also bladder incontinent, he couldn’t always empty his bladder either. so for a little while i had to help him by expressing his urine to make sure he wasn’t keeping it in. we eventually got past that too and he began freely flowing, which while inconvenient in keeping him dry is way safer for him.
when he had been with us for about six months…cole lost the ability to swallow. the food would just get stuck in his esophagus and when it was too full, he would regurgitate it up again. not sure what that was all about but with a few weeks of several antibiotics and puree’ing his food..he made it thru that last challenge as well.
i have already talked about cole buggering off, wanting to eat a dead sheep if i could find him one please, and skulking around and being the fun cop who could not stand anyone having alot of fun. he really did not like stupid happy dogs, especially cockers, but he liked tally well enough and tally was not the brightest star in the sky.
at the old place cole and tyra had a job they both liked. i used to give the dogs bones to chew on…we only had 12 dogs and i could easily moniter and keep them all in line. i used to let them out to chew on their bones on the property in the nice sunny weather.
at night when most of the dogs and i were busy putting the much fewer barn guys to bed…cole and tyra would scout out every square inch of the property and collect up all of the bones into each of their own piles. so while bill and wilbur and daffy duck dog, and lexi and abe and river and jazz and the first jesse and whoever else was there were getting fed fresh from the chickens eggs to chow down on, (copper the run away bastard was shut in the house!) cole and trya were working hard as bone collectors.
tyra would lay on her pile and dare anyone to disagree they were hers…cole moved all of his into the big dog house that was set up for the outside neighbors dogs to sleep in. once they were all in the house for the night it was dead easy for me to pick up the bones and throw them away til i gave them more again…hah no forgotten bones around that might cause a fight!
the last few months, cole has been showing his age…his disabilities were becoming more pronounced, his diarrhea episodes were frequent again. we all knew what we were facing, a day at saints without cole any more. we tried not to worry, we tried not to be sad..we just took every day that came as a gift and enjoyed it with him.
and this is what cole’s story should teach to folks…live your life fully, enjoy every day, let go of the past because the tomorrows are worth way more than the yesterdays….and one day a crippled old neglected stray can become a wanna be wild dog with a soft bed and couch and a whole family of very good friends…it is a good way to end your life’s journey.
that’s cole’s song.
but first for the rest of today.
esther started vomitting early this morning..somewhere before i got up just after 5. she was vomitting a lot. i called the vet and got the ok to hold her meds and to give her some gravol til i could get her into the clinic late this afternoon. then she started with watery, bloody diarrhea….poor baby she really felt like crap.
anyway…we made it into the vets…the skin thing is negative for mites and looks like an endocrine issue or maybe severe untreated food allergies gone wild. she also has a bacterial and yeast overgrowth so she remains on cephalexin, a lower dose of benadryl and surolan for her sore ears until her blood work comes back….we are specifically looking at cushings or thyroid disease. her stool spec showed a ton of really nasty bacteria..the vet said it is the kind that dogs get from eating dead and rotting things.
so poor absolutely sweet esther came from a home that let her skin itch and rot beneath her and where she had tons of access to probably old rotting garbage on a continual basis.
she is on high doses of flagyl and had a 12 hour antinausea injection…but she puked again as soon as we got home.
i am glad she got lost from where ever she was living and ended up in the pound.
it is official…kodi is a total doornob. but for some reason he is totally appealing and we are all falling under his cattle dog spell.
mandy and max are moving along…max is actually wandering about tonight and he had something to eat twice today…so maybe he is turning the lost in his dog head corner and finding himself again.
lahanie has a sore foot and so does edith today…i think that is pretty much it and i will tell cole’s story in a bit after i do a few things with the guys waiting for me to be with them here.
I made Cole a photo album
he managed his passing well. rest in peace good dog, we are all really missing you.
cole got his knickers all in a knot again at 5:30…trying to get up but he still can’t. cole is pretty vocal when he is upset..molly and squirt who were sleeping with him, joined right in, adding their panicked voice to his….no possibility of sleeping thru cole being in trouble again.
i think i have decided to let our cole go…i think parapalegia while feeling like he is on a rollar coaster ride from the rapid back and forth movement of his eyes…is not something he can tolerate without a guarantee that he will fully recover and it won’t be a prolonged recovery.
so..for those of us who worship this lovely wanna-be wild dog…it is time to shift from worry and fear and soon to be loss to thinking about cole finally at the end of his journey, finally to be free of his totally wrecked body (which until yesterday, he could mostly ignore)
from the moment of his arrival, five years ago….cole was destined to stay here. his profound lack of bowel and bladder control doomed him forever to the ranks of saints living legends…the ones who despite disability, had great quality of life, but were forever unadoptable.
i remember cole eating right thru the walls of our old trailer because he wanted to be out…i remember him buggering off our five acres to check the nearby countryside out…i remember taking my eyes off him for a second and then trudging down our road calling for him and cole who was not deaf back then, running happily to greet me. i remember cole the boy who wanted to be a wolf but couldn’t actually hurt anything… so badly wanting any one of our sheep to please just fall dead and lifeless conveniently at his feet. i remember the fun cop punishing any dog having a blast and i rememeber before he lost his hearing, seeing him running in terror from fireworks and thunder too.
i rememeber how utterly much cole hated being wet…the disgust in his eyes at the others while watching them splash thru the pond, his moarnful wails when bathtime came around. i remember his devotion to mo and even his second best love that he had for me…his joy on the weekends in the field/barn time and his anticipation of mp room or memorial garden time. i will forever rememeber the feel of cole’s head, shoved deep up against me and his groans of content while buried inside my hands. i will remember that day we sat in the grass of the old buttercup field and he chose carrots stix over the cheezies….he made me smile every day from something about cole just being cole.
but mostly i will always remember looking up and seeing the wild wolf like dog skulking around in the bush and trees. my heart always stopped when suddenly i saw cole the silent and majestic wild dog, standing far away, under the trees, perusing his sainted territorry…looking every bit of the regal wolf that he thought he should be.
i love you cole…we all love you. safe journey today my friend, just a little while longer and you will finally and forever be the strong and free and the wild wolf you always wanted to be.
but he is settling again and i hope he will soon go back to sleep. the rapid eye movements are getting more pronounced so it is either a stroke or vestibular disease. in any case i am not sure cole can emotionally handle either of the potential recovery periods…he is just not built that way.
