Goodbye to Ivy (Catherine Campbell)

I am chewing on walnut bread toast with cinnamon-infused honey. It tastes like sawdust. Those big brown eyes aren’t staring up at me, waiting less than patiently for her share. She didn’t greet us at the door with her canvas fish in her mouth and her short tail wagging. How could she? We had just come back from leaving her still warm body at the vet.

This morning started as usual – 6 a.m. Ivy is up with “sole” in her mouth trotting around the bedroom. I get up, grab her blankies, her kong bone and head for the crate in the kitchen. She trots out ahead of me, drops “sole” (not allowed in the crate) and runs in, waiting for her cookie. She made a funny bark an hour or so later. I got up to take her out. She trotted around in the long grass and then ran a couple of circles on our lawn. Suddenly she sank like she was going to lie down and she crumpled, folding over on her side.

Same as two weeks ago. Then I had pumped her chest, hard compressions and she gasped and recovered. We did the gamut with the local vet – x-rays, ecg, exam and started her on medications. The scary part of the heart – everything looks normal until it isn’t. She bounced around the house, raced around the pool table, leapt through grass twice her height out behind the house. She went to her agility class, ran the courses, not even panting. Last night she seemed lethargic and a little unresponsive – lying on the couch, head on my leg. But bedtime was normal.

I dropped beside her this morning and started pushing on her chest. She didn’t start to breathe. Her death spasms ripped my heart out. I want to turn the clock back but then what? I was so helpless.

Back from the vet…

We just threw her bed out – it was worn and it is garbage day. I couldn’t leave it somewhere where I would see the void. The crate went to the garage. Her medications packed to send to a vet for someone else’s pet to use. Her food – just opened a brand new bag last night – will go to a rescue. I feel like I am sanitizing our home, making it like she was never here.

That would actually be hard to do. She was the Pet of the Month in the Neighbours of Riverbend magazine, ironically, the same month that she dies. A memoriam.

It is five years this month since she arrived in our home. Her show photos are on Facebook, her images were part of a pet photography course. I have a video of her yodelling to the piano. There is a worn spot on the arm of the sofa where she rested her head to stare at Howard. Hundreds of pictures.

Maybe my Turkish rug will stay flat now that she isn’t careening around the dining room waiting for her food dish. There won’t be puddles on the floor around her water dish to step in – I won’t be filling it several times a day because she won’t touch “stale” water.

Not sure what I am going to do with her agility set up. She loved the weaves and the tunnel. We set jumps up around the pool table. We started agility to provide more socializing. She was a star. Last week when she was running mini-courses at her novice agility class, not a hint, no premonition that it would be her last.

She was absolutely beautiful. The sheen on her coat, the arch of her neck.

I just watched a deer walk across the fairway. Ivy would have been apoplectic. She frequently worked herself into a frenzy over the deer, the coyotes, a robin, a golfer looking for the golf ball in “her” fescue.

She was a mooch. She shared the beater from making cookies (test of wills between she and Howard as to who got the biggest portion). My yogurt. And the crusts from that toast I am trying to eat.

She loved toys. She knew them all by name – fish, sole, bone, antelope (her blanket) – and would fetch what was asked for. The only Doberman we have shared our house with who didn’t destroy toys. Canvas fish was coming on two years old – looking a little tired from constant attention but intact.

Her “outdoor” toys resided in a bin on the patio. When she wanted to play she headed straight for it. When she had enough of a toy she took it back. It was the only place she would hand over a toy willingly.Not a retriever, my Ivy. Chase the ball and keep it. Catch the ball and keep it. “Ivy, put it in the bin.” Into the bin the ball, the frisbee, the tug toy went. Our charcoal and barbecue stuff share the bin. Heartbreaking – need to move the toys.

My sister was my first call. As a vet she has been close to the highs and lows of our canines. This news was the lowest of low. I left it to her to tell my niece, also a vet and working in my sister’s practice. They had both devoted hours to researching the latest treatment for cardio after Ivy’s first collapse. None of us expected that it would only be two and a half weeks.

The vet clinic staff were so gentle. “No, I don’t want her ashes, nor an ink stamp of her pawprint. No, please keep her blanket with her.” The receptionist softly says “You can settle up later. You don’t have to handle it now.” Perhaps the tears trickling down my cheeks uninvited. I wasn’t crying but the tears kept coming. “No, we will pay now.” We didn’t want to have to think about doing it later.

Now the tedious task of telling everyone who needs to know. It is always a little surprising how much people recognize that a pet is an integral part of a family and treat the loss as a significant emotional upheaval. I remember a conversation at a party years ago. An attractive middle-aged woman was practically sobbing – “It is so difficult to look at my little dog and know that I will have to cope with him dying.” At the time I just nodded but thought that perhaps she shouldn’t have a dog. Today my son said the same thing. Today, perhaps, I feel the same thing. But I would have missed out on so many special memories. Every canine we have shared our lives with has had his or her own character – to be discovered and treasured.

Ivy came into our lives, on a trial basis, when our Doberman, Brock, developed bone cancer and, in pain, needed to be put down – another low for my sister. If it isn’t one thing, it is another. When Brock died my husband and I were without a dog in our house for the first time in over 30 years. Ivy wasn’t leaving although she was actually afraid of Howard. That didn’t last.

I wrote then about the loss of Brock:

“His spirit permeates the house – whispy sense of presence – still.”

Did I misstate that? Ivy’s absence is tangible and raw. Time, I hope, will give us back the memories of her spirit and her joy and ease the loss.