Last week was the worst week of my life. Through all the shit I've dealt with in my life I can honestly say that last week topped them all as the worst ever. The universe decided to chuck anything and everything it could right in my direction, but among everything that happened I'd like to talk about Thursday night.
My awesome lil sis knew I was having an awful week so she came over Thursday night with Logan to cheer me up. She is my life saver I don't know what I'd do without that girl and seeing Logan's smiling face can't help but put a little cheer in my heart.
The night was fun, I actually forgot about the mess in my life for a few hours. Logan of course immediately wanted to give Dozer treats. Logan knows all the commands and hand signs to use with Dozer. He'll have him sit, lay down, put the treat on his nose and balance it there until he says "okay"!
I love it and of course Dozer loves it too.
We all got to bed a bit late that night and as I was lying awake in the dark I could hear Dozer whining at my door. Which was normal because he always wants to come and sleep on our bedroom. Usually he will give up after a couple of minutes but this time he didn't.
I opened the door thinking that he probably had to go to the bathroom. He was lying on the ground panting and whining. He gets pretty excited when we have guests over so I convinced myself that that's all it was and I let him outside. It was about one in the morning by this time.
After I let Dozer back in he began to pace around the house then try to lay down in his bed but he'd immediately get back up and pace around again. I tried to calm him down and pet him because that's usually all he wants when he doesn't want to go to bed, just to be loved.
I decided to lay on the couch to see if he would calm down and go to sleep. Well, he didn't and soon he started going downstairs and coming back up and whimpering. I went downstairs and found that he had been throwing up a foamy white substance.
I freaked.
"Ok" I thought, "Something is definitely wrong, I'm not just being paranoid anymore." I didn't care what time it was, I finally decided to wake Al up and ask him what to do. His dad is our Vet and Alex has worked as a vet tech in the past so he knows what to do.
I felt Dozer's belly and realized it was bloated and extremely tight. We took him to the hospital right away. I could tell he was in so much pain it was hard not to cry. We arrived at about 2 in the morning and the doctor on call immediately got him back for x-rays.
Alex's suspicions were right, Dozer had a twisted stomach. Apparently it is very common with large chested dogs. To fix the problem they have to do surgery and untwist his stomach and then stitch it in a way that won't allow it to twist again.
Alex called his Dad to come do the surgery. I was so grateful that I was able to stay with Dozer the whole time which wouldn't be possible of course if Alex's dad wasn't his vet. It was a common surgery and Alex said Dozer should be just fine.
They began prepping Dozer and got him hooked up to an IV, and the surgery finally started at about 4 in the morning. My mom-in-law and I were able to watch the surgery from right outside the door of the operating room. Dozer has never done well under anesthesia so they had to monitor his heart beat closely because it would skip from time to time.
At about 6:30 or so I went to the restroom and when I came back to the operating room everyone was just standing around looking at me. Alex came over and I saw that his eyes were red and wet. His voice broke as he said "He didn't make it" and he took me in his arms.
I didn't believe it, I was just here and he was fine. How is it possible? He was going to be fine. All I could do is shake my head in disbelief, I refused to accept it. Finally I broke down and went limp in Al's arms as he guided me back to his dad's office for a some privacy.
We cried.
And cried.
Just like I am crying now. Dozer was our child, my little boy how could he be gone? Just like that? Just hours ago he was happy as can be, I just couldn't understand.
During the surgery, Dozer went from good to bad within 15 seconds and they did everything they possibly could do to revive him but his heart was too weak and it just gave out on him. Dozer was just too old and his heart couldn't handle the stress.
I feel pretty empty right now, kind of like I am floating around and life isn't really real. There is a hole in my heart. Every time I walk through the front door I expect this black drooling mass to come running at me knocking me over. He was always happy to see me. I miss him terribly.
Every time I'm at home and hear a dog bark I run to the back door by habit to tell Dozer to be quite. I wake up in the morning expecting to wake his lazy ass up and drag him outside. I arrive home from work and expect to see him whining from behind the fence begging for me to let him back inside.
I finally cleaned my house yesterday. All of his hair is gone. That annoying coarse black hair that I hated to clean up is gone and for the first time I wish it would come back.
I'm going to miss finding slobber on the walls.
I'm going to miss cleaning up dirty paw prints on the kitchen floor.
I'm going to miss finding his bones buried in the laundry basket or in the corner of the room.
I'm going to miss taking him on walks and having everyone ask me "Who's walking who?"
I'm going to miss all the bruises, scrapes and scabs that I get while playing soccer with him in the back yard.
I'm going to miss cuddling with him while I watch a movie.
I'm going to miss yelling at him to get off the damn couch.
I'm going to miss the scraps of toilet paper that I find around the house or the chewed up can of tuna that he pulled out of the trash.
I'm going to miss those brown puppy dog eyes pleading with me for just one scrap of food.
I'm going to miss how excited he gets when I put on my tennis shoes because he thinks he is going on a walk when in fact I am just going to the gym.
I'm going to miss him growling at Smokey when he gets too close to his bone.
I'm going to miss asking him "Where's your baby?" and having him go looking until he finds his stuffed animal baby and brings it back to me.
Most of all I am going to miss the unconditional love that he always had for me.
We love and miss you Dozer.
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