Friends in the Nick of Time

It was a Friday afternoon at the animal hospital. It had been a long, busy and very stressful day, and I was looking forward to being able to call it a day and go home to my girls. I was looking over the last couple of appointments on the schedule when one of the receptionists peeked around the corner and handed me a patient chart. “It’s a drop-off E & D,” she said, anticipating my response.

Euthanasia and Disposal. I never did understand how a pet owner could just bring an animal and “drop it off” in such an impersonal way, leaving the animal with strangers to spend its last moments on earth. It was not a choice I would have ever made. But for years I had worked by the rules. I wasn’t allowed to question the proceedings; just to abide by the hospital policies.

“I’m going to put them in Room 3,” Jessica told me, and slipped back around the corner. I sighed, and opened the chart.

The dog’s name was Missy, and she was a Shepherd/Lab mixed breed. At her last weighing, eighteen months prior, she had weighed fifty-nine pounds and the doctor who had examined her for a skin condition noted that she was severely underweight, and had a small growth above her left eye. I folded the chart open and walked into the room, setting it down on the counter before the opposite door opened and a young man in a dirty blue t-shirt stepped inside, acting embarrassed and holding a leash, with the dog still outside the door. An unpleasant odor was accompanying him around the corner as well. He held the leash out toward me. “I can’t stay.” He said. “It’s my Mom’s dog anyway, not mine.” And with that, he disappeared, and I followed the leash around the doorway to see Missy at the end of it.

A quick glance told me she was probably not much over forty pounds, and she wobbled as she stood there, head down and turned away from me. In a soft voice, I said, “Here, Missy. Come here, girl.”

She hesitated for just a second or two, and then turned toward me, and my heart broke. Her head stayed low. Perhaps it was from the weight of the massive tumor over her eye. The tumor alone must have weighed close to five pounds. In the middle of it, sunken in, was her eye. I couldn’t help thinking she must have a massive headache, from the pressure of it.

I could also see three or four other tumors, and all of them had been neglected for far too long. There was infection in all of them, and she had obviously been scratching at the one on the right side of her ribcage. It had been opened up.

The stench had become overwhelming already, and in the tiny exam room, was stifling. I felt a need for fresh air… but then I looked down at Missy again and decided that if she could endure the neglect she had obviously endured for the last eighteen months, I could endure what I needed to for the short time she had left. I leaned down and patted her on the neck, and she raised her head and gazed up into my eyes with hers pained and sorrowful.

“O.K.” I said softly. “Let’s be friends, O.K., Missy?”

Her tail wagged, ever so slightly, and I took a deep breath, and slid down to the floor. I sat against the exam table and said, “Come on, Missy!” I patted my leg as if for her to climb in my lap, and she knew just what I meant. She climbed into my lap and laid her head against my chest, gazing up at me as I scratched her ears and then wrapped both arms around her, by then oblivious of the various secretions and the stench. All I could think was, “This dog needs to be loved like no one has ever loved her before.” In the back of my mind, I was wondering whether she had ever known what it was like to be loved.

I was breaking policy. I was supposed to have taken Missy to the treatment area, to weigh her, and then to let either the other tech or the doctor know that Missy was ready for her “treatment.” I didn’t care about policy. All that mattered was that Missy needed love, and I was determined that for the last few moments of her sad life, she was not going to doubt that she was loved.

It took a lot longer than a few moments. In fact, Missy fell asleep in my lap and I didn’t have the heart to wake her, and it was nearly an hour before someone came looking for us. It was my fellow tech, Dee who knocked softly on the door and then opened it slightly. What she saw, was an emaciated but happy dog sprawled across my lap, her head resting against the crook of my elbow, and me on the floor with tears streaming down my face and neck.

“Are you O.K?” She asked me.

I nodded. “This is my new friend, Missy. Missy needed me. Sorry I couldn’t let you know.”

“No problem,” she said, and I could see that she was tearing up already as well. “Did you get a weight on her?”

I shook my head no. “I’d estimate forty, possibly up to forty-five but definitely no more than that.”

“Sounds good to me,” She said, and slipped out to get a sedative for Missy. She returned, gave her a quick injection and patted my shoulder. “You stay with her,” she told me. “I’ll give it some time to work and I’ll be back.”

So I sat with Missy some more. She woke for just a few minutes and realized she was slipping, I guess, because by the time Dee returned, Missy had managed to coil herself into a bony circle and rested her head on my chest, falling asleep again gazing up at me. She seemed totally at peace.

She slept through the final injection, and then Dee and I carefully and respectfully wrapped her body in a blanket.

I washed as best as I could after we finished with her, but I couldn’t wash the odor off of me. I didn’t care about that.

I had never been more upset by a case than that one. I had had to assist with the euthanasia’s of animals I’d known for a decade, and none of them affected me the way sweet Missy did. I’d never cried like that, or gotten as messy, or as angry. But I had also never had the opportunity to be so important to someone in my entire life as I was to Missy. I had the great honor of being her best friend when she needed it most, but the funny thing is, I think she knew that her trust in me was something as precious as gold. She also seemed to realize that she was bringing out the very best in me.

When I think back over all the pets I’ve “owned” in my life, (and there have been a good number of them) Missy is as important as my own, and years later, I still remember what it felt like, looking into her sad deformed face as she drifted into her long overdue peace.