We went to Costco with our neighbor to load up on Super Bowl foods, and came home to find Bumpy had thrown up all over his bed again. It's starting to really scare me, how serious this is. It was three and a half years ago when my cats Torden and Cricket evaporated in front of my eyes, barely eating and turning into just fur and bones before they died. I don't want to see Bumpy emaciated and weak like they were. I don't want to get there. I'm not ready. He is somewhere between twelve and thirteen years old (we will never know for sure -- he was half-grown, we think, when we rescued him from Route 66 in the California desert after some careless asshole turned him into their own private speed bump and drove off). For being a medium to large sized dog, he is reaching average life expectancy. Our time with him has been incredible, and he will live in family lore as long as my children have memories, until their old age. But we have to start thinking now about what these last months are going to look like.
If you were the best dog of all time (don't even pretend he isn't), what would you want your humans to do for you as your life wound down? I've seen viral videos on the internet of people who created bucket lists for their dogs, and took them to all sorts of places to make their final weeks special. He loves going to our mountain property, but it's under just enough snow right now that getting up there is difficult for everyone, humans and canines alike. We are on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, so getting to either ocean is a long haul right now, but if he wanted to dip his paws in Folly Beach water again, I would get in the car tomorrow. I'd love to take him with me in the car to the Magic Food Window for cheeseburgers and fries, but all he is doing is barfing, so maybe that makes more pain than the fun equals. He spends more time inside than he has been since we moved to the house with the heated garage, where he and Murray and Elsa are not criticized if a bladder overflows before sunrise, unlike the Original Park in Charleston where yelling happened when the wood floor in the dining room was used as a latrine. He likes it a lot when the girls come over to the house, so maybe on D&D night, when our foster daughter is here along with the gang, he can be our campaign dog, sitting on her feet while she leads our group. Our in-town daughter has promised to come visit more often, and I know he will like that. I will move heaven and earth to keep him going long enough for our older daughter to make it in from SoCal, for an extended cuddle and maybe a frolic with his niece dog Sheba if it's a road trip instead of a plane ride.
I spent a couple hours next door, talking with our neighbor and his dog Barley. For all that he helped me by letting me talk about Bump's illness and inevitable decline, we didn't come up with a solid plan for giving Bump the sendoff of a lifetime. He goes to Loveland on Thursday for an ultrasound to evaluate the tumor in his bladder, which could give us some sort of timeline for how long we have to celebrate with him present. We weren't able to get back to the pharmacist before closing time to approve the compounded meds, since they called and left a voice mail while I was at physical therapy for my own problems. I don't want to put off making a list any longer. Bump is the Best Dog Of All Time, and he needs to hear it every single day from now until he can no longer hear me speak to him. I'd appreciate suggestions, knowing that he is probably hurting and probably unable to keep down even the rice and egg diet we have switched him to. What do you think we should do together?
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