The Monkey

(Warning: This is an extremely personal, and for me, sad post. I’m not sure why I’m sharing it actually, but I want to pay tribute as best as I can, although nothing I do seems worthy.)

I’ve been unable to write for over a week. Losing the Monkey has affected me more than anything else in my life to this point. It hurts to talk about it and I still don’t really believe it. I keep thinking she’s in the house when I get up in the morning and come back from work. It’s weird how my mind won’t allow her to die. It just happened so suddenly.

The Monkey was not your normal dog. I considered her part human for the way she seemed to understand things that the other dogs did not. When she was younger, she would push the limits of behaving, but know when enough was enough. She knew when she didn’t have to obey humans, and when she had to. I think she thought herself smarter than most of us. We obeyed the Monkey. She was the perfect dog.

I met the Monkey when I met my wife Smrp. Monkey was about 2 or 3 years old at that time and was still somewhat of a terror but nothing like she had been before I met her. She was a tremendous athlete, able to jump over 6 foot fences to pursue squirrels or any other rodent that had to chase. She’d ignore you when you tried to stop her, until she knew it was a losing battle and she was going to be forced to come inside. She’d stop; making it seem like it was on her own terms, and come inside and take a nap - just like that. She stopped trying to jump fences after we built them 7 feet tall, or used welded wire fencing that couldn’t be climbed easily. She never stopped being interested or fixated on what was beyond the fence though…that is what made her the Monkey.

Once the previous Matriarch, Kootenai, passed away, Monkey became the calm and assertive leader of the pack even when there were bigger male dogs in our pack. (Our pack has ranged from 5-9 over the years.) When she’d come into the room, all other dogs knew she was the queen and would immediately follow her lead. She was mistaken for a boy dog many times. She always lifted her leg when she peed, usually on top of other boy dogs’ scent markings. By her rough play techniques, she’d also show everyone their place, but she never once got in a fight. She never had to. To me, that is truly amazing.

In 2001, her life (and ours) took a turn for the better in my opinion. Her mom moved to the mountains and to a place that had a huge trail system accessible from the back yard. This is when the Monkey and I really made our connection. We’d go for pre-work morning hikes and explore the area behind the house, usually with her side-kick and best friend Count Basie. They loved hiking, but they loved hiking together even more. The excitement they’d exude once I got the leashes out was hilarious. They’d jump around and play like maniacs on the way out the door. I was just along for the ride.

When I say I was along for the ride, I mean that I was not determining for the most part where we went for a hike. I left that up to the Monkey. After all, the hike was for them, not me. We always leash our dogs for a multitude of reasons, so I was tied to her every move. She could’ve been off leash, as she knew how to heel, would stay nearby, and could be called off a fleeing deer, but we chose to use 25 foot extendable leashes to allow freedom while also maintaining a degree of safety from her running off and from other dogs or wildlife that may want to attack. Heading out on hikes, the Monkey had a mission. Like Meriwether Lewis’ dog on the Corps of Discovery, she had the exploratory gene. She loved the home life, to get affection from humans, to kick back on the couch, to play in the yard, but her true colors shined through when we went for a hike. She was out there to study every nook and cranny of the landscape and go far and wide while doing so.

The Monkey knew where home was, or where we started out the hike when we’d drive to a new place. It was like she had an internal homing device implanted in her brain…except this homing device worked in reverse – to lead her away and into the wild. It was uncanny how she’d always know if we were heading back to the house even if she’d never been in the area before. If the left trail went back to towards the house, she’d always take the other trail - without exception. So eventually, I’d obviously have to make a choice for us to turn around and go home. But I feel like she could’ve (would’ve) gone forever, on a cross-continental hike, if we had let her. Even two weeks before she died, she was pulling me away from the known trails and into unknown terrain. If we took a trail that we took too much, she’d want to go off-trail to find another deer trail to explore. She never gave up. If we continually passed a fork in the trail that we’d never take (because it went onto private property for example) she’d try to take that turn every time we passed it. If there was a right turn that eventually went back to the house, she’d veer as far to the left as possible at the intersection in the hopes that we would not turn right, so we would continue on the hike. It didn’t matter if we were 5 miles away from the house, she’d always want to go further. She wasn’t a manic dog; she was calm yet on a mission to get out. At overlooks, when Smrp and I wanted to stop and take in the view, she was just as happy to sit down and take in the view too. It was cool watching her as we sat looking around. We weren’t looking at the same things as she was observing with her ears and nose where Smrp and I were just looking at the distant peaks and landscape. I think the Monkey was planning her next moves based on what she was hearing – if she heard or smelled something down the hill, she’d try to get us to go down there and see what it was. Up until she passed away, she just wanted to go explore no matter what the time, weather, or place. There were times when I thought she was just using me to get out. She’d be very affectionate and loving, and then ignoring me once we got outside. I didn’t care. She got me outside in the process and exploring new places too. This is why she got out on more hikes than everyone else – she was the only one that demanded it and the only one that I believed truly needed it. Of course, I could just as easily have described myself just now, so you can see why I chose the Monkey, and she chose me.

