I’ve Got To Start Utilizing These Gifts

Dogs

I suspected the “royal” baby would be a boy. And I also suspected his name would be George. Why oh why didn’t I place bets in Vegas?

OK, that settles it. I told myself that if it would be a baby named George, that’s what I’ll call my next Pug, assuming it is a male and assuming it is young enough to not already have a name it responds to.

Dream with Lucifer Sam

Dreams, Lucifer Sam

I dreamt that Stan and I were traveling, I think it was in the Camry, but it seemed dark green. We had both dogs, Jasper and Lucifer Sam. We stopped somewhere, and Stan let both dogs out of the car, unleashed. I was mad because he didn’t have a leash on them, but he grabbed Jasper’s harness, and I wasn’t too worried about Lucifer Sam wandering off.

It was very strange because usually when I dream about the dead, like Tim or my dad, I don’t have any realization in the dream that they are dead. There’s no “hey, what are you doing here?” moments. But it was different with the Pug. In the dream, I felt like I was awake (even though I was asleep and dreaming it), and having a dream while I was waking, and I realized the pug was dead. As he was wandering around, he walked into a shallow running stream and lay down in the stream. It seemed as if he was hot and was trying to cool himself off. This disturbed me in the dream because it indicated he was uncomfortable. I also made some sort of comment to Stan that it is unusual for me to have a waking dream where I have the dead come back.

There’s so many layers to this I am trying to figure out. And if he was walking around, why did I know he was dead? Very confusing.

I do remember he was extremely black with no grey fur, and with no tumor. Like he was in the prime of his life.

Writing the day after letting go

Animals, Dogs, Lucifer Sam, Pets

July 10, 2013

We let Lucifer Sam go yesterday afternoon with our Vet. He was on Ann’s lap while he was given the injections and I held his head so he didn’t have to rest the weight of his head on his tumors. He was beginning to refuse water that morning and the timing to let him go was as good as it could have been. Very soon our pug dog will become someone else, but our love for him and his love for us will not change.

Lucifer Sam inspired me to begin making our own dog treats. His illness caused me to wonder about mixing up some high antioxidant foods and baking them into dry dog treats. I experimented with different berries like; aronia, strawberries, blueberries and black raspberries. I tried working with some roots like sweet potatoes and beets, and also experimented with greens like dandelion, cilantro and parsley. Some of these treats turned out to be tasty even to me while others were too stinky to dry in the oven, and instead had to be made into frozen dog treats.

I’m very grateful to Lucifer Sam for inspiring me to experiment with