Pure love and joy begin their journey. She-Wolf, on her way to the Spirit World.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

A man and his dog. Two spirits I love more than life itself. 

About 9:27 this morning, we had to send She-Wolf to start her journey to the Spirit World. She began fading Monday night, fairly drastically, and we knew then that it was a matter of not if, but when. We didn't expect her to make it through Tuesday, but she wasn't ready to go yet: She rallied, and let us know that she wanted more time with us, with Raven, with her adopted feral pup, Cricket, with her treats and marrow bones. I took the photo above two evenings ago, sitting with her favorite person in the whole world.

I imagine anyone reading this already knows the story, but in case not, here's the short version: She-Wolf came to us near the end of 2008, a starving rez pup who'd been completely abandoned to fend for herself or die (Raven, too; in fact, we think they're cousins by blood). She began coming to the gallery, and she was so loving and so fiercely intelligent; not a single command in her repertoire, but she intuited what I wanted her to do immediately and without fail, and she would sit and lie down and just generally behave. And I'd give her some of my lunch, and she'd lie in front of the fireplace to get warm. After I'd been doing that a few weeks, I learned that Wings had begun doing the same thing, and so we decided that we should just bring her home, which we did the night before Thanksgiving. We pegged both her and Raven's birth dates at roughly January 1st, 2008, so she was a little more than ten years old now.

At any rate, in late 2013, she began deteriorating, and it finally became clear that she was likely diabetic, a product of the extreme starvation of her formative months. She was more Wings's baby girl (and Raven was more my boy), but I wound up being the one who took her to the vet to be diagnosed (yes, she was diabetic, and severely so), and that bonded her to me very nearly as tightly. The vet told us that she'd be completely blind within two months, four at the very outside (but she'd already had it for at least a couple of months, so two was the real estimate). Of course, we're bullheaded, and so I buckled down and dug around for supplements to save her site, and we managed it for three more years almost to the day. Even now, she was not 100% blind, although very nearly so, but her other senses were so highly developed and she knew her environment so well that no one could tell, not even us most of the time. 

Back in October, when we first began sleeping in the house at night, I began noticing something sticky in the doorway and on the tile. The crew were coming in and out constantly, and I thought they were spilling something. Then in November I got so sick that everything else became, well, not even really an inconvenience, even when she had an accident on the kitchen rug a couple of times (although at that point, we weren't positive that it was her and not Raven). Then in late December, there was a fairly large puddle on the rug, and on New Year's Eve, there was one with blood in it. It took a couple weeks of following them around to establish that it was indeed She-Wolf and not Raven, and in the third week of January, we made an appointment with the vet.

The news was bad — very bad. Not merely a diabetes-induced UTI gone haywire; he suspected something worse, and did an ultrasound. She had multiple masses in the bladder area: transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder, which under the best of conditions is a highly metastatic and fast-moving cancer. Add into it the location of her particular masses, and the fact of her diabetes, and the additional fact that her diabetes had already caused significant thickening of the bladder wall, and the outlook was worse than grim. Unless you're willing to put your dog through surgery and chemo and radiation, the established treatment is pharmaceutical, and her age and diabetes meant that the former protocol would be putting through agony to no purpose. We told the vet that we wanted to give her the best possible quality of life for whatever time she had left, and that we would go with the drug regimen: Piroxicam, Prednisone, and Amoxicillin. Unfortunately, the Pred raises blood sugar, a lot, and so we knew that the two might work against each other. In fact, the vet only gave us a 20-day scrip for the Piroxicam, because, as he admitted to us later, he never thought she'd have this kind of time left.

So in addition to BG testing and insulin shots twice a day, she now got bladder-control kibble, three separate meds, and eventually, a switch to raw meat to keep her BG numbers down. The last few weeks, the pressure from the masses caused enough involuntary leakage that every evening, we taped puppy pads to her dog bed, and every morning, we mopped up what they didn't catch. Jeff was shocked and thrilled, and told us that she'd lasted this long because of us. And she remained happy and engaged and loving her life, and we gave thanks for every additional day we had with her.

But as I said, she began fading on Monday night, and then last night, just after seven, she threw up twice: two massive amounts of blood. At her last vet visit, Jeff told us he thought her spleen might be a bit enlarged, and didn't want to talk about what that would mean unless and until we had to deal with it. I'm reasonably sure that it ruptured last night, and we really didn't expect her to make it through the evening, much less the night. We called around, though, and couldn't get hold of anyone on call, so all we could do is wait it out with her. She seemed to be in no pain, just very weak and tired, but still thumping her tail every time she perceived that we were nearby. This morning, we called the vet, and the practice owner was the one on duty (we've taken our animals to both vets there). He only does house calls on a very discretionary basis, but he did one for us back in 2007 when we lost BearGirl, and even though he had appointments later this morning and surgeries this afternoon, he came out with Natalia, the vet tech who had been taking care of She-Wolf. It was an unanticipated $200 out the door, but we owed it to her to make sure she didn't suffer.

She-Wolf has always been the spirit who was closest to pure joy, and pure love, of any we've ever known. It turns out she also has (had) one of the strongest hearts, both figuratively and literally. It took three tries; on the first, the vein apparently blew; he was worried that the second might be insufficient, and added a third dose. She felt none of it, had no pain, and was completely at peace, lying in the grass with her head cradled in my arms and Wings stroking her face while even Raven, who is always terrified by these things, came up and licked her once. She's buried with everything she'll need, including two of her beloved buffalo marrow bones.

And there is a new, 83-pound, She-Wolf sized hole in both our hearts. Also in Raven's, and in little Cricket's, who had imprinted on her as his adoptive mother.

I took this shot on the evening of the 24th, with one of her marrow bones (what we thought then would be her last but was not). I want to remember her this way, looking alert and beautiful and happy.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

We love you, She-Wolf. You'll never be out of our hearts.

Wings has asked me, explicitly, to thank everyone who has prayed for our girl, sent good vibes, and pulled for her all the way: thank you from him personally, and thank you from me, as well. You helped us keep her with us an extra three months, all pain-free and with wonderful quality of life, and that's the best thing we all could have gotten right now.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.