And Then She Licked My Face

(RIP Ruthie the Rescue, 2008-2024)

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Now that we’re home again, we can finally pay a fitting farewell to our canine companion of the past 10 years. Here are Simon’s words…

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I’ve never been lost for words before. You know, spoken, articulated words said out loud, to people. But that’s not it. I can still talk about many things, the important and the mundane. But not about our dog, and the grief it has generated having had to ask the vet to euthanize her.

OK, those are the words I can’t say. I cannot, under any circumstances, in the days and weeks following the act of taking another creature’s life, try to articulate anything about our Ruthie that doesn’t end in tears. And tissues. Lots of tissues. And eyes that feel like they’re full of sand and ash. And a heart that feels like it has a lead weight inside.

“It’s just a dog,” some might say and, in many ways, they are right. It is, or was, just a common or garden household pet. There are hundreds of them in the streets around us, every day, everywhere.

But it was a living, breathing, reactive pet who had been part of our household for nearly 10 years, claimed from a dog rescue center in 2015 and a permanent fixture with Susan and myself ever since.

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At 4am on May 26 we had to end that life, that lovely canine companion, in the face of a growing distress that seemed to be escalating quickly and inexorably with no effective cure or palliative measure at hand. The vet agreed with us, but it was still our essential decision, our fateful, conscious act to end a life that had become a tale of torment. It was our call.

But that’s not the issue. Our Ruthie was 15 or 16 – no-one could be really sure; she had been a stray, and the vet’s best guess, from looking at X-rays that showed a fair bit of arthritic build-up, was that she was around six or seven when we adopted her – and that’s a pretty decent age for a labrador, a breed that is often ‘elderly’ by 10 and straight up old by 12. She had already beaten the odds and survived to an age where humans would be gasping for breath.

And that was the issue. She was gasping for breath, not constantly but regularly, and often at night, when everything sounds and feels worse amid the darkness that closes in and amplifies all your fears and concerns. It was a condition called laryngeal paralysis, something quite common in labradors, especially at such an advanced age. We knew it and had been aware of it for at least a year; Susan thinks a bit longer than that.

Either way, it had become a daily reality in recent months, not always obvious but a serious background issue to a dog that was still always up and about, ready for the next adventure, the next place to sniff. And oh, she loved to sniff. She lived to sniff. She spent much of her days sniffing anything and everything that didn’t move, and some that did. She would have been the ideal sniffer dog for the authorities, a regular bloodhound in labrador clothing.

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She especially seemed to thrive on our travels, both in and around Florida and further afield on trips to Michigan and North Carolina. One of the reasons we decided to take off on our “A Year On The Road” RV escapade in the first place was so we could take Ruthie on the biggest adventure of her life, a chance to really sniff the open road and the vast array of olfactory delights to be had along the way.

In the multi-year planning of the trip, we weren’t sure she would even make it to the start line. Her vet was happy enough for us to take her, but we would need to see other vets along the way, keep her essential medications and vaccinations up to date, and seek out urgent medical advance if she showed major signs of distress.

She did, on two occasions, but both were related to upset stomachs, probably related to too many sniffs in transient dog parks where another dog had probably left trace contamination. On both occasions, she bounced back immediately with the aid of antibiotics, and she was soon ready for the next location, the next new set of sniffs.

But the laryngeal condition was still there, a background menace that occasionally flared into open distress in the form of a coughing fit or heavy panting. One vet described it as “like trying to breath through a straw.” But labs are tough old birds of a furry feather; they are masters at disguising their symptoms and hiding the underlying distress. And Ruthie rarely let her symptomatic guard down. She was a total trooper. To my eye, she had a few moments of concern but then bounced back to her normal nose-dependent best, an elderly example of her breed, sure, but still largely a fully functioning one.

OK, we’d had to compromise. Ruthie was no longer able to undergo any real workout, no more scenic walks and hikes. “Do not exercise this dog,” was the stern warning from her vet back in Orlando, so we had invested in a doggie cart from Petsmart, an $80 adjunct to outdoor adventuring without the strain. We could pull her along, get our own level of exercise, and still stop for plenty of sniffs along the way. On the beaches of Texas and the state park trails of Louisiana and Alabama, she got to admire the scenery while putting in zero effort. Reluctantly, of course, because no dog truly wants to travel without their paws on the ground, but orders were definitely orders, and exercise was strictly off the daily menu.

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However, as the final few months of our extended road trip ticked away, Ruthie had trouble sleeping through the night. She developed moments of incontinence, which instigated the indignity of having to wear a doggy diaper when inside the RV, while her ability to shed great clumps of fur – her enduring canine super-power – seemed to increase. Her age was finally showing, but still she soldiered on, unwilling to sit things out when we reached a new campground and she could at least take her nose on new investigations of the immediate surroundings.

By the last week of our epic 12-month voyage around the country, we had reached the grand finale of a stay in Disney’s Fort Wilderness campground, a fitting exclamation point on our year-long adventure as well as a quiet celebratory moment in a 20-year journey for Susan and I in our Disney/Orlando writing career together. Ruthie met an armadillo and two extra-large chipmunks while also trundling around the extensive grounds in her wagon. Everything came together in one glorious Florida sunset.

Sadly, that sunset was also for Ruthie. Within a week of being home, the laryngeal paralysis was staking an ever-larger claim on our dog. The breathing issue was now flaring up significantly several times a day. Worse, the nerves in her back legs were inducing clear and distressing physical discomfort. The lack of any real exercise had caused her muscles to atrophy to the point where her hips were clearly visible through her fur. We took her to see her regular vet, who prescribed a strong pain-killer but also furnished us with a slightly chilling prognosis. The medication would help, she explained, but we were definitely on a final count-down. It might be two weeks, it might be as much as a year, but we needed to be alert to a point of no return.

