I am so grateful to have had him…

ByGoody

I am so sad to write that my dog passed today but I needed to find an outlet to release, so I wanted to share some things about him.

We got him from the pound when we lived in NYC. I looked in a cage and saw what appeared to be a fluffy brown dog that turned out to be 6 puppies intertwined with each other. We were sad to split them up but we lived in a small apartment that barely fit us, so we chose one and named him Brownie.
When we first brought him home, he slept in his crate at the foot of my bed and I held his paw…We were on the 4th floor of a walk up so we had to carry him up and down the stairs for quite some time until his little legs grew and then he was unstoppable!
I remember it so clearly, it seems almost like yesterday but in reality it is almost 9 years later…
Needless to say that the past weeks of him being sick have been painful. He was my little bad, baby boy. I just knew we would grow old together and he would end up taking care of me.
I am a fighter and never want to give up..on most things, but especially when it comes to things I love..so I was determined to be the miracle worker.

So I quietly went about trying to get him better to the extent that I thought I could.

I spent hours on the internet researching what others had done, what meds… what procedures…

Almost everyone cautioned against expecting a good outcome. The vet repeatedly told me the unfortunate facts.

Joe wrote me “Jaye its just like w/oscar (a cat we had years ago). U gotta know when to stop throwing in money. U should have serious talk w/doc about his chances to survive this.”

And my response was simply “for me I need to be able to say I did everything I could for him before giving up”.

And that was my goal.

I ordered products that are sadly arriving the next couple of days that I hoped would help him get his energy back and possible increase his desire to eat, which in my mind would help him get well.

In the end, I am overcome with the thoughts that maybe there was more I should have tried.

But then I think about the last few days and how I had to literally carry him up the stairs. How his hind legs were giving out on him.

How it came to a point where we were practically fighting because he didn’t want to eat and I was desperately trying to syringe feed him food I had ground up and liquefied and sometimes he just wasn’t having it.

And that was Brown. Stubborn…like his mom.

I called him “The Beast” because you could never tame him. He was wild and always excited and assertive. Sometimes I loved this about him…other times it drove me crazy.

Actually he had several names…Brownie, Brown, Doonie, Doone Joe Joe…it all depended on who was talking to or about him.

We had to have a vet that made house calls because taking him to the vet would turn into the most headache inducing experience. He would bark the entire time he was there.

When we lived in Harlem, grown men would cross the street when we were coming because when he was outside, he was all over the place, crazy Cujo style.

He and I drove from New York to Chicago and back in a rented Chrysler 300 when they first came out and people would approach the car when I would pull into parking lots and gas stations but they would back up a bit when I went to the back and let Brown out.

What these people didn’t know was that, although he looked like a killer, he was a baby. A big baby.

At his largest he weighed 115 lbs+ but he didn’t know that he was that big. He would still try to climb on you like he did when he was a pup.

 And he LOVED to play and have fun. He LOVED to eat snow. He was always sitting at your feet hoping that you would drop something. The kid always feed him junk and he LOVED it. He LOVED carrots. He LOVED to eat socks. And his releasing them was so gross at times because they would get stuck coming out and he would need assistance.

I tweeted earlier today that he was dying because I knew, although my heart did not want to admit it, that it was time.

Time to let him go. Let him rest.

We had spent lots time cuddled up in my bed lately whereas before, sleeping with him was asking for punishment because he slept so wildly (I don’t know how my kid did it all those years).  We would lay quietly until he had enough of me crying or touching him  he would loudly sigh, get up and go lay elsewhere. Brown had a lifelong reputation for long sighs, so it just made me smile…

I took these pictures during the summer but never posted them…he was so not interested in a photo shoot. Every time the camera would flash that it was about to take the picture, he would look away..

Today my heartbreak was multiplied when the kid came after I called her and told her I found him on the floor and she laid down with him and cried and talked to him.

The swells of guilt come and go…maybe I should have been home more, walked him more, played more, anything more…everything more…

But more so than guilt, is the intense sadness…

I turned the kitchen light off tonight before retiring to my room.  We always left it on so that he would have light if he got up to go and get water. I also never turned my tv off and always left a radio on when I was out, so that he wouldn’t feel totally alone…

I loved my dog so much and I know he loved me. I can not count the number of times he would comfort me through the years when I was upset about something…he was my constant companion…no matter what…and although my heart is so broken…I am so grateful to have had him.

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