I held her in my arms that evening. I felt myself swell up with emotions, some i couldnt explain, some that even my face couldnt hide. She was so small and frail. her eyes sullen and just looking up at me.
Some say that you can hear your animal talk to you. in that moment i heard her tell me she loved me.
Wether or not it was my own anticipation of the horrible event that was about to take place or she really spoke to me i dont know and dont care. She shiverred softly, like holding a bumble bee. Small breaths were the only thing that gave more life to her body... and i felt like a monster because i was going to take it away. Or was I?
We dont exactly know when she contracted the Parvovirus, and we dont know how. It all started less that 4 days before she died. She awoke me one morning, moping restlessly in the bed next to me, when she suddenly vomited. I was scared at first, but she had been acting sensitively and the day before i had called the vet. She said, " nothing to worry about. Small puppies often have a hard time dealing with changes in environment" and that had calmed me.. after all, I had taken her no more than 4 days earlier for her vet visit and shots.
Michael and i had been forced to leave our house due to an infestation that was a result of a broken spa in the backyard that Century 21 had refused to empty. Maybe thats how she contracted it? I'd read that flies carry the virus......
We stayed with our friend gretchen and then at our friend susan's home where we house sat for her during a trip with her children.
In the next few days that followed that morning, she slowed down. she stopped eating and drinking, and what she ate she vomited. Finally out of hope i rushed her to the emergency vets office to find that she had parvo and that she may not have the night to live.
The next day, after her routine morning vomiting, michael and I packed her in her kennel crate and brought her to the vet. There they gave us worse news... news that came with accessories.
Zoe was so far gone that at the point treatment was futile, but if we couldnt afford to leave her there for it, we could take her home.
He showed us what to do with the evil looking bag of saline...." make a tent with the skin on her upper back and inster the needle making sure to stay within the pelt. you want to give her 100 ml of the solution. it'll give her a large hump, but in about half an hour it'll all be distributed."
I held back a heave and michael cried. We had to stab our dying dog with a needle the size of a large toothpick and with two hands rush 100 ml of saline into her flesh. The hump was so heavy she couldnt even lay on her side... she kept rolling over. We brought her home and michael went to work... and thats when the day turned so much worse.
Zoe started to have seizures... not too bad, like violent shivvers. On one occasion, as i was feeding her...or trying to... she had a seizure and clamped down on my hand. It caused her to expel a violent and dark red shot of diarreah that splattered across my shorts and the floor like a murder scene... as though someone's throat had been slit. michael soon came home from work and things only got worse. She had her most violent seizure and the mucus from her throat stopped her from breathing. We debated for only an instant if maybe that was for the best... but my maternal instincts (odd you say for a man, but in my position i definitly was the mother) kicked in and i lifted her like a hawk lists prey from her kennel and plced her in the bathroom sink and gave her mouth to nose. with a gurgling heave and another spray of diarreah, she started to breath. Too weak to cry, she looked up at me. I couldnt take it anymore. i lay her in the sink, and as i watched her there, she was dead it seemed. she was so limp that the way she lay, her head met her tail and she only breathed, barely.So that leads us back to the ER.
The nurse came in soon, and as i held her and she looked up at me, a needle was inserted into a tube that came out from her leg. slowly, Zoe began to close her eyes. I could see the yellow venom flowing into her body... i wanted to pull away, run with zoe from the hospital... into thwe parking lot and lust bury her with myself. I love you i love you i love you i cooed... and just as i cooed she left me.
I have never felt that way. i've never felt such loss.
I can never recover the part of me that was lost when she left my world, but i have the rest of me...
and the bit of her that she gave me while she was here.
She loved her slinkies... and she had a tongue of steel... no matter how tight your teeth were clamped, if she wanted to, her tongue would be cleaning the backsides of your teeth. she was that determined.
She learned things too.
Just before she fell ill she learned how to swim from one side of Susan's pool to the next. She knew who her mommy was and she loved her father. she was mommy's angel and daddy's little girl.
Was and forever will be.
xoxo