Good-bye sweet boy. A tribute to our first warrior

On Saturday, July 14th, we said good-bye to our best friend.  He was our first born child, our first love,

our pride and joy, our only son.  Over the past couple of months, he had been declining, rapidly,

January 2018

so we had known this day was coming soon for a while, but of course, that does not make it any easier.  I miss him so much already and no doubt, this blog post is going to be difficult to get through. But I owe it to him to have a record of everything he gave us and everything he meant to us.    

August 2017

He came to live with us exactly 9 years ago.  I had been asking to get a dog since we moved into our

house in Arlington, and even more fervently once we were married a year later.  Chris’ third anniversary

present to me was to grant me permission to start looking for a dog. Somehow I stumbled upon a

rescue organization called Adoptalab, which mostly rescued labs out of the south.  I knew I wanted

a yellow lab, especially since Chris’ parents already had a black lab (Maddie). I searched their site

every day and inquired about a couple of dogs, each of which had already been adopted, then I saw him.  

The photo from his adoption listing

I was instantly in love. He was big and handsome and his eyes shone with love, despite an uncertain and likely unhappy past. No one knows what the first two or so years of his life were like - he was dumped at a shelter, though I don’t think he ever made his way inside before being scooped up by the rescue and carted off to a foster family.  After I learned he was available, I was interviewed by a volunteer from the organization, and approved, then I exchanged emails with his foster mom.

Dates were set and he finally came home to us on July 11, 2009.  He traveled in a converted RV from

North Carolina with many other dogs who were also traveling to their forever homes across New

England.  They stopped frequently to walk the dogs and we got several updates on how the journey

was going. Finally, late in the evening on a stormy night, the RV pulled into a mall parking lot in

Southern NH.  Several families were waiting and as the truck pulled in, they formed a line in front of

the truck, waiting for their new best friends. Sanders came out of the truck with a smile and

immediately flopped onto his side in the wet parking lot for a long awaited belly rub.  

Chris let him into the car and he quickly settled into his seat, perfectly content.

They came home, and Chris showed him around the house. I came home from Ocean City 2 days

later.

Swimming in Mystic Lake

First trip to OCNJ.  He LOVED the boat

He settled into our family seamlessly.  Shortly after we got him, he started to run with me and we

loved taking him places to be active.  I took him everywhere I could and quickly forgot what life was

like without him. I felt so lucky.  I missed him when we were apart and couldn’t wait to see him when

we’d come home. The feeling was mutual.    I had waited so long and he was just what I wanted.

He was big, he was handsome, he was affectionate, he was loyal.  He did not have a mean bone in his

body and I don’t think I ever heard him growl or saw him bare his teeth, at least not at a human being.

A fall hike in his younger days

  

Hope's first solids

A girl and her dog, October 2016

Hope and Sanders, November 2016

Baby Reya, February 2017

He was never far from Reya's high chair.  She loved to feed him.  It looks like they're conspiring here

The whole family, April 2017

June 2017

This is not to say he was perfect.  He had plenty of flaws and plenty of quirks.  He was a challenge to train, and consequently, was never really all that well trained.  He was intensely food motivated and would do anything for food. Chris used to say he would deal cards for food.  So while he would

Never far from the high chair!

happily perform a command if there was a food reward involved, he could have cared less if there was no reward or a non-food reward.  We tried. Even the trainer we took him to said they had never seen such a food motivated dog. He was top of his class, performing all of the commands on the first or second try, but take away the reward, he ignored you.  Due to his love for food, he got himself into more than a few sticky situations. We had to put a child lock on our trash can long before there were children in our home, and he always seemed to know if we forgot to lock it.  I think he checked every day. He was still getting in the trash up until a few weeks ago. Up until a few months ago, He would patrol the house after we left, looking for snacks, especially in trash cans. Used tissues and paper towels were his favorite.  We got new trash cans last year to keep him out and even in his old age, he figured out how to knock them over so he could get his treats.

I know his antics entertained so much of the facebook community.  He certainly had his Marley

moments. Some of my favorites - the Old Bay incident, where he took a can of Old Bay off the

counter and opened it in his bed - he wouldn’t even look at Old Bay after that, the time he atea whole

batch of brownies and was high for 3 days, and the time he opened the Christmas presents.    

The Christmas presents

I still laugh about these, though the brownies and the Christmas presents almost had him sent back

to North Carolina. We couldn’t keep anything on the counters. He was tall enough to reach into the

sink if he got up on his hind legs. He’d retrieve what he found in there and bring it back to his bed.

