(Nobody Is) Invincible

We had moved into our home, and things were good. We had a fenced backyard, and great neighbors, and a deck. There was a pergola with fairy lights strung through it. We spent a lot of time outside when the weather was good. We ate outside a lot of nights. The dogs loved the newfound freedom. No more leashes! They could run if they wanted! Life was good!

We’d been here about nine months when the pandemic hit. The baby, Hank, was already eight years old. It’s true what they say about time flying. Like an arrow, I’ve heard. Suddenly, Hank was homeschooled. We spent even more time outside. Eating dinner on the deck, Nanners would circle us like an ever-watchful hawk, waiting for any sign that someone maybe wasn’t gonna finish that plate. This was a very food-motivated dog. He once ate four dozen chocolate chip cookies that had accidentally been left out to cool while we were at a band concert. So, food-motivated, and a bottomless pit, with an iron stomach. (Yes, I’m aware chocolate is really bad for dogs. To be fair, it was my husband who was baking them and left them out. No, Nanners didn’t even throw up. Yes, I did spend a fair amount of time googling exactly how much semi-sweet chocolate is required to kill a dog, then doing math to try to figure out how much he had consumed. No, I didn’t sleep well that night because of watching him for any sign of discomfort.)

One night, he was circling too close to the edge of the deck and fell into the rosebushes below. He jumped back up and got right back to it. Until he fell off again. And again, right back to it. But the third time he fell, he was tangled up in the rosebush, or something, so the kids helped him up. This time, he was limping a bit. He still wanted our dinner, though, so we figured he must be ok. The next morning, however, the limping was worse. He wasn’t having a good time trying to get around like normal. I called the vet to see if we could get him in.

The vet’s office had gone through some changes since we had first taken him there. It had been ten years, after all (remember what I said about time flying?). Our original vet there had moved on, so we had to see someone new. Also, this was, again, during the pandemic lockdowns, so not a great time to be needing an appointment. They managed to work us into the schedule, but everything seemed super rushed. They didn’t even do any X-rays. They just said he probably pulled something and sent us home with gabapentin.

I would just like to take a moment to say here that gabapentin is NOT a pain med. In humans, it is used to treat epilepsy and neuropathy. It is used off-label in dogs as an alternative to pain meds but causes sedation and coordination issues, and has been reported to cause rear leg weakness. Not ideal for a dog with some sort of leg injury.  

A day or so later, his pain seemed to have increased, even with the gabapentin. That night, he was in so much pain that he woke me up. He just didn’t want to be alone. He was pacing in circles, just trying to find some relief. I got down on the floor with him, and he just leaned into me. I spent the rest of the night like that, trying to help him find some comfort. When I called the vet the next day, they told me they were ‘all booked up,’ and they were in the process of telling me that I could take him to the emergency vet once they opened after 6 pm, when my son came running in and said, “Dad thinks Nanners just died.” I literally hung up on the vet’s office and ran downstairs to find Nanners lying on his side, not breathing. There was nothing we could do. My husband thinks he was in so much pain that it caused a heart attack. We were devastated. None of us had seen this coming.

Since Bananas had shown up in the middle of the night, after having been dumped in the middle of nowhere by some heartless jerk, we had no way of knowing how old he was. We knew he was at least a year old because he didn’t grow any after arriving. The vet who treated him when he got hit by the semi estimated that he was probably about 5. We always sort of discounted her conclusion, though, because of how much energy he had. But he had started to have white fur where it used to be brown, and was slowing down just a bit, so maybe she was right. Now we figure he was probably about 15 when he left us. Still, though, he had survived being hit by a semi! He had survived breaking a bone in his neck that was almost always fatal! He had eaten four dozen chocolate chip cookies! He had pulled a glass baking dish off the stove and eaten half of a turkey carcass out of the shattered glass before we got to him, with no ill effects! I guess we all just thought he was invincible. That he would live forever.

We were all just absolutely heartbroken. Remember how I said my husband isn’t a terribly sentimental guy? I would walk into a room and catch him crying. I couldn’t stop crying. All three kids were crying. And then there was Brownie.

Brownie suddenly was getting all of our attention. And now that Nanners was gone, it came to our attention just how much she had been relying on him to get around. She was basically almost blind at this point, and we hadn’t really realized how bad it had gotten, because Nanners had been herding her in and out of the house and around the yard so she could do her business and have time in the sun. Now, without him, she was lost.

After about a week of overwhelming sadness, watching Brownie struggle, I made an executive decision. We were going to get a puppy. I had (maybe) jokingly asked for a border collie puppy for my birthday, but had gotten a pretty chilly reception. So, I decided to look at border collie rescues.  But every dog I was interested in was unavailable by the time I got my application submitted. And they were expensive. So I started looking at puppies…