Strawberries and Sunshine: Euthanizing Joe Poop Part Two

Joe Poop (during healthier days)

Joe Poop has been having a pretty good week, meaning he’s been able to walk onto the deck and get a drink of water on his own. He still can’t control his bowels, and often poops wherever he’s resting, standing, or sleeping. He’s even started to lose his bladder once in a while, and we’ve had to ditch two dog beds because they were saturated with urine. But his mobility has been so good that I haven’t had to think about euthanizing him very much, and yesterday he did something that assured me I’ve made the right decision thus far. That it isn’t time, not yet.

So yesterday…I was working in my office and heard him barking from the kitchen, not an angry bark, but the one that says he needs a little help. I found him sitting in his now normal frog squat on the tile floor. When Poop can’t stand anymore, he falls straight down and his back knees rise on each side of his flank, just like a frog. I reached for him, thinking he needed help getting up, but he kind-of-grunted, then pointed his maw towards the doggie door. It took me a second or two to understand what he wanted, but once I did I asked: “Joe Poop, you want to go out back?!”

Joe Poop hasn’t been in our backyard for weeks because to get there on his own, he has to descend the staircase which runs from a doggie door in the kitchen to the basement, then pass through one more doggie door before he would have access to a half-acre fenced-in backyard that we call the mosh pit.

But Joe can’t do stairs anymore. Last year, Mace had built a ramp off the front porch so that when Joe needs to go the bathroom, we can take him to the front yard. The last time he tried to go to the backyard, I had discovered him sliding backwards down the staircase, a terrified-panicked expression crossing his shaggy face.

Yesterday, when he was sitting on that tile floor, I swear Poop was telling me he wanted to hang out in the backyard, his old stomping grounds, so I scooped him up, carried him down the stairs, through the basement, and into our yard. When I set him down, he shuffled to the grass and plopped down in his frog squat, wearing a goofy smile.

I returned to my office, got absorbed in work, forgot time, and thirty minutes later, I realized Poop was still outside. Startled, I ran out to the deck and saw him clear as day, standing in our strawberry patch, plucking the red juicy candy-fruit right off the stems. After a minute, his arthritis-riddled legs couldn’t hold him anymore, so he plopped right down on top of the plants and continued to munch away.

I called out “Joe Poop” because I wanted to say his name, not because I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to know that I saw him in the strawberry patch in the sunshine’s brilliant glow, eating my favorite food on the entire planet. He could tell by my tone I wasn’t angry; when he heard me, his tail started wagging and wagging and wagging.

The problem with moments like that one is that they carry me through days of Joe not moving a whole lot. I wanted so badly to ask him if it was worth it. Are weeks of pain worth one day of eating strawberries in the sunshine? I have to believe it is.