Early in the morning of June 2nd, 2009 she died. It is likely she had Hemangiosarcoma, a cancer that propagates from her spleen and sends out small tumors that spread through her bloodstream. Unfortunately, once you figure out what is going on, it’s too late. You can’t diagnose until you do surgery and find the tumors. By that time they have at most 3 months left to live. You have to guess based on symptoms and clues. This type of cancer is not thought to be painful, but definitely uncomfortable, because they “bleed out” into their abdomen when these little tumors rupture. Their bellies fill with blood and their hematocrit (red-blood cell count) decreases to a deadly level where they become tired and lethargic and eventually fade away. It’s possible that they can have small ‘bleed-outs’ and reabsorb the blood and recover to a certain extent. But those episodes are difficult to determine and the end result is still the same.

Strangely, two weeks previous, we had taken her to the vet because something was a little off. That weekend we had taken her on three long hikes and the first one she was acting “off” but the 2nd two hikes she was as energetic as ever trying to get us to take the untraveled path. After the 3rd hike she seemed overly sore – like she had hurt her back. So on Monday, the vet took some X-rays, and a blood sample, and found nothing abnormal with her blood but the X-rays showed serious hip-dysplasia and arthritis in her right wrist and back. We expected this, as she had recently started limping a little bit on her right front paw after long hikes. The vet let us know that he’d not seen such horrible hip dysplasia and can’t believe this “young” 12-year-old was going on such long hikes just the previous day (over 3 miles, half uphill, at 8,400ft), but there’s really nothing that can be done about arthritis so he sent us away recommending 2 weeks rest combined with anti-inflammatory drugs, and pain pills, and a recommendation for hip surgery. This is how “normal” she seemed -- 2 weeks before we were considering hip surgery to reduce her pain level so she could keep hiking with less pain for another two years. She didn’t even limp after hikes with her rear legs…it was unbelievable to us that she had such bad hips. Sadly, the next two weeks were pretty boring for her. She was tired from the drugs so slept a lot, but ate normally. Smrp would give her bones to chew while outside in the yard but she was on bed-rest. She loved that I brought home the occasional chicken, rice, and cheese burrito to split up between her and the other dogs (she was a burrito fiend. Burritos and pizza crust were her favorite begging treats), but mostly she rested.

Monday June 1st was two weeks. I had planned to take her on a new hike route on Monday when I got home from work to celebrate the end of her 2 weeks off. But when I got home she just seemed a little off. She was walking a bit stiff and her eyes seemed droopy. She hadn’t been on the pain pills in a few days so we initially thought that she was still in pain from her hips and back. She had slept most of the day but was outside with a bone in the afternoon with Bear and Jessica when I got home. She barked at the approaching car (me) and was spunky sensing that she was going to go for a hike. But seeing her different, we decided not to go for a hike and put her back on the pain medication. That’s when Smrp noticed her color was different. When you look at a dog’s gums, they should be reddish and when you press on them with your index finger the color should return completely in less than 3 seconds. (She’s learned this over the years through many vet visits.) Monkey’s color was whiter than red, and wasn’t ‘refreshing’ as fast as it should. Her stomach was also ‘full’ which was just weird. It didn’t really hit us what it was but we knew she had to go to the vet. I took her down to the vet a half hour later and they thankfully stayed open for us as it was now almost 8pm. They did the normal stuff, took her weight, blood and x-rays and found that she had gained almost 8 pounds in the last two weeks, and her hematocrit was at a very low 18 -down from 42 two weeks previous. We thought the weight was a mistake, so were going to re-weigh her…but the low hematocrit was dangerous. The vet took a sample of her abdomen fluid to see if there was any blood in there, and there was…they didn’t say “Hemangio” but we were all thinking it.

Hemangio kills quickly. Our shepherd Sophie was running around one hour and collapsed the next. She died a few months after the collapsing episode. So we knew what to expect: 1 – 3 months depending on whether we removed her spleen and whether we did chemo. Because the Monkey was so normal before that day, we were going to give her a fighting chance and do the surgery. This is no small decision…because it doesn’t guarantee they’ll be granted more time, and they can die in surgery if there are other tumors found. We were going to take the risk, as we felt she still had at least 2 years left of exploring the world.

