Stubby

Before I moved to Vermont, Stubby, my Doberman had been successfully treated for a lung tumor.  It was a nectarine shadow on the x-ray that made her cough at night when she was initially diagnosed.  She had remained cough-free on a low steroid dose for a year, the tumor in check.  However, the stress of moving triggered the cancer and the tumor started to grow again, impeding her breathing once more.  Her pulmonologist increased the steroid dosage.   Her breathing steadied.  She was twelve years old and didn’t have any gray on her muzzle.  

I had moved to Burlington, Vermont to live with my boyfriend, David.  A little over a year earlier, we had met at a singles-night cocktail and dance event in Albany.  My co-worker, Jane, and I spent most of the evening navigating the Costco hors d’oeuvres, the socially awkward chitchat talking about nothing to a stranger, but still sizing them up to see if you could live together forever and, for me, trying to hide my white, waspy, sway-to-the-music, totally off-beat dance moves.  Toward the end of the evening, I felt relieved that I had suffered through another attempt to meet the man of my dreams and in an hour I would be happily content, curled up on the couch with my dog.  But the relief was mixed with disappointment that I actually hadn’t met anyone for all my efforts.   I sipped my beer and watched the dance floor as Jane danced and chatted with a potential new beau.  I was happy for her, but also feeling left out, wondering how on earth it was possible to meet someone these days, when David appeared by my side and introduced himself.  Ugh, it’s too late for me to feign interest in some boor, I thought.  I yearned for my dog and my book.

“Hi, I’m David.” He held out his hand and shook mine as I introduced myself.  

“Sara.  Nice to meet you, David.” We clinked beer bottles, then exchanged the obligatory age, profession, where-do-you-live, what-do-you-like-to-do speed-dating questions.  Within minutes, I had forgotten about my book and the couch.  He was as irreverent as I was about the singles scene we found ourselves in, but he was funnier about the whole thing.  He had me laughing along with him about how unnatural it was to find a partner in a room full of people, all of whom were negotiating a last-resort chance to partner up.  We exchanged phone numbers and by the time I was finally on my couch, all I could think about was if he would call like he said he would.  

Within a year, we had fallen in love.  During that time, David had moved to Burlington to pursue his education and our new relationship survived my commuting regularly from Albany to Burlington,Vermont.  We were both at that shit-or-get-off-the-pot age, and definitely not getting any younger.  In an all-inmove, I upended my life in New York, said good-bye to twenty years of friends and memories, and moved to Vermont.  

One afternoon in Burlington, I came home to see Stubby had thrown up in the living room.  She lay quietly by the glass door, willing it to open so she could escape outside.  She looked worn out and ashamed of herself.  My breath caught just looking at her.  

Dr. Crootof, her regular vet in New York, recommended Brown Animal Hospital in South Burlington.  I met with a young veterinarian who looked like she had just graduated from middle school.  I went over Stubby’s symptoms of the last few weeks, starting with the renewed coughing.  The young vet had a kind way of interacting with the dog as she listened to her lungs through the stethoscope.  She took the time to tell the dog what was going to happen next and she would gently lay her hand on the dog’s shoulder in reassurance as she moved around the table.  She recommended blood work and x-rays.  I went back to the waiting room and she lay at my feet with her head on my clog.  A technician came from the backroom with a rope slip lead.  She cast it gently over her head and patted her leg to get the old dog up and moving with her.  I followed to the door, but I wasn’t allowed in the back to watch the procedures.  Before the door could swing shut, I saw Stubby stumble.  She almost went down before the leash tightened on her neck, keeping her from falling on her nose.  The vet tech startled and reached for her.  I barged through the door. “Is she okay?  Did she trip?”

“She tripped, but she’s fine,” the tech responded.  Stubby looked back at me with a worried look on her face.  The tech moved her forward and I let the door fall back and resumed my spot in the waiting room.  Over half an hour passed before the door swung my way and Stubby and the tech came out.  She was sporting a large red bandage on her paw.   

