Change in the weather, change in me

The last few days have been rather busy. We had two really warm nice days, enough to make one think Spring is really coming. A friend called me saying the warm weather was making her think about kayaking and would I be interested in a 4-day kayaking expedition in May.

I fell for it, hook line and sinker. I haven't been kayaking at all in almost 2 years, and definitely not on an expedition in that time. Two years ago May four of us booked a "cabin" (more like a house) at a lodge on a lake system in the interior of the province and spent our time kayaking the lake system and cooking and eating great meals. Not to mention wine and conversation and a fire in the big old stone fireplace and soaking up the sun on the deck overlooking the lake…

Anyway, same cabin, same time, same women. But I can't leave Hapi alone for much more than 3 hours and I can't leave her with someone else or put her in a kennel, her health and well-being are just not up to it. The friend who called me is a very pragmatic sort of person with no pets, she tried to be polite about it but her scepticism about me still having a sick old dog shone through. The last expedition she organized I bowed out of for that reason. I told her I was interested and thanked her for her call because it got me thinking about what I was doing and why, something I needed to do. So long story short, I am looking at euthanasia for Hapi, sometime before May.

The following day I met with two friends for wine and cheese and crackers and nachos, etc., leaving Hapi at home. We had a really good time and I was home 3 hours later, to a kitchen floor covered in doggie diarrhea. I cleaned up, did some laundry, and gave Hapi a small amout of food just to get her pain meds into her. Next morning, more diarrhea in the kitchen, more cleanup, and more thinking.

I was thinking about calling the vet on Monday to talk about Hapi's future, or lack thereof, but the vet's office called me on Friday afternoon. I had the conversation with the vet tech, she talked a lot about "quality of life", and I said Hapi's quality was just fine but mine not so much. However, this caregiver is burnt out. The possibility of a new spring, a new opportunity only available if I am dogless, just was overwhelming.

On Saturday I went to a movie. It was a fundraiser and the seating was carefully arranged for social distancing; I sat with two of the women who would be going on the kayaking expedition. The movie, a documentary, was interesting but overly long, I think it needed some serious editing. The problem with a lot of documentaries—to my mind—is that the filmmaker has a message to deliver that he/she considers really important, and just hammers it home repeatedly. I think the dramatic repetition is a bit much. By the end of the film I was already at my 3 hour limit and then there was a discussion. I didn't like getting up and leaving in the midst of a discussion but felt I had no choice, I was at the end of my Hapi-tether.

Real dog, fake eagle

I know that tether is only going to get shorter. I know she is not going to improve. She still has good times, she eats well and likes our walks, she can still manage a short flight of stairs. Her daytime schedule has become very unpredictable, I can no longer count on her to eat at a certain time and have a nap for a certain length of time. She gets restless unpredictably. I love having a long bath but it's hard to schedule anymore because if Hapi is outdoors she will scratch incessantly at the door and she has already damaged the weatherstripping considerably. If she is indoors and needs to go out she is liable to have an accident if I don't hop to it.

My friend's phone call the other day was a wake up call, it made me realize how stressed out I was about Hapi, and for how long this has been going on. The unpredictability of how much longer this situation is going to continue, the lack of a foreseeable endpoint, has made making plans or even thinking about the future impossible. On the other hand, having a specific endpoint makes a lot of things so much easier to bear. I can do this, knowing that it is only for so long. It is sad but doable.