In Memory, 16 years of Lab love

Now that it's been almost a week, I can sit down and write again. Last Saturday, our elderly Lab mix stopped eating and drinking and we could tell she'd taken a turn for the worse. She was 16 in November and we have had a lot of false alarms with her over the past few years, neither of us has ever had a pet live this long, but we realized that this was the real thing after an entire day went by without her letting us feed her anything at all. The photo above was taken in early December, we always said she could be a poster dog for Iams, her favorite food & favorite treats.

She's been an indoor dog for many years now, terribly spoiled and has always had better health care than me or my husband. I adopted her as a puppy and never knew anything about her other than she was "mostly" Lab, she was shorter and more muscular than your standard AKC Lab, which probably helped her health. She never fell prey to the hip or eye problems common in Labs, though the last few years of her life she had a great deal of trouble with her back legs because of a circulation problem in her lower spine. I originally adopted her as a companion for my Lab/Shepard mix male, but he ended up only living about 7 years and after he passed away, she got to move into the house and live with our male tuxedo kitty (who also passed away a few years ago, we're currently pet-less). I named her Tala because it was the American Indian name for "wolf", which was the name of my male dog. Both dogs were jet black except for a few white stars, but as Tala aged she developed a lot of white and was a beautiful old girl.

I don't know if it was the Lab temperment or just her personality, but she was a very loving, calm and well-behaved dog to the end. Our main concern was that she not be in pain, she had a lot of trouble walking in her last years but the doctor believed it to just be weakness and not pain. He said she was a very "stoic" dog, and was always patient and polite to the vets, even when she had to have surgery for a ruptured spleen four years ago. At that time the vet told us we'd probably have her for another year, but she proved him wrong. We knew her time was approaching, though, because she had begun to lose weight despite still having a pretty good appetite. She lost about 15 pounds this winter, so when she refused to eat we knew she was telling us it was her time. Our male dog had been very sick and in obvious pain, and our cat had broken his leg (which turned out to be cancerous), so choosing to put them to sleep had not been quite as hard a decision, though it's always a difficult thing. But we worried the entire day Saturday if we were making the right decision, because Tala has had bad days before and managed to bounce back afterwards. Well, as bouncy as a 100+ year dog could be.

So we agonized and called our vet to see which doctor was on call for the weekend, and were planning on taking her Sunday morning, but we couldn't let her suffer, she just looked too miserable. So at about one in the morning Saturday night, we called the animal hospital back and had them call the doctor on duty in. Poor guy, he was the one who had to put our cat asleep also. But when he saw her, he agreed with our choice. Between us we guessed whe must have had some sort of heart problem, probably congestive heart failure, Friday night because she had coughed some and could not lie down comfortably. We'd been giving her heart medicine for a murmur for years, so that makes sense.

Neither of us had been present when our other pets were put to sleep due to their conditions, but we stayed with Tala till the end. Our house is very quiet now, neither of us has been sleeping well because of the 24/7 hospice care we'd been giving her the last year or so because of her mobility problems, luckily we both work at home. It's been strange this week going out to eat, to the book store and not having to rush home to make sure the dog is OK, she would often try and get up and walk the house, only to fall and be stuck there till we returned.

We'll be getting another dog, most probably another Lab, and another cat. We'll get the kitty first so he can feel confidant as the king of the house (as our last cat was) before we introduce a big bouncing puppy. My entire life my family always kept their dogs outside year round, so I did also (except during extremely cold spells), and so my dogs were never properly housebroken, though Tala learned very quickly. Now I can't imagine making a dog sit outside and stare at us through the glass door. Our next dog will be very spoiled, needless to say.

Posted by Morticia at January 10, 2003 01:29 AM | TrackBack