“She may have sprained her foot when she tripped.  She was still limping a little so we wrapped it for support.  Leave the bandage on for a week and then cut it off.  We’ll call you tomorrow with the bloodwork and x-ray results.  I didn’t know Dobermans could be so sweet.” She took the lead off.  Stubby moved to my side and we walked out to the truck together.

A day later we were back at Brown’s.  The results were bad.  The cancer had spread.  There were tumors on her kidneys and in her stomach.  This time we met with another vet, a lookalike to the first one, but seemingly younger.  She only had the file to read so I went through Stubby’s entire history again, including her sprained paw.  She listened to her heart and gut sounds, but she didn’t pat her, talk to her, or look at her.  “Maybe you should put her down today,” the new vet pronounced.  

“But she’s fine right now,” I said.  And looking at her, she was fine.

“She’s not fine inside.  She has cancer.”

“I get that.  She hasn’t thrown up since that first bout.  She eats everything.  She seems happy.  Maybe the steroids will give her some time.”  Stubby had moved to my side and nudged my hand to put her head in stroking range.

“If she were my dog, I’d put her down,” the young vet pronounced again.

“She’s not your dog.  We’re not ready for that.”  She gave me the x-ray films.  Stubby and I walked out of Brown’s together once more.

That evening, David shook his jacket off as he walked down the stairs to the main floor of the condo. “Hi, what’s for dinner?  I’m famished.  Are we having the pork chops?”

“Oh, sorry, I’ve had a tough day.  Dinner wasn’t on my radar quite yet.  Maybe we have something in the freezer I can microwave or maybe you could cook the chops and I’ll figure out a vegetable.  What do you think?”

“I think that since we are living together that you could at least have dinner ready when I come home.  My mother had dinner ready for my father every night.”  I thought about reminding him that she had also divorced him before their forty-first anniversary and maybe the cooking arrangement was part of their problem.  

“Um, I’m sorry to disappoint you.  I’ll make more of an effort, but, uh, we really didn’t have an agreement about me cooking every night.  I can barely cope because the news about Stubby is bad.”

“Okay, I’ll get the frying pan started and there are frozen peas in the freezer.  Can you handle that?  I’ll go change first.”

“Don’t you want to know about Stubby?” I asked his retreating back as he walked up the stairs.

“No need to ask, you’ll tell me anyway.”

I stared at his back and wondered where that nice, funny guy I thought I knew had gone to.  It seemed long ago that he asked with interest about what I was up to, how work was, how my day had been.  Where did that guy go?  Had I imagined that guy?

The day after the unsympathetic vet had argued to put Stubby down, I called Dr. Crootof.  Stubby lay on the deck beside me, her red bandage sticking out over the edge.  I rubbed her favorite spot behind her ear and noticed a bump on her lip.  It was bigger than it was yesterday.  Weird, I thought, maybe it’s a wart.  Dr. Crootof had read the x-rays and the ultrasound films and he confirmed what my heart already knew, but what I refused to believe.  The cancer was everywhere.  He wanted to know how she was feeling and I could tell he was sad.  Throughout her life, he had saved her from near-death three times.  There were times I didn’t have the money to pay him and he kept saving her because he was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met in my life.  

I tried to tell him that she felt fine, but I ended up crying and couldn’t stop.  This dog had been by my side since I had graduated from college.  I met her as a puppy when she was owned by a bartender at a local bar, where she spent her days tied to the door of the tavern.  If she peed inside the door she got in trouble, and if she peed outside the door she got in trouble.  She was being neglected for all the world to see.  I asked the bartender to give her to me more than once.  Ace, my retriever mix, and the poor pup had taken to each other.  The bartender always said no.  By the time the puppy was four months old, she stopped trying to chew through the chain and started chewing on herself instead, so her sides and legs were swaths of red sores.  Her head and back gleamed with black, only because she couldn’t reach them with her teeth.  

