Saturday, August 11, 2012

my dog Lad



august 10, 1989: that was the day i had to put my beloved Lad down.  so yesterday, on the 23rd anniversary of that sad occasion, I felt more than a bit melancholy.  yeah, even after all these years.  he was only 7 when he died, much too early.  but he had fallen ill in the spring and been through a surgery that only confirmed the diagnosis.  the one thing I felt really badly about, in terms of his treatment, was the ordeal of changing his bandages during his final months.  he bore it like a champion, but his skin was raw and it hurt me to go through the routine each time.  i thought i was doing the right thing at the time, and i do think i was, at least the best i knew how to do to hopefully save his life.  sometimes I try to second guess if it was the right thing, but in my head I know it was.

he was happy and active until the end, but he grew weaker and weaker over the summer, and one morning as I woke up I heard his weak cough and simply knew that it was time.  before he got so weak that he couldn’t stand or worse, had a crisis that might cause him, and me, acute distress.  I called the vet and made the appointment for that afternoon at a time when there would be few pets in the waiting room. 

I spent those last hours with him, just petting him and talking to him.  I lay down with him on the living room carpet, telling him I how much I loved him and how much he had meant to me.  I cried uncontrollably, and he licked my face to comfort me.  he was the best, such a sweet sweet dog.

taking him in to the vet’s office was just the most awful thing, knowing I’d be coming back home without him.  but I stayed with him through to the end.  some people can’t, finding it too hard to watch their pet die.  but I couldn’t imagine leaving him in that room with the vet to spend his last moments alone.  not my Lad. 

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yesterday I sent a short email to my brother terry (that’s him in the pic with Lad) expressing my resurgence of grief.  he has two dogs, sisters, both quite old currently and one has a serious larynx problem.  he also had their mother and their grandmother, whom i refer to below as "grandma" and "mom".  he had a pair of border collies in the 80's, both of whom died young, one especially young and abrupty. here's his reply to my mail, excerpted: 

This doesn't surprise me in the least. I've been through the same many times.

I'd always opt for a chance at life. I didn't interfere with [mom dog] for an extra day in the hope she had Vestibulitis rather than a stroke. It happens. My neighbor's dog, right here on the road, has had it twice and recovered fully after a few days. He's around 16 or 17, a very long life for a border collie. But, as it turned out, [mom dog] didn't recover and actually had a dreadful passing.  I could - and do - weep over it. But I can't second guess my decision, not really, except as an excuse to torture myself. I held off similarly with [grandma dog] and she died peacefully in her sleep and loved life up to 36 hours before the end. Even a mere 12 hours before the end, she surprised me by getting off the bed to go with the others, daughter and pups, for a walk and then coming home and (unexpectedly) still wanting her share of sausage.

So there's no telling. I couldn't deprive [grandma dog] of a moment of it. Nor [mom dog] of the hope. We wouldn't for a human and we'd never look back, so why do we think we should for a dog?

There's no way out of it. You get an animal and if you love the animal, you will suffer in equal measure. You will be judge, jury, and executioner over and over and over again. No matter what you did or didn't do.

You make a contract with the animal to take care of him/her for subservience, obedience, loyalty, devotion, and attachment. Ok. The animal lives up to his or her part (well, ahem ... except for obedience, maybe) but in the end you can't live up to your end of the bargain. You're not god. Yet, in a way, you promised to be. You lied. Shit, we can't take care of ourselves in the end, never mind anyone else.

Life just sucks, that's all. For them and for us. Maybe if they weren't so cheerful about it all, it wouldn't feel so bad. :-) But they wouldn't fight to live so hard no matter how much they suffered if they got no joy out of life.

All I can say is that I know it well, it can hit at any time. I've wept 20+ years after the death of a border collie for all that went wrong and for all I did wrong. I wept for a death to come for dogs still living because its inevitability made it as real as if it had already happened.

For what it's worth, he probably loved you - there's no accounting for taste (j/k) - and you permitted him those three months of doing what he loved: eating and being around you. :-)  

[sister dog A] has been having trouble breathing for a year now. It can't be very pleasant. But then she also has been really happy sometimes, all through that period. Could I deprive her of that? I feel miserable myself often enough, and yet I laugh at things in a day - should I give that up?

I met Lad only once.  For me, he was not only loveable, but instantly loveable.  That's how I remember him.  I'm glad I didn't have to go through what you went through.  But as i said at the beginning, I have indeed been through it.  There is no remedy.  

So I can't comment on Lad. I have no idea. But maybe second guessing yourself is always a losing proposition. Ask the expert! :-) 

Friday, June 1, 2012

if it's June, it must be time for ICAD ...

it's June 1, official kick-off day for the 2012 index-card-a-day project.  i participated last year and loved working on index cards.   somehow 3 x 5 white space is not nearly so daunting as a blank journal page!  for the 2011 project, i dug out my collection of watercolor pencils, dusted them off, and dove in.  i had a blast working with the w/c pencils, especially in my new w/c Strathmore Visual Journal.  you can't beat the fun of smushing color around on your page with your favorite waterbrush pen

my stash of fabulous blank index cards from Levenger's is sitting in the middle of the table, ready for my first brush strokes, pen strokes, pencil strokes of the 2012 ICAD season.  of course my colored pencils, pens, crayons, calligraphy pens are sitting there waving at me, going "me too, me too" ... 

this year i'll try to post some samples so that you can see what i'm creating as the summer progresses. 

let the games begin!!  oh, and feel free to join in the fun.  just sayin' .... 