We’d always look in his bed the moment we got home to see what trouble he had gotten into.  Some

of the things we found - wine glasses, my sharpest knives. Then, there was the time he got into

prescription strength ibuprofen. That landed him in the hospital for a couple days and almost killed

him. It really is remarkable that he never got an obstruction. He always managed to get whatever

non-edible item he had eaten out.

But as much as he made us laugh and kept us entertained, he also taught us some important lessons.  

Sanders and Hope, January 2015

He taught us how to live life to the fullest in the face of critical illness. How to thrive despite heart

disease.  He taught us what a true warrior is like. You see, a week or so after we brought him home,

at his first check-up, the vet found a significant heart murmur.  She decided to do a chest x-ray and

found out his heart was significantly enlarged. We were advised to have him examined by a veterinary

cardiologist. The veterinary cardiologist did an echo and determined that the murmur and enlarged

heart were congenital.  They told me we’d need to monitor it and it would significantly shorten his life.

It was devastating. Our handsome, strong boy was not as perfect as he seemed. They told us it was an enlarged right atria, which meant nothing to us at the time, except that he was sick.    This past year, we had the kids’ cardiologist take a look at his echos. He was able to help us better understand it, especially with our acquired knowledge of cardiology. He had an AV Canal Defect as well as an ASD

Two brave warriors

and a VSD. In humans, this is surgically repaired. If it is not, it develops into Eisenmenger’s syndrome, which is irreversible.  With one look, the kids’ cardiologist told us Sanders had Eisenmenger’s. He was impressed that he was alive and still doing pretty well. Sanders was our introduction to the heart world. In receiving that diagnosis, little did we know how perfect he was going to be for our family. He was a gift. And just like it hasn’t stopped our kids from living mostly normal lives, CHD didn’t stop him.  During that fateful appointment, the cardiologist and vet gave him a life expectancy of 6-8 years old. He was estimated to be 2-2.5, so that meant at most, we’d probably only have 6 years with him. We had NINE. We got 3-5 extra years out of him.

Living life

Lake Winnepesauke

Arethusa falls

Overlooking the mountains of NH

Our warriors

When he died, He was at least 11 years old, maybe even 12, which for any lab is a ripe old age.

I'm still so grateful to his vet for telling me to treat him like a normal dog. He lived life to the

Hiking in NH

fullest and we didn’t let his heart condition define or inhibit him.  He easily hiked through the mountains of MA, NH and Vermont at a running pace, usually covering twice the distance as us, he was so delighted to be there. He ran regularly with me up until 2 years ago.  At his best, he covered up to 12 miles with me, and regularly ran 6-8, often pushing the pace. He especially liked to run with the Fembots, the group of (mostly) women I often run with. He always had to be in the front, usually with a big smile. One time he epicly chased two of our running buddies down, so that they were no longer in front of us.  Up until the last year, he’d get super excited any time I put my running shoes on. He took any opportunity he could to go for a swim, even it was March. He loved to go for a walk, no matter how long and loved to go for rides in the car. He loved visiting our local wine store, Menotomy Wine and Beer, for treats. He even loved going to the vet (they had treats, too!!) Up until very recently he was an active and happy dog, always ready for an adventure. His zest for life was contagious. He taught us to laugh in the face of adversity, a lesson I am glad we learned well before we welcomed two children with CHDs

He loved to run

Mt Watatic, May 2015

Our lives for the last nine years, especially the last 6, have been no picnic.  We have been greeted by

more bad news than I ever thought possible. He loved and supported us through all of it.  I don’t know

how I would have survived it without him. Through our journey through infertility, he would snuggle

beside me after each retrieval and each transfer.  When we experienced miscarriage, he was there

Head on my knee, July 2014

to comfort us. Through my pregnancy with Hope, then Hope’s surgery and recovery. Through my maternity leave with Hope, though I know this was not his favorite season of life.  Through my pregnancy with Reya, and through her endless surgeries, catheterizations and hospitalizations. He was always there for us to come home to. I’d bury my nose in his neck and breathe in his warm, musky, dog smell and be instantly comforted.   I don’t even know what to do with myself now…

My running partners, June 2016

Halloween 2017

The last two months have been hard.  As I had always predicted, ultimately it was not his actual heart

that took him away.  Sometime last year, he had developed laryngeal paralysis, ironically or not so

ironically.  This condition, possibly attributed to his enlarged heart, but also prevalent in labradors,

Home after the January episode

progressively worsens.  It started with a weak voice and this coughing / throat clearing thing,

which he did mostly at night. At the same time, his heart also had gotten progressively worse,

causing him to have a syncopal episode and pass out on a walk in the center of town last September.  