On a blistering hot day, the bartender called and gave me her dog.  It wasn’t a good match for her lifestyle, she said.  An understatement.  She told me where she had hidden the key so I could go get the puppy in her apartment.  How could she be out of town and the puppy in the apartment?  “Well, I cut a bag of food open on Tuesday and she has the toilet to drink out of.”   

I hung up the phone and raced to the bar.  The pup cringed toward the wall as I approached her, so I stopped.  She lifted her lips and growled.  It worked.  It scared me.  The food was gone and the toilet dry.  The stench from the poop made me gag.  It was a stifling 80 degrees in the un-air-conditioned, third-story walk-up.  I started talking to her.  She seemed stunned from being locked away for two days.  She didn’t remember me as Ace’s mom.  Part of her wanted to come to me and a part wanted to hide away.  Part of me wanted her to come to me and a part of me was afraid she’d bite me when she got there.  Fortunately for both of us, her brave part met my brave part.  

I sat on the bed.  I didn’t know how to stroke her where I wouldn’t touch a sore that could sting, so I just kept talking to her.  I told her that things would be better from now on.  I told her she was going to be mine and I would always take care of her.  I told her that she was going to have a sister named Ace and we had an apartment on Woodlawn Avenue.  I told her we had a horse named Bugs and I groomed racehorses at the track.  I told her she could come to work every day and sleep in the big straw aprons in front of the colts I cared for.  I told her we could hang outside all day while I day-watched at the stable.  I told her Ace was sweet, but she was a little crazy.  She loved to chase rocks.  I started to run out of things to say, but by the time I stopped, she had moved from the corner of the bed and now sat with her back against my side, looking at the door.  I touched her gently, wrapped her slowly in a t-shirt and carried her downstairs.  

For the next two months, she peed all over my apartment, tore the sheetrock off the walls, and wrestled the drawers out of my bureau.  She and Ace would go to the barn and run for hours like she had never been free from a six-foot chain.  I don’t think she knew I existed.  One day I let her free to run at the barn.  She and Ace headed off, but they were back before I had the bridle on.  She came and stood by my side while I finished tacking up Bugs and moved off with us to the mounting block.  She lay quietly at the gate while I worked the horse.  She wagged her Stubby tail when I dismounted and came and stood by me as I ran the stirrups up the saddle.  We moved off as one – dog, girl, horse.  Ace took up point position.  Ace and the pup had a good run around the field while I grazed Bugs, but when I turned him toward his stall, the pup cantered out of the field to my side – dog, girl, horse.  Ace trotted ahead.  I gave Bugs his carrots and the pup nudged my hand, watching the horse.  She took a carrot piece in her mouth and made a big point of chewing it noisily.  I laughed out loud and told her how smart she was.  The red sores had turned gray.  She didn’t chew herself any more.  We turned from the stall together and walked to my car.  I had named her Chukker after my love of a good polo match, but Stubby seemed to fit her better for her little tail that wagged whenever I smiled at her.

And now I wailed into the phone to Dr. Crootof, “She said I should put her down.  All she did was look at her x-rays and her lab results.  She didn’t even examine her.  How can you say, put the dog down, when you don’t even look at the dog?” I was inconsolable.  I should be crying with David, not Stubby’s vet.  But the floodgates had opened and and no one else was listening. 

He waited for me to stop crying.  He waited longer than the most patient man on earth, who would have already quietly hung up the phone.  And still he waited until I got a grip and calmed down.  Then he said not the best thing ever, but the only thing, the only thing at all that could have reached me.  He said, “Stubby will tell you when it’s time.  The lab work won’t tell you when, and none of the vets will tell you when.  It’s between you and her.  Don’t worry, she’ll tell you.  Okay?”

