This is an event that I hold very close to my heart. It has actually become one of my most treasured memories. If you understand why then you do if you don't understand why then I cant help you with it.
It is a sad moment in my history, one amongst many, but separate from the rest because this was the final moment between me and Damien.
Damien was my Rottweiler, he was pure bred and beautiful. He weighed 140lbs and was the gentlest sweetest puppy that I ever had the privilege of meeting. He was completely people friendly, anyone with a tennis ball was his friend.
Well I had to leave home for a while when Damien was three years old, I was gone for just under four years. When I left home he was happy and healthy and vibrant and the world was his playground, when I came home things had changed.
I left him in the loving care of my ex-girlfriend, her name is Dee. She was Damien's mother in essence, we picked him out together at the age of two weeks, brought him home together at the age of seven weeks and despite mine and Dee's intermittent break ups over the next three years raised him together. He was constantly loved, there was never a question of it.
When Damien was one year old Dee and I got him a little brother, enter Ragnarok. He is a fruitloop of a Rottweiler, hyper and nuts. Damien loved him from the moment they met. They were inseparable from that day forward. Rags, he's still my silly boy. He is living with Dee, I can see him pretty much when ever I want. But his story will be left for some future blog.
Damien as you could see by the photo loop on my profile page was a perfect rotty, the big block head, deep chest and broad shoulders not a hair out of place. Just the type of perfection that will almost make you wonder if god took a personal interest in his creation. We had his hips x-rayed when he was one, an he saw the vet on a bimonthly basis. With the exception of his mild addiction to honey dip doughnuts from dunkins, (due to their love of doughnuts, my friends actually nicknamed him and Rags rot-crullers), Damien was always in perfect health. Never was there a reason to believe that he would not live forever.
When Damien was about six years old and I was just under a year from coming home he began to act a little strangely. Dee described it as acting old, slow to get up slow moving loss of energy and vitality. So as always she took him to the vets, after tests and x-rays they told her the bad news. I do not know the medical terms that they gave her for the condition, but what was happening to my baby was cruelty most foul. If god did take an interest in Damien's creation, then the devil himself touched him as well.
A vertebrae in Damien's lower spine was turning itself, it was slowly pinching his spinal cord putting immense pressure on his lower back and hips. The vets told Dee that as time went on the pain and the pressure would become unbearable, the simple act of moving any part of his body would put him in the most excruciating pain. She made dozens of calls and many appointments with many vets but they all had the same horrible answer for her, "there is nothing we can do except medicate him for the pain". Only one vet said there may be an operation to help him, it would cost between $6,000.00 and $8,000.00, the risk was extremely high and the possibility of success extremely low. So there was no answer, no help for my puppy.
Dee started him on the pain killers, but there help was limited. If he was active or if it was chilly out or if ect ect, then he would whimper every time he moved. The pills made him hyper and hungry. He was constantly looking for food of any kind, like a man starving to death, and even though every movement brought on more pain he couldn't sit still. The doses of pain meds she gave him increased by leaps and bounds, within a year she was giving him in essence a clinical overdose every day, still he got worse.
Around this time I returned home, to see the most beautiful creature I have ever known, to find my one pure possession, broken. The depths of the pool of sorrow surrounding my heart at seeing him like this knew no bottom. He was, but also, was not the animal I loved and lost just a short forever ago.
Dee and I spoke often over the next year of what had to be done, his pain was constant, unrelenting. It was cruelty and selfishness to force Damien to bear another winter, neither Dee nor I could emotionally handle watching him suffer that, so the appointment was made.
It was Damien's birth month, November of 2001, making Damien just 8 years old. He was so young, but I could not wait any longer the chill in the fall air was hurting him terribly. So after pumping him full of his pills, I took him to the park and ran him and played with him and hugged and kissed him and loved him for every moment that I missed while I was away. When I brought him back to Dee in the late afternoon Damien could have no doubt in his heart that I loved him. He did not know the horrible and burdensome secret I carried in my heart.
