Taking care of Jack

My Jack isn't long for this world.  A few days, a few weeks.  Probably not more.  He has a tumor in his jawbone that has grown so that he looks like he has a bad case of the mumps.  He takes two prescriptions to manage his pain, and he needs help getting his food down.  But he still loves his food, his walks, his pets. He greets me at the gate with a brief, tired wag of his tail.   

I smash food between my fingers - a whole can, because he is a big dog. Each piece has to be very soft and flat. If it's too small and crumbled, he can't move it in his mouth and it eventually falls out. If it's too big or thick, he can't swallow it, because of the way this tumor has encroached into his mouth. Every day, it's harder to get his pain medication and food into him. It won't be long, probably no more than a week, before we have to make that one really hard decision.

Jack has never had monetary value. We got him for the price of the puppy shot that his mom's owners gave him. Their border collie had a brief romance with the neighbor's Bernese Mountain Dog, which left her with eight large puppies, each of whom was half her size by the time we took him home. 

He will often eat a piece or two of bread torn into pieces after the can of food.  I soak them in water because we worry he isn't able to drink enough. As long as he wants food and takes pleasure in eating, I will help him get it down. It's a messy, smelly process, which leaves him drooling and the blanket that covers the couch is smeared with dog food and bloody saliva when he's done. He's still able to eat a full can of food in the morning and a full can in the evening, with his pills, as long as I can get the texture just right.

When we first got Jack, he would walk with me and my girls to the bus stop - they were all in elementary school then. Now one is engaged and out of the house, another getting ready to graduate from high school, and the third looking toward graduation next year. On one of those first mornings, when the girls were still little, the worn leash that I had clipped to his collar broke. Jack, only about ten weeks old, calmly turned, took the dangling end of the leash in his mouth, and led me home so that I wouldn't run off or get hit by a car.

Jack has been our calm dog, our gentle giant, who introduces new dogs to our home as a relaxed place where everyone is interested in meeting a new friend, but no one makes it stressful. He watches, unperturbed, when middle daughter's rabbit hops around the living room. The old cat bumps against him to remind him who the boss is.  He lets her think it's her.

Jack became a favorite of our Afghan daughter who arrived, terrified of dogs, to spend a school year with us. Toward the end of the year she told me, "when I grow up, I want to have two dogs, one big one like Jack, to take for runs and one little one like Chaco (our Chihuahua) to rub his ears.". Jack had introduced her to solo walks and runs, and helped her feel safe alone in public, something she had never experienced before.  

We could always count on Jack to behave appropriately for the situation.  Occasionally we loaned him to friends who wanted to hike in the mountains near our home.  We live in mountain lion territory and more than one of our friends has taken Jack for company and protection on a hike or run.  He pulled our youngest away from more than one dangerous situation, sometimes with threats we never saw.

At one of my jobs I had a client who was living in a nursing home.  He missed his dog and desperately hoped to get home to him.  When I would go to meet with him, I sometimes brought Jack with me, and Jack would navigate the halls of the nursing home with his usual grace, accepting pets and treats, to lean against the knee of the people who most needed him.

My husband, recently retired, takes Jack on a short walk almost every day.  They walk around the corner, across the creek and then into the nearby fish hatchery and along the tanks of fish before heading home. Jack's tail is up and he still shows mild interest in the tanks churning with fingerling trout. After one such walk,a neighbor called animal control.  This neighbor must not be a dog person. The officer showed up at our yard and watched Jack through the fence.  "Is your dog okay?" he asked my husband.  No, he's dying of cancer. The officer is kind and can see that this is a dog who is loved, even though Jack hasn't let me clean his forelegs and they are crusted with exudate from his mouth.

We've had a hard pet year.  Our Boo left us, gently, at the end of the summer and is buried in the shade outside the big living room window.  Boo was fifteen when she died and my youngest doesn't remember a time before she was part of the family. Jack hangs out near her burial spot sometimes, as though he knows he will be joining her soon.

My two daughters who are still at home tolerate the smell in the living room and I change the blankets on the furniture a couple of times a week. There's kind of a lot of laundry. Bloody drool is really smelly.  Death isn't always clean or gentle. It's a tricky dance that we avoid in our modern lives because we don't really know the steps.

It takes at least half an hour to feed Jack each morning and again each evening. I wrap his two pills in thin slices of butter and I help each small bite of food into the left side of his mouth and over the back of his tongue. He is hungry almost every day and eats gratefully, if not vigorously.  He trusts me with what must be at least an uncomfortable process. He drools and my hands need to be washed several times. I smell like wet dog food and approaching death for a while, even after my ablutions.

In a few days, in a week, whenever the time comes, I won't be remembering the smell.  I will be remembering the dignified way Jack would lay with his clean white paws crossed in front of him.  I will remember the way he would lean against the legs of a newcomer to our home, winning over almost everyone with his persistent attention.  I will remember his soft, intelligent brown eyes, and his way of putting a paw on my knee.  And I will hope against hope that we chose the best time for him to go.

In Memory of Jack

aka JackJack, aka Jackos, aka JackyJack, aka JackieChan

fall 2008 - February 19, 2018