I’m late to post this week. Life happens and it happened a week ago. I debated if I should even post about this but what happened is natural. There was not much unnatural about what happened. It does have a tie into my garden so I guess it ties into gardening. All through the talk about fertilizers, cultivars and pest, we forget about the humanity in gardening. We build our memories by living our life and for many of us in this space, our gardens are part of the definition of us and a large space in our memories is given to this. It is a strange thing but so many of us spend the effort in the uniquely human activity of farming or gardening but yet we forget its humanity.
I lost my little garden guard at 16.5 years old. Less than 36 hours before, she was chasing things out of my garden and having a grand old time doing it too. I have tried to varying degrees of success to keep posting on Minds. They were not as good as my previous posts but I am more simulating being myself than myself at the moment. I was really close to my dog. Her personality and mine got along really well. I was her third owner. I got her at 4 though I knew here for most of her life.
The Sad Part, You Can Skip This
She had a seizure condition that eventually morphed into brain cancer. Her first seizure was in October 2019 and the cancer diagnosis was in March of 2020. She was a strong dog and lived to June 6, 2021. As I said she was pretty good condition with very, very few break through seizures until June 5. At about 9:30 pm or so, she had a dozy. Lasted over a minute but was thankfully not a chain seizure. She wanted to go to bed at 11:30pm and I was tied too so we did. She was restless through the night and woke me up last time a 7:44am arranging herself nose to me.
When I awoke at 10:15am, I did my morning ritual and noticed her eyes were open. I touched her and she was nonresponsive. Her tongue was slightly sticking out and flopped over and I knew she was dying. I called my Mom and she called my Dad and he came down. I rubbed her and talked to her. Her breathing sped up and around 11:30 or so she gave three barks about 5 minutes apart. I wasn’t sure but I figured he was trying to kill the Grim Reaper. She went to sleep through about a 1/3 of the ordeal. She then seemed to seize and got a thousand yard stare. My Dad got in around this time. Her breathing started to slow. She pooped herself for a second time. I cleaned her up as best as I could.
It seemed like an awful thing to go through the process of dying with an itchy butt. The things you think about when you’re in those situations.
Her breathing slowed and slowed until she seem to pop back into herself for a minute. She curled into a ball and seemed to shoot out sort of movement back to straight laying on her side. I told her “goodbye sweetie” as I knew what was happening and she was gone. I swear I felt the last couple of beats of her heart. When my dad felt he said it was probably in my head. When I felt her again, they were gone.
I rubbed on her for 10 minutes or so. As here machine wounded down, I didn’t want her to be alone for the last few moments. I don’t think she was really there but I wanted to be safe. She did death movements as I did it. It honestly freaked me out as they were so unnaturally unrefined and spastic. I scratched her behind the ear and realized I had the mother of all headaches.
She went the way most of us will be jealous about. She was surrounded by everyone who ever loved her. Laying in her bed. Well my bed but she managed to get to sleep in my bed the last two years of her life. She really liked my new latex foam mattress and conned her way into sleeping in it every night. Death happened at 2:05pm so it was a very quick death. She expired in less than 6 hours.
She was a strong little dog. Most likely her cancer spread to her blood or she threw a blood clot from her heart arrhythmia, since it was becoming more common over the last few days. Either way her blood wasn’t working. It was close to how I wanted her to go. I would have preferred her going in her sleep but this was close. Her organs gave out before her muscle and skeletal system. It is awful but still a much better way to go. Death is always awful.
I left her in my bed for a few hours as my Dad distracted me. I think we went to eat somewhere but I don’t remember where. In fact, I don’t remember much of that day past that point unless it had something to do with my dog.
When I was able to do it. I wrapped her up in the baby blanket she came to her first home with as a puppy. I wrapped it up under her front legs and around her bottom, her head and shoulders sticking out. She was still quite flexible and I did my best to move her to a dog bed with a strong frame. It was Sunday and the vet was closed. She laid through the night in my office. I scratched her behind the ear that night and told her, she was the best dog that ever dooged and told her how much I loved her. It was a modification of the nightly ritual. I did this ritual because she outlived her prognosis for so long that I figured the last time I would get to interact with her was the end of each night.
The next morning, I called the vet. We took her body there wrapped in her blanket and laying in her bed. She had the happiest dog expression on her face. The rigor mortis had made her ear stand up straight. Her eyes wide open. Mouth wide open with the tongue sticking out in the spitting image of her coming in from a summer day chasing squirrels. I gave her a final ear scratch and said my last good byes. They came back giving me an empty bed and a folded up baby blanket. I picked her ashes up on Friday and took her home on final time.
Ok, Here Is Where the Garden Comes Into the Picture
After her death, I had a horrible headache. I took my headache pills and ate a flour tortilla so I would not have an empty stomach. I sat in my garden looking at it. Walked through it and ate some sweet peas that were ready to go. Her last meal was Italian style green beans. She loved them. I stopped her eating grass the night before. She did this when she didn’t eat as here tummy hurt. She didn’t eat the day before, except for the green beans, she gobbled them up. I was a little regretful that I did not let her finish them off. Though, I did give a bigger than usual serving. I buried the rest of her green beans in the garden. It will be a good source of nitrogen in the refurbished bed.
When I first got her, she ended my gopher problem. Moles, rabbits and birds all felt her wraith. She chased cabbage moths away. She protected my garden until her dying day. About a year or so after a brought her home, I had my 6×6 garden that I had converted to a square foot garden. I was so happy. After years of trying, I managed to finally get an eggplant to fruit and it was growing. She saw some critter and bounded into the garden. Something I had never seen her do in the past year. She flattened my eggplant. I didn’t try eggplant again until this year. It is starting to bud so I think I will get some this year. My skills are much better today than they were 12 years ago. The end result was my raised beds went from 6 inches tall to a foot.
For years, I had few pest problems. Even as she got older, her wandering around every day discouraged the local wildlife from my garden. When I look at my garden, I remember so many things she did. I really amped up my garden in 2020 and 2021 because I wanted to encourage her to exercise and get more sun. That was done by me being out in the yard gardening. As I am getting close to finishing up my Spring garden to Summer garden conversion, I am going miss her chasing the hose water. Chasing everything in sight and barking her little head off to the thunderstorms. I remember her eating my cucumber seedlings. She really liked them.
The practical realities of not having her in the garden, have not yet occurred. Her presence was enough to discourage critters from raiding my garden and without it, I suspect I will have higher loss to pests. I have not had to net my garden since I got her. She did provide actual value in the garden.
It wasn’t until this week that I realized how much a human activity gardening actually is. The memories formed in it and is something that I will be very aware of into the future. You don’t realize it until something happens but there is more than a food factory in that garden.