Archive for March, 2005

“Now I know I have a heart, because it’s breaking.” – the Tin Man, Wizard of Oz

We buried Tiamo today.

My wonderful pup, my one little dog, had a recurrence of pancreatitis in February and, although she got better, we had an ultrasound done to try to find out what was causing it. She was a mess inside–scarred pancreas, a serious heart murmur, numerous kidney stones, and a tumor on her adrenal gland.

Any one of those things could kill her, but trying to treat all four was like walking a minefield. Treatments for one ailment would aggravate another. At that point, we knew she didn’t have much time left.

It was her kidneys that gave up. Tiamo started feeling bad Friday evening. By Saturday around 11, she started throwing up. Blood tests showed the kidneys weren’t working properly. The vet recommended that we put her on IV fluids and other medicines that would help flush her out and then retest the blood Sunday to see if it helped. It didn’t. The moment we had been dreading had arrived.

We brought her home Sunday afternoon, so that she could have one more night in her own bed, and scheduled a home visit with the vet, so she could be surrounded by everything she loved. She died in my arms at 2:15 p.m. today.

We put her next to Zebbie, even though Zeb would have hated the idea. Zebbie despised all things dog and merely tolerated Tiamo.

I would have done anything I could or spent all the money I had if I could have saved her. Even as the vet pushed the barbiturates into her vein, my heart was screaming “No! Don’t! Stop!”

But she was in pain. And I knew that trying to preserve her life, even for only a few days more, would have been selfish. To let her go now, while she still had a little of that Tiamo spark, was the merciful thing to do.

I feel a lot like the Tin Man this evening. My face stings from three days of hot, salty tears. Any more and I really will rust, I think. And my heart hurts. Bad. And it probably will for a long, long time.