Personal Story With A Soundtrack

I should start writing these stories about positive events as well as negative ones.

The thing is that you don´t notice all the positive ones till in a moment of melancholy you look back at all the good things that happened in your life.

On A Positive Note

The good things, there were so many.
However, I did not agree with the start of this one.

We moved from The Netherlands to Spain less than a year ago. And I was back in the Netherlands, no clue why but I was there and fortunately that does not matter.

I think we used email as calling internationally was still expensive and WhatsApp was not invented yet.

What I do remember is being asked the following:

"My mom's cleaning lady has puppies, and well you know her. She can not keep them so if they are not gone in the next couple of weeks they go to the pound. And in the Spanish pound that means they get about one week," is what she told me.

I am sure she also raised the question in some sort of form and told me how important it was for our one-year-old kid to grow up with an animal.

As I remember it I was asked for an approval, and I am quite sure I did not give it.

We rented a house, and I was not sure what our landlord would say.
We were not even a year in Spain, and I had no clue how long we would last. But I did know that finding an affordable place to rent in the Netherlands was hard, and nearly impossible if you had pets.

So I said that I did not think it was wise, for those reasons. That it was too early and there was no need to rush.

My Ex listened, but that was about it.
When I came back home there was a dog, without asking the landlord and without my consent.

It was a puppy with a dark spot around his eyes which resembled a little black mask. She planned to call him "Bandito" because of that mask. But that was too hard for my son to pronounce, so it became Patito. Which means little paw, little duck, or more commonly rubber duck for in the bathtub.

And so Patito became part of the family. Other dogs came and went in the years to come. He even impregnated one of those other dogs and left his offspring in this world.

Offspring of which most have already gone where all dogs go.

But Patito just kept going.

This Dog

He survived four years of living in the Spanish countryside without any confinement. He was allowed to wander and he did. He would chase our car down the dirt road for at least 10 minutes and we would have to push down the pedal to lose him.

We sometimes would be gone for a couple of days and leave him with food and water and as soon as he heard the engine from afar he would come barging down the mountain and show us how happy he was we were back.

Those days in the countryside were some of the best of my life but also the hardest. With financial struggles and cracks in the marriage, it was not easy to live off the grid.

But when I would find a nice quiet place to feel sad, he would sniff me out and come sit next to me. He would always comfort those that were said, he really had a nose for that.

I guess these might have been his happiest days as well.

During the peak of the financial crisis in Spain in 2011 I needed to find a real job. We were just not able to live from the irregular work I found in the villages and the little disability pension of my future ex-wife.

I moved to Granada and so did Patito, well at first we all did. But my son and his mom moved back soon, for many reasons. But Patito stayed with me.

Missing The Country Feel

No longer living in a rural village where you could leave the door open to the back alley or the countryside where he had all the space in the world I started to take him for walks. Although I am sure we both missed that country feel.

It was just him and me in the city all week long, and even though I vetoed his coming I actually started to grow attached to him. Still, he was my son's dog, at least that is how they sold it to me.

I was used to taking him off the leash when we went out of the village where I lived but after a couple of minor accidents and two more serious escapes, I decided that we were both better off if he was leashed.

I started that job thirteen years ago, and all those years I lived in houses and apartments that required me to take Patito for a spin.

My mornings, for the past thirteen years always started with me getting dressed and before doing anything else taking him for a walk.

I can not remember a life without that ritual, and on days that I travel and he is staying at the Dog Hotel it feels weird to make my coffee without walking him.

That will be a feeling I have to get used to now.

The Less Positive Note

Patito turned Seventeen in August this year. It was a little before that when I started noticing things. Spanish summers are very hot, and that used to be no problem. But it was this year.

He struggled to go for his walks, requiring me to pause many times. Then he started to have trouble holding his blatter till he was out the gate.

We lived in this building for at least five summers, but I did not notice this ever before.

I know that in the past years, he had some what I call attacks, which would cause him to be unable to get up for a bit and the following days he had some trouble controlling his blatter but nothing like this.

The vet and I both thought that it might be due to drinking more and walking slower, we tried a medicine but things only got worse.

When I stopped giving him the medicine it seemed to go better.....for a while.

So why should I worry...

Because when September made the world cool down, his lack of bladder control went up.

In addition, where he for 17 years had gotten a little bit of human food after dinner (when possible. He now would get diarrhea from any food that was not dry dog food. Even from the tiniest amounts.

He would go onto the balcony and poo there until I figured out what caused the diarrhea. But even after that, during the night he would poo in the house if the balcony door was closed.

This was so not him.

By now I was putting on his diapers before walking him so he would not have the occasional accident before we got out of the gate.

The occasional accident became frequent.
And a few weeks ago it started happening as soon as we would be out the door. We would not even be in the elevator, his tail would go up and I would know what time it was.

It also did not make sense to add more walks to the routine because we already did five walks daily, which was his max.

Thank God for Doggy Diapers

The diapers I bought this summer, of which I thought they would no longer be needed after the temperatures would drop became the standard.