It was mid morning when I arrived at Dee's house. She had been crying off and on all morning and dotting over Damien like a mother would a sick child. Her sadness at seeing me was written on her face, my arrival meant it was time. I watched her try not to cry as she walked him outside with me to say goodbye.
The ride from Dee's house to the vets was too short, it felt like time was racing when in my heart I only wanted it to slow down. Damien sat contentedly in the front seat beside me eating the dozen doughnuts I brought for him.
I arrived at the vets as I had dozens of times in the past, these were the people who had taken care of my baby since I first brought him home. They knew everything about him, they were another part of the family to him. Damien knew no fear of this quaint little building, a building that to me now looked like the deepest darkest dungeon to ever have blighted the land of men.
After Damien had finished his doughnuts and picked up his tennis ball I slowly got out of the car and let him out. I spent a few minutes in the parking lot tossing the ball for him and watching him play, I cant remember a time that I'd seen him happier.
When I walked him inside it seemed almost surreal, I could hear the other animals in the waiting room but could not see them nor did I acknowledge their presence. The woman at the reception desk knew Damien, he was happy to see her again. She knew why he was there and came out from behind the counter to say a sad hello to him.
They did not make me sit in the waiting room but instead ushered me directly into a treatment room. As the minutes passed many of the long term staff drifted in and said their hellos to the big silly puppy.
Finally the vet herself entered, I dreaded the sight of her. She smiled a knowing smile of painful understanding and gently asked me if I was ready. I told her the biggest lie I have ever spoken, I said yes.
My case would be handled differently than most, as the vet had know me, Dee and Damien for so long some changes to the procedure would be allowed. I sat upon the floor and curled my right leg in front of me, making Damien lay down in front of me facing towards me. I rested his big beautiful head upon my curl up leg. I then placed my left leg over the top of him, foot planted on the floor so he could not rise. The vet approached him as I spoke to Damien, telling him how much I loved him and how important a figure he would always be in my life. Damien looked into my face and kissed me repeatedly, sniffing and nosing me but allowing me to hold him still as the vet touched his hip. He barely took note of her as she slipped the needle in. As he happily stared deep into my eyes I reached back with my left and found the vet's hand. she guided my hand to the needle. While she held my hand I personally depressed the plunger sending the poison into my lovely boys body.
Letting go of the needle I took Damien's head into both of my hands. I never took my eyes from his, telling him again and again that I loved him letting him lazily kiss my face. His trust in me was unquestionable as he lay there. In just moments his eye lids started to droop, slowly they began to close and his breathing slowed. My heart was breaking, such a ravenous sorrow stole through my being threatening to devour my very essence. I kissed him one final time and whispered my love to him, then I felt upon my wet face his final breath as it escaped his body. My puppy was gone.
While I sat on the floor rocking back and forth holding his head to my chest the vets came in and wrapped his hind quarters first in plastic then in a blanket that I had brought from home.
As I rose to my feet I covered the rest of Damien with the blanket. I reached down and picked him up, his lifeless body the heaviest burden I have ever had to bare.
Leaving the treatment room I stood tall carrying him, an orderly approached to help me, my glare told him not to touch my dog. Instead the orderly turned, walked to the front door and held it open for me.
Damien would not have his body "disposed of" by the vets, I would take him three hours north to my fathers property and with my own hand dig his grave and place him in his final resting place.
As I sat in the car trying to fit the key into the ignition I glanced at the rear view mirror and watched the tears roll down my face, shattering the illusion that I had entertained that I was stronger than tears. I then realized that Damien had licked my face because he had been trying to take away the tears I had been crying since I first lay his head in my lap.
My face was his last vision
My breath was his last sent
My kiss was his last touch
My love was his experience
I love you always bubity……………………………
<SALUTE> RED26
FLOTSOM