The sadness didn’t leave me then, but the turmoil did.  There it was and it wasn’t going to change.  She was sick and she was going to die.  But right now she was still by my side and for today she could stay there.  It was her choice, not a vet reading an x-ray.  It wasn’t even going to be my choice.  It would be hers.

We talked a little more of pain and meds, steroids and bodily functions.  I was intent and ready to do whatever it took, but the race to the cure was over.  I won’t say I relaxed and I won’t say I stopped crying.  But I did stop thinking about all that was out there to reverse the course of the cancer that couldn’t be reversed.  Instead, I went back to the way things were before she got sicker, and I looked to my dog to see how she was.  I laid the phone down and patted her with two hands.  Her head rested on my thigh and she took in the view of the grass and the Winooski River.  She didn’t sleep, but stayed awake enjoying my touch for over an hour.   

The rest of the week was uneventful. The little pimple on her lip had grown past pea size to the size of a big marble, you know, the one that you flicked at all the small marbles to win the game when you were a little kid.  I thought it must be some old-age acne or a reaction to the steroids.  It didn’t bother her.   She was holding her own and I became increasingly and stupidly optimistic that the x-rays were wrong.  

The day before the bandage was to come off her paw, she seemed to limp a little.  I know horses can get irritated if a bandage is on too long.  I kept the bandage on one more day, meticulously following the vet’s directions.  She looked a little mournful when I approached her with the scissors to cut the bandage, but she was stoic and didn’t move.  

There it was.  I was wrong and the vet tech was wrong.  There was no broken toe, no sprained paw.  I was wrong to think that the cancer was happy where it was and it wasn’t going to go any farther.  The cancer was in her foot.  A week ago that vet had wrapped a nice tight bandage around a sprained paw and all week, under that bandage, a tumor the size of my pinky digit grew underneath her toenail.  I rewrapped the paw gently and we were back at Brown’s in half an hour.  

This time we saw still another third young vet.  She looked exactly like the last two and I wondered about cloning, but she was more compassionate than her colleague from the other day.  She connected with Stubby right away and she didn’t talk about putting her down.  She re-dressed the paw in a bandage that wouldn’t bind the tumor and showed me how to take care of it.  She looked at the acne on her lip.  She smiled at me in a really gentle way and said, “How fast did the tumor grow on her lip?”

“Oh, that’s not a tumor, I think it’s a reaction to the meds, or just an old age growth.” As I said the words, I knew they weren’t true.  Is it possible to tell yourself one thing in the face of so much evidence showing that it’s just not true?  Of course it was a tumor.  What else would it be?  And if it was on her lip and under her toenail, it was everywhere in between.  The kind vet finished up her exam. “The medications should keep her comfortable.  You know we’re here for you when you need us.”  She gave Stubby a final pat and left the exam room.

That night, I set up a huge bed on the kitchen floor for her to sleep on.  I unfurled my sleeping bag so I could lie next to her.  David didn’t like the new sleeping arrangements.  He didn’t like all the time I spent with her during the day, and now I was leaving him by himself all night.  The next morning, he asked, “How long are you going to sleep on the floor?”

“I don’t know.  I just want to be close to her at night in case she needs me.”

“I know that.  How long is this going to go on for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not to change the subject, but I have been having trouble connecting with my new study group.  They don’t seem interested in interacting with me.  I think it will help to have a dinner party for them and I’d like to do that next week.”

“Um, this is a massive deal that my dog has cancer everywhere in her body.  She has shared my life with me through so many ups and downs.  I can’t possibly think about a dinner party right now.  I spend every waking moment with Stubby.  I can’t even think about entertaining.  Your party will have to wait.”

“This is very important to me and it may not be able to wait.  I’ll see what their schedules are for next week.”  With that he grabbed his book bag and walked upstairs.  He didn’t say good-bye to Stubby.  Hadn’t he heard what I said?  Didn’t he see the tears welled up, threatening to spill over?  I was cracking apart inside and the fissures were showing for anyone who would stop and take the time to notice.  One kind word, one offered hug would have healed so much of my hurt in that moment.  He was blind to all of it.  