Then one morning something weird happened. We would go for the walk, the same walk we did for years and he would always pee. But not today.

The only other time that happened was this summer when I was caught up in work and had to walk him a few hours later than normal.

We went for the walk and no pee.

Till I came back in the elevator and saw that the floor was soaking wet.

I had still been with my head at work so I must have missed it, but he had released himself in the building for the first time ever.

Knowing that I checked the balcony and found the evidence I was looking for.
Now the diapers would also become the standard for the nights.

The Near Future

For weeks I thought about this; "How long will he still last, and how does he feel about this?"

Because I noticed changes in his behavior, he would get anxious an hour before the walk. Or when the balcony door was closed, or when I was coming in the morning to clean up after him.

I started noticing little things, and they told me that he was not happy with the situation and tried to warn me or do his best to at least go to the balcony when needed.

Week after week I noticed it getting a little worse, but when is it enough?

I decided that when in the near future something else would start happening I should seriously think about making the decision.

Something Else

Then something else happened.

In the past, I had seen this once before after an attack, where he was just not able to get up anymore. He would literally be like Bambi on ice.

A few weeks ago that happened, but seemingly without any attack. Then it happened again waiting on the elevator, his paws started sliding outward and he did not have the strength to control it. A few minutes later, and with a bit of help, we were able to go for the walk.

But this was now becoming more than an incident, a few days later I was on a Zoom call I heard him trying to get up. I heard he could not, I heard him panic.

I ended the call and sat with him for a few minutes, then I tried to help him up. Something he hates as it hurts his arthrosis.

He got back on his paws the second time and a bit later we went for a walk. A neighbor walking her dog commented; "He really does not want to walk does he?"

She was right, over the past year or so, his walking has become already less stable than it used to be. But now he was shaking with every step. This was one of his bad days of course, but how bad should it get?

How Bad Should It Get?

That was the million-dollar question, when do you say this is it?

I asked my good friend Google, and some living and breathing peeps as well that I spoke with that day.

Nobody knows, but the best answer I found was an owner often knows by intuition when it´s time to say goodbye.

To be honest, I never thought about it before. I always expected to walk into the kitchen one day and see him there not getting up.

And I had a few of those moments over the last couple of years where I really had to look hard to make sure he was still breathing.

The previous morning I spoke with a colleague about our fathers who are both in different stages of the last phase. During that call, I realized I did not want to end up like his father, and that I would probably settle for the stage my dad is in now.

But who will make that decision?
Could I still do that then?

My Dad is a strange one, just like many of us.
But he was a good one, or at least he did his best.

I think secretly he was a proud man, and maybe we all are.
When he lost his ability to do the things he loved such as sports, driving, and bicycling, he lost interest. He is no longer staying around because he wants to, he told me that in not so many words.

My dog, we always thought of him as a little lion, because of his surplus of hair, because of his starting, and because he was a very proud dog. He can for sure not make that choice.

Too Early or Too Late

I can not make the choice for my dad, and who knows if I can make the choice for myself one day.
But I can make the choice for Patito, and as a lifelong caretaker, I think I should.

Of course, the eternal dilemma is when?

When is it too early and when too late, and the answer is you never know.
That is why I will go with the intuition on this one.

He had several bad days last week, more than ever before.
He is not getting any younger, he is already way beyond his life expectancy with his 17 years and a couple of months.

I see him getting worse, and I hear him panic when get can't get up.

He can still do most of his things.... on a good day.
But his breathing, his breath, his reduced appetite, his not wanting to sleep in the kitchen no more, all were signs.

I made my decision

The weirdest thing is the sign that really got me thinking was my Dad saying; "You should not feel bad about letting him go to heaven."

Maybe he was asking it for himself, maybe because he himself is closer to heaven it was a message.

But him saying that planted a seed, and now a week later, a bad week. I have called the vet.

Patito is a proud dog, always has been.
I want him to go taking his pride with him.
He has had so many beautiful years, I don't want him to suffer at the end of the ride.
There is no need for that, and I hope one day if needed someone will do the same for me.

We suffer enough in life because we know there is a future, but why suffer when there is nothing left to suffer for?

Am I too early, maybe?
Am I too late, I don't think so.

Am I crying a little while typing this, hell yeah.

See You Soon

This personal story with a soundtrack has already gotten longer than I planned. But I don't feel breaking it up will do it justice.
There is a second part coming soon, about those last days after I made the decision. It will probably be a sad story, but writing this all down helps to let him go.

Patito

Thank goodness you made it till the end Pees, Love and I am out of here!

You just read the latest chapter in my Personal Story With A Soundtrack series.

Some earlier Personal Stories:

All Art & Pics by MyI & AI

Personal Story With A Soundtrack - 𝑨𝒍𝒍 𝑫𝒐𝒈𝒔 𝑮𝒐 𝑻𝒐 𝑯𝒆𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕 1 - Deciding To Let Him Go