As it turned out, she had two weeks.

After the long haul around the U.S., we had to take another long journey almost immediately up to Michigan on family business, something we had postponed in order to take our RV on the road but which was now a pressing concern. We packed a (small) bag and set off for the two-day journey, stopping off in Knoxville, Tennessee, overnight and completing the drive on a late Wednesday afternoon. To our relief, Ruthie slept most of the way, then was awake to some serious front-yard sniffing on reaching our destination. Equilibrium restored, we thought.

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Thursday night told us otherwise. Awake and fussing to go out at 3am, Ruthie relieved herself but then struggled to get back to sleep, turning around in her bed multiple times in clear discomfort, and not the usual I’m-not-quite-sure-how-to-get-comfortable routine that most dogs do from time to time. This was the nerve problem writ large and unmistakable, a cry for help I still didn’t fully recognize. Susan was more alert to the issue but, with all the work we had to do on the house, Friday passed without either of us thinking another vet visit would probably be wise.

Friday night was worse. Again she needed to go out in the early hours, but the nerve issue wouldn’t abate for more than an hour, her back left leg twitching in involuntary spasms.

We, or I should say, I, still didn’t read the signs properly. It was the Memorial Day holiday weekend and there was more work to do. We could wait until Tuesday and go and see the vet then, avoiding the ‘emergency’ fees and, perhaps, getting stronger medication that would ease the nerve problem.

At 3am on Sunday that lack of foresight was shown up for the folly it was. Our dog was awake and in unmistakable distress bordering on agony. Even her labrador sensibilities of not showing any pain were wiped away in a clear message. Her twitching and breathing issues were at a head. Even though she couldn’t speak, the look in her eyes said everything. Help me, she articulated. Please help me.

It was a look that ripped at the shreds of our hearts, an urgent message of misery we could no longer ignore. We needed to find a vet, emergency hours or not, and it had to be now. I could curse myself later, but now I had to initiate a solution, the one I had ignored for much of the past week. Susan was readily in agreement.

Thankfully – and I do give thanks for this one piece of cold comfort – the attendant small animal clinic of Michigan State University was only 10 minutes away and fully staffed for just such a situation. We were in the car and on the way within a matter of moments (forgetting even to remove my retainer in a rush for the car keys).

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Within five minutes we were checked in and awaiting the duty vet’s consultation, our Ruthie showing few signs of her immediate discomfort but agitated all the same (she hates the vet’s and can recognize one straight away). We knew what we had to say to the vet, but it’s the message that all dog owners fear to deliver. Should we or shouldn’t we? Are we reading the signs right? Do we ask the vet to take her life? Do we make The Decision?

The vet was calm and understanding personified. More medications might help, she said, but the fact the previous pain meds hadn’t worked was a clear sign that we had probably passed the point of no return. If that’s what we saw and thought, she would support our decision. We would euthanize.

Now comes the point where it’s hard even to type, let alone talk about it. I had gone through this routine with another dog, some 30 years previous, and it had been a terrible moment, a heart-crushing resolution. This was worse. Much worse. Were we, truly, correct in what we were seeing? Most of the symptoms Ruthie had been displaying had flickered off. There was no clear sign of what we had witnessed just half an hour earlier. Were we sure?

The vet then gave us the one, vital, piece of the puzzle we had been lacking. The laryngeal paralysis was primarily a nerve condition, she explained, and it affected both her breathing and her spine/hip issues, which accounted for the uncontrolled twitching and muscular spasms which made it look like she was trying to run away from her own body. This was the symptom that most alarmed us and which had brought us to the emergency moment.

And then there was The Look. The one that said ‘Help me’ in no uncertain terms. In this final, fateful moment, we had to decide that ‘help’ meant ending her life, not prolonging it. That level of distress was desperately real and desperately unavoidable. The Decision had to be acted upon.

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While Susan and I were led to a “comfort” room where we could be with our pet for her final moments, Ruthie was led away to be prepped for the process. There, on a soft blanket printed with cuddly pandas, we communed with our pet. Petting and patting, stroking and soothing, we said our silent goodbye.

And then she licked my face.

Ruthie never licked us. That had never been part of her – many – charms. She could be affectionate in her own way, a kind of stand-offish sociability that never broke out into open affability. We called her The Moody Intellectual for this notable demeanor, a character trait we had grown to love and admire, and which, somehow, perfectly suited our relationship; a partnership in exploration and adventure.

Now she was indisputably saying goodbye with a gesture of pure love and affection that totally melted my heart and remains my abiding memory of a household pet that totally crossed the line from “just a dog” to a genuine family member, a being of real humanity. In the finality of her life, she simply laid down between us and let the life force leave her body, finally at peace with the awful condition that brought us to this terrible fate.

And that’s why I can’t even start to form the words about it without dissolving into more tears and inarticulate sobs – deep, racking sobs – that are my only defense against that terrible decision to take another creature’s life, whatever the evidence to justify it.

Fortunately, we have many, many friends and family members who have rallied around at our distress with an outpouring of love and understanding.

To them, I say a heartfelt ‘Thank you’, along with this (long) message of explanation why I can’t just talk about it. From The Look to The Lick, I was fortunate to have known our Ruthie, but that feeling of having a hole torn in my heart will be a long time in passing.