Euthanizing Joe Poop Part One

I’ve debated doing this because it means all you folks that read my stuff (and with all my heart, thank you so much for doing it) will have to put up with my tears, but I’ve decided to write about Joe Poop, our thirteen-year-old shaggy mutt, as he dies, or more appropriately as I wrestle with the decision to euthanize him.

I’m not saying this will happen in the next week or two, although it could, but Joe is never going to get better. And I need to accept that. I’ve decided to write about this experience because I’ve had SO MANY PEOPLE ask me about the decision to euthanize a dog, and frankly, I’ve never had to make it before. I hope this helps somebody else because this is a horrible experience, and there’s no way around it. .

About six years ago, we had to euthanize a cat that we had had for a year because he had FIP, and that was terrible enough. I can’t imagine what it will feel like to have to put down a dog that has been a loyal and wonderful companion to my family for the past thirteen years.

This may change, but right now I’m using his tail as a gage: when his tail stops wagging, then its time to make the call. I’ve already decided to ask a vet come to the house to perform the euthanasia and to have him cremated because I’ve told myself these end-of-life decisions are easier to make beforehand.

Last year, right around this time, Mason and I were wrestling with the same decision. Joe’s physical condition had rapidly deteriorated over a course of six months. He had stopped eating, dropped twenty pounds, and couldn’t stand to use the bathroom, defecating all over himself and his bed. Besides having an autoimmune disease, Joe is just plain old.

Joe Poop did make a comeback last year, even taking a weekly lap or two around the trails behind the house this past winter, so it’s not impossible, but something in my gut warns this time he’s ready to face the unknown. Now, he’s biting at me when I prop him up to go outside with an angry fierceness I’ve never seen before, especially towards me. It’s an “I’m over it” kind of growl.

Almost thirteen years ago we found Joe Poop at the Love At First Sight animal shelter on Murphy Road in Nashville, TN. Mason picked him out. He explained that it was the way Joe had been sitting, on his hind legs, with his paws resting against the front cage door, like he was just waiting for us to swing it open and take him home that made the choice obvious. He had earned his middle name “Poop” because as a three-month-old pup, he had a penchant for pooping on pillows; our pillows, friends pillows, anywhere we took him that had a bed, he found it and left his brown turds as a reminder that he’d been there.

Joe is the second dog to join our permanent pack, and in his prime he was a sixty-pound terrier mutt with a wonderful shag coat and a beard that gave him the aura of the wise one. Joe was the kind of dog we trusted to “babysit” when we couldn’t be in the same room with new pack members or strays that stayed temporarily. He knew the house rules and made sure all newbies followed them. For instance, dogs are allowed to sleep on our couches and run in the backyard when it’s muddy, but if they chew on a houseplant or tear up a book, I swat their butt with a fly swatter or plastic cooking spoon, whatever is closest. One day, when an ambitious foster puppy had started chomping on the spine of a new hardback I left on the floor next to my desk, Joe started growling, and he wouldn’t stop until I came into the room and reprimanded the astonished pup, who glared at Poop with a betrayed expression.

But he isn’t like that anymore. He’s losing all that beautiful shag hair, and he’s in too much pain to be baby-sitting all the freaks coming in and out of this joint, spending most of his days watching everybody from his dog bed, rarely moving, unable to stand on his own legs for more than a minute or two before they start wobbling or totally slide out from under him.

Joe still loves his vegetables, always has, and this morning when I was sitting next to him on the floor, feeding him chunks of a raw sweet potato (his favorite), his tail was wagging.

That means it’s not time yet. Right?