The vet put him on a bunch of meds and he came home. He was mostly fine until January, when

he had two more of these syncopal episodes. As Chris loaded him into the car, I was pretty sure this was it and he wasn’t going to come home. Another hospital stay, more meds.   The cardiologist was off the grid and the ER vets didn’t know what else to do for him, except to wait to hear from her. Finally they did. She told them to try diltiazem. It worked! He almost died that time, but he got to come home once again. We really wanted to get him to nice weather, so he could be a dog again, even if just for a little while.  The vets at Blue Pearl thought we were crazy. He came home from that stay in January good as new - his quality of life was still good. We went for long walks when we could and tried to do as many of the things he loved as we could. He spent two weeks at Chris’ parents while Reya was in the hospital in April and came back looking so good. While I was home with Reya recovering, we went for lots of walks.    But at the end of May, he started having these breathing episodes if he got too excited, overexerted himself, or if it was too hot out. The first one happened in Ocean City over Memorial Day weekend. It was scary - he couldn’t breathe, was gasping for air, his tongue turned blue, and he was

How I'd like to remember him, May 2018

foaming at the mouth. Eventually he snapped out of it. We took it easy with him and got in touch with the vet when we got home.  They wanted to see him the following week. In that week he had several more episodes like this. Some days were better than ever and he could go around the block, but mostly it was just a few houses. Once again, I said goodbye to him the morning Chris took him to the vet, thinking I wouldn’t see him again. Once again, he defied expectations. His heart and lungs looked better than ever. It was his vocal cords. They sent him home on an anti-anxiety medication and told us to check back in 6 months.  For the first day or two he seemed as good as new. He could get around the block again, and even into the center of town and over to the playground. It was slow, but he could do it. But it seemed to come and go. Some days were good, some were not. The anti-anxiety caused his back legs to be really weak. We kept hoping that adjusting his dose would help him, and we tried

4th of July, one week before we said good-bye

everything, but to no avail. The final straw was the very hot first week of July. We traveled to Ocean City. I kept him cool in the car, but when we got there, he was a mess.  He got out of the car and had diarrhea everywhere, then went into an episode. He recovered quickly, I got him upstairs, and he had a syncopal episode and collapsed. The week he was in Ocean City, we had to carry him up the stairs more often than not. Finally the weather cooled off, and he seemed to be better. But he wasn’t. We tried to decide what to do. Put him down right away? Get him home to MA? We decided that he would fly home with Chris. The morning they were to fly home did not get off to a good start. I took him to the beach, just so he could smell it one last time.  He seemed great on the way there, but went into an episode when we got there. We waited it out and started to walk home. Another

handsome boy

episode. Waited that one out. Got to the corner by my house and he passed out. Chris had to carry him upstairs. The rest of the day he was ok, until it was time to go.

Ice cream last supper

He knew we were leaving despite our efforts to conceal it from him. He didn’t even make it to the driveway without an episode. I had to get him in the car in full episode mode. He finally came out of it at the airport. But I had to get him to pee, and he had another episode getting back in the car.  We had to load him into the plane in full episode mode. It didn’t get much better on the flight home. I was pretty certain he wouldn’t make it home and I wouldn’t see him again. He did make it home, but it wasn’t pretty. Chris was ready to take him to put him down and gave him until 11PM. He snapped out around 10:40, but had another episode on the trip up the stairs to bed. Yet he woke up Monday like nothing had happened. I am beyond grateful to my friends Carrie-Anne and Melissa who stopped in to see him while Chris was at work. They spent a lot of time with him, undoubtedly making his last week much better than had he been alone.  I came home Friday. I knew when I saw him it was time, and I felt like he knew it too. He didn’t get up at first, mostly because I think he was sound asleep. When I came over to him, he lifted his head and looked at me in disbelief - almost like he had thought he wouldn’t see me again. We exchanged a look - I could tell he was tired. The girls and I gave him lots of love. He finally got up and then followed me around like a shadow the rest of the afternoon. When Chris came home we made the decision to take him in the next day.

snuggles

We knew it was the right decision, but it is nonetheless a really hard one to make. We gave him ALL the scraps at dinner.  Chris and I ordered take-out ice cream and I gave him the end of mine. We also ordered him one of his own. On Saturday morning, his walk was only out to the curb and that was really all he wanted to do. He had hamburger for breakfast, then about an hour before his vet appointment, we gave him a whole ice cream sundae that we had ordered just for him - chocolate and all :) We gave him lots of love and took some pictures.
We made sure he knew how loved he was. When it was time to take him, we left the girls with our friend Melissa so that we could both go, once again, we are so beyond grateful to the support she provided us. He had an episode in the car and refused to get out, and never really recovered until he was well sedated by the vet.  Our vet was wonderful, she sat on the floor with us and comforted us. She told us how amazing he had done and how he had exceeded everyone’s expectations, and some of that could be attributed to the care we gave him. When he was finally calm, it was time to say our final goodbye. I don’t know I’ll ever forget watching the injection go in and seeing him slip away. But I also won’t forget his comforting smell and the silkiness of his ears. Even up to the day he died, he had the most beautiful, soft coat. He never got that old dog coat that some dogs get. When he was young, you couldn’t take him anywhere without someone telling you how beautiful he was. And he was. Such a handsome boy.