** thanks to Tammy at DaisyYellow for kicking it off with the guidelines.  on, what else, an index card, lol 

Friday, April 6, 2012

if it's April, it must be International Fake Journal Month

funny how that rolls around again each year and manages to catch me off guard!

i had an idea for this year, but after exchanging some emails with Roz to clarify the ground rules, i realized that my idea was not really suited to the concept of a fake journal.  Roz suggested i tackle my concept during NaNoWriMo in November, so i may very well do that.

as of now, six days in, i'm still undecided if i'll actually participate this year.  last year i "armchair traveled" to Ireland, and that was great fun.  this year i'm low-energy and behind already on my writing classes, so i hesitate to take on another writing project.  but you never know.  stay tuned ;)

Friday, March 30, 2012

of paper and pens and such

so, we all know how addicted i am to blank notebooks, journals, pens, colored markers, Washi paper tapes, stickers, ephemera, and .... well, it's an endless list.  i'm nothing if not obsessive-compulsive anal-retentive, or as i fondly refer to myself ... OCAR.

today, i'm going to share some sites i particular enjoy.  let's call it Link Love, if you will.  my goal is to enable share with other addicts paper/pen lovers like myself.  i want to spread the addiction love ;)

here are the links, in no particular order of importance ....

(1)  penchant for paper's notebook system -- i just discovered this today thanks to a post over on another favorite, notebook stories.  i love the way Heather has organized her notebooks, although my personal philosophy is that consolidation is the best way to go because it presents a snapshot of your life in one place.

(2) it's almost April 1 and time for another round of International Fake Journal Month (IFJM), which is one of the reasons i check Roz Stendahl's blog regularly.  today she had a fun video about creating a journal with paper scraps.  check it out.

(3) speaking of IJFM, in my "journaling for memoir" class i'm taking, i wrote a list of things that i have nurtured me, including the fabulous new idea for this year's fake journal (last year was my fake trip to Ireland, or as my instructor Amber described it, my armchair travel).  Amber was intrigued, so i sent her links to Roz's IFJM site.  she found the concept really exciting and wrote her own posting about it.  check out Amber's IFJM post.

(4) always looking for the latest and greatest from Moleskine (let's all say it together now .... mol-a-skeen-a).  imagine my delight at discovering the latest new thing from Moleskine: postal notes.  think of it, little moleskine notebook thingies that you can write or draw or collage in and then send to someone else.  wouldn't you love to get one of those in the mail?  i know i would!  

(5) and just yesterday Rice Freeman-Zachery posted a link to her interview with Mark B Hill at Create Mixed Media.  check out his envelope project ... how fabulous is that?!  and yes, i sent my address to him in the hopes that one day, one of his fabulous envelopes will magically appear in my mailbox.  *grin*

i have hordes scads an endless supply of links to share, but i'll save those for another day.  maybe a rainy day, but there are so few of those here in the desert that it'll more than likely be a sunny day when next i post Link Love.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

less is more ...

last august i concluded why have 1 when you can have 3. now i have 3 blogs sitting out in the blogosphere gathering dust instead of just 1. what's wrong with this picture? i'm rethinking this approach as a result of the blogging class i'm taking. well, ok, really i was already thinking about it and have been since i created the new blogs. you know, the old saw "do one thing and do it well", or "jack of all trades, master of none."

but Susannah's class has brought the idea back to the forefront of my lazy brain. i'm thinking to pull these other interests (artsy fartsy stuff and genealogy/memoir/family stuff) back to the mobytes home page, possibly as a link to another page, or maybe a tab. as i always say when i take too long to make a response bid in bridge, "thinking, thinking" ...

oh yeah, and i definitely to need to spruce up the "about me" bio ... the current version says next to nothing about who i am. i'll have to jazz it up, make me more interesting, lol ...

stay tuned for more exciting developments in the world of mo ;)

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

already in love ....

with the new blogging class, Blogging from the Heart, and we're only at day 3 of week 1!!! that says a LOT about how good Susannah is as an instructor, never mind all her other talents ;)

i'm glad to see i've at least got one of the cardinal rules well in hand: simplicity. simplicity of layout, of color, of content on the page (well, ok, that needs a spot of refinement, lol).

but just based on today's lesson alone, i have some minor changes ... tweaks as it were ... to implement that will make the page a bit more personal, a bit more reflective of me. by this weekend i hope to have them in place.

excitement abounds! at least for THIS blog geek.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

new class .....

well, one of several online classes that i'm currently taking or that are about to start. but THIS one is "blogging from the heart" ... it's being offered by Susannah Conway, a wonderful photographer and instructor from the UK. can't wait to see what unfolds ;)

Susannah Conway