For the remainder of the week, she held her own against the cancer and she seemed pain-free and happy.  I adjusted to life on the kitchen floor.  Periodically we would sit in my office, but the weather was glorious and we spent most of the time outside in the grass.  She had always loved sunbathing.  One late afternoon something changed.  It wasn’t an acute crisis.  It was a shift, a subtle change in score, and she and I were no longer winning.  She wobbled on her legs from the walk outside.  We were in the grass, watching the river.  She had trouble settling down and when she did, she slept right away, not able to stay awake.  Before her eyes closed, she looked up at me, acknowledging I was still there and she was by my side.  It was time.  

The next morning, David asked if I wanted him to go with us and I said no.  He looked relieved.  Then he said, “Not that it’s about timing or anything, but I invited my friends for dinner tomorrow.  I’ll borrow a card table and grocery shop later today.”  It didn’t even register to me what he’d done.

She walked by my side all the way to the truck.  We went really slow.  They kindly didn’t make us wait at Brown’s, but put us right in an exam room.  I had never seen a dog be put down before.  She lay on the floor on a blanket that had been placed before we came into the room and I sat down next to her.  It was awkward for her to rest her head on my leg because of the lip tumor, but she did anyway and I cradled it in my hand.  The compassionate vet came in.  She smiled at us both, patting Stubby, telling her what a good fighter she was.  She got busy with syringes and rubber tubing.  I told Stubby she was lucky to go in September because she wouldn’t have to live through a freezing cold winter.  Ace would be waiting for her, I said, and she could play bite her on the neck all she wanted.  The vet was gone and it seemed like she was sleeping.  I walked out of Brown’s for the last time by myself.

That afternoon David said, “Everyone is coming at seven tomorrow.”

“I am really not up for this at all.  I’m totally exhausted.  I’m going to crawl into bed for a nap.”  I blew my nose.  My face was one big red blotch.  The idea of meeting the best and brightest only worsened my sorrow.  “I don’t know if I can make it through this.  Can I have a hug?”  

He wrapped his arms around me stiffly, squeezed hard and then let go.  I wondered when the last time he had hugged me without my having to ask for one, and I couldn’t remember back that far.  “When you get up, we’ll go to the store and pick up the meat for tomorrow.  Don’t worry, she was only a dog.”

In that moment, from the outside, I looked like a whole person.  I looked like the person that had woken up and started the day like any other day.  But on that vet’s hard floor, with my hands on my dog, witnessing the warmth of her body cooling to a lifeless chill, as her soul left it for good, a part of me left with her.  How could I explain to someone who couldn’t see for himself, that after this morning I would be always a little less than I had been with her by my side?

I curled up on the bed that I hadn’t slept in for over a week.  I thought of Stubby and all that had passed in my life while she was with me.  I thought of tomorrow and wondered how I would manage without her.  I couldn’t help but compare.  I had chosen her, rescued her really, from a bad home.  In turn, she had ignored me for weeks, ruined all my possessions, but then showed up by my side one day and adored me without fail until her last breath.  I had chosen David, and from the start, he had charmed me into loving him.  He wined and dined me from the beginning, even though we split the bill.  Hook, line and sinker, I fell for him quick.  While out of the blue, one day she devoted herself to me and one day, out of the blue, he took me for granted.  

As I drifted off, I wondered, to be fair, if David had felt neglected over the past few weeks while I had dedicated myself to Stubby, knowing our time together would be ending soon.  I had absolutely no regrets about the choices I had made to devote myself to her in her final days.  I had been so consumed by her illness that I hadn’t allowed myself more than a few minutes at a time to contemplate how David and I were doing.  It was almost too painful to think about.  I continued to push those disquieting feelings away.   I made a silent pledge to recommit to my life with David.  I slept for the rest of the day.