One last trip to Great Brook

So now where do we go from here?  I am constantly reminded of his absence even after putting all his stuff away and vacuuming up his hair.  There are crumbs on the floor now after meals. The house is painfully quiet, even with two small kids. I miss the sound of his heavy breathing.  The jingling of his tags, which I’ve been hearing phantomly. His moving around our room at night. Stepping over him in the middle of the night to get to the kids room.  So many times I tripped over him in the middle of the night - he always ended up next to my side of the bed. Despite vacuuming on Saturday, his hair is still everywhere.  I miss his excited greeting at the door or having him following me excitedly every time I go out. I miss our long walks just he and I, or the walks with him on my waist while I pushed the kids in the stroller.  I miss his snout next to me in the kitchen, checking out whatever I was cooking. I never realized how many scraps I gave him while I was cooking, or how many things I just let fall to the floor, knowing he’d clean it up.   We all miss him so much.

The whole family, pre-Reya

In some ways, there is relief too.  We spent much of the last 2 months obsessing over how to make

him better and worrying about whether he would have an episode during his morning or afternoon

walks.  He is no longer suffering - he is at peace. Mornings are faster without another child to take

Reya comforting Sanders

care of. His morning routine took about 20-30 min each morning - feed him, dole out each of his 9 pills (trazedone, benzapril, pemabendin, diltiazem, spironolactone, viagra, gabipentin, lasix, doxepin), go for a slow walk for as long as he could handle.  I don’t know what to do in the mornings anymore, I kind of feel lost. While there are crumbs everywhere, the floors are a whole lot cleaner, though I’d gladly have the dirt that comes with a dog back again. We will be going on vacation soon, and it is a relief that we did not have to make this decision based on that vacation and that he will not be a burden on either of our families.  The vacation will be well timed. We will still be grieving him, but will have had time to adjust. We will also have had time to adjust to him not being in the house anymore, so it won’t be a shock to our system when we come home and he’s not here. But I am telling myself all of these things just to make myself feel better...I’d give anything to not have any of these things be true.

Hope drew Sanders the day after he died

The kids have handled it well.  Mireya is way too young. She just knows he is not there anymore.

She gets super excited when she sees his picture.  Hope was the same age as Reya when we lost Pablo and reacted about the same.  Hope understands a little bit more and keeps saying she misses him (but she’s glad he’s not here to bother her while she eats...lol).  She does keep remarking on how quiet it is and she does repeat some of the things we say. She has said she wishes she could pet him again.  We told them that he was too old and tired to stay with us anymore and we were going to take him to the vet to give him some medicine to go to sleep.

We will eventually get another dog.  I can’t imagine living another 40 years without a dog at some point,

and I really want the kids to grow up with a dog.  There are so many lessons to be learned from dog

ownership and dogs are such loyal companions. It will probably be awhile before we bring another

dog into the family.  Maybe in a year or two. ‘

I try not to, but can not stop thinking of him. I keep seeing cardinals - maybe they are him. Today is a

gorgeous day. He would have loved to have been here at my feet on the patio enjoying the nice weather.  

He loved the plane, May 2018

We would have gone for a long walk this morning with the kids. I miss having someone to talk to when the kids are asleep.    I know he is there, somewhere. His heart is now whole and he can run, jump, and swim to his heart’s content. He eats whatever he wants and is surrounded by love.  Maybe he has found Pablo (though I hope he didn’t pee on him) and maybe he even found the baby we lost. He will be waiting for us when our time comes. Until then, I think he is watching us and maybe, his passing was the last event in a series of turbulent years for our family.  Without him here to support us, maybe it is a sign we are finally heading into a more peaceful time. Reya’s health has improved and it seems like it will be years until Hope needs another surgery. Maybe the stressful, scary stuff is over….

We chose to have him privately cremated.  They picked him up from the vet yesterday and will return

him to us on Friday.  That is likely to be a hard day, but I know it was the right decision. When we are

ready, we will take him to all of his favorite places to go with us and sprinkle him there so that he will

always be with us in those places.  When we eventually move to a new home, we will find a place for

him so that he can be there with us too.

Soooo may pictures to choose from. Rest easy, buddy. We'll see you again some day.

Superdog!

Christmas dog

Cool dog

Rest easy Sweet Boy