I took Monkey to the emergency vet and did what they recommended – surgery to remove the spleen and grab any other ‘mets’ while they were in there. Because they agreed that she was so strong, the tumor could have been benign. With that chance, we just had to try surgery. It all happened so fast that in hindsight, I’m not sure what I would’ve wanted to do if I could do it all over again. I was in denial that something like this could even happen to her; she was just hiking 5 miles with no problem -- how can she have terminal cancer now? I just didn’t (don’t) get it.

We said goodbye before her surgery. I was totally convinced that she was going to make it through and I’d see her in a couple of hours. She was bright-eyed, happy to see us giving us kisses and not in any way seeming stressed out. This was odd as she HATED vets and would visibly shake in the vet’s office. But there was none of that now. We hugged and pet her while she laid there not trying to run out of the vet building like she was just an hour previous. She was strangely very calm. I didn’t think this would be the last time I’d see her…I knew she’d at least make it out of surgery to live at least another month at home where we could spoil her rotten. We drove home and got into bed around 4am.

The vet called around 6am on Tuesday morning. Smrp answered the phone and the vet told her that the cancer had spread to her liver and beyond - she was covered in metastases. It’s amazing that she was acting so normal. Dogs appear to deal with pain so much better than humans, but she was an amazingly strong dog with a good poker face, so who knows if she was in pain. The vet’s call was to ask whether we wanted to pull her out of surgery and spend a last day with her knowing she was going to have to go back to the vet and be let go, or if we wanted him to let her go on the surgeons table. We chose to let her go while she was under anesthesia. We didn’t want her to wake up from that, in pain from stitches and tired from the drugs, only to be put back down soon after. After hanging up the phone, we both cried uncontrollably in bed for the next half-hour. I couldn’t stop the tears.

Although I wished my last goodbye could’ve been better than seeing her in the vet’s office before surgery, we knew that it was the right way to go. I can truly say I’ve never cried that hard for that long…it was the worst day of my 36 years. My girl had died of cancer and I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. It didn’t seem fair, I felt ripped off. I was angry and sad and bitter at the same time (I still am). One week she’s exploring in the woods with me, and the next she’s gone.

I’ve never been that close to anyone that has died…and I knew it would be rough when the Monkey died, but I had no idea what she meant to me. I tend to bond more with animals than people. Animals are just so innocent and pure. They don’t have egos (at least with people) and they don’t judge you. They never talk behind your back or intentionally try to hurt you. They just ARE, and they love you unconditionally as much as they can while they are here. No matter how crappy a day I was having, I knew that when I came home from work the Monkey would be as happy as ever to see me and give me a kiss. Smrp and I don’t have any (human) children; I considered Monkey to be my first child. I’d look forward to exploring the outdoors with her, and taking her new places. I had a list in my head of all those places and was slowly checking them off and returning to the ones she really liked. Right now all I can do is look around and think of all those un-checked places and how I wish we had had more time. But what I’m trying to focus on is all those ‘checked’ places, and all those trail junctions where we took the other way – the way she wanted to go. I know she had a spectacular life, but I wish I could’ve set aside my personal goals that took me away from my family too much, and spent more time exploring with her on a daily basis. But like everyone, chores, work, and life in general get in the way and take more time than you expect. All those things take time away from being with them. There are no second chances now that she’s gone, and I have to live with that. I need to stop coming up with “only if” statements and know she loved her life and where we lived. Her life was just cut short. And the worst part to me is that it was an unexpected end and she spent the last two weeks on bed-rest and the last night in a vet’s office - two of her least favorite things. That’s hard to cope with. So now I am trying to focus on those good times and how much she got out to explore, and how it’s good that it was a fast end with little to no pain, and she never had to deal with chemo or recovering from surgery. I can’t imagine seeing her get old and not being able to go on long hikes in the woods; having to be left behind at the house so the others can get walked. There are benefits to how it ended, and I need to focus on those. Being with the Monkey, whether it was kicking back on the deck or getting to go on hikes with her, was one of the best things that has happened in my life and I feel lucky to have known her. I’ve never met another dog like her and I am sure I never will.

I’m not religious. Apparently there are no dogs in heaven (not a place I want to go then). But I really hope there’s something after, even though I can’t rationalize it. So just in case you can hear me Monkey:

I hope there are lots of new places to wander wherever you are. I love and miss you, and hope we can hike in the woods again some day.

Here is a photo album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/whitcj/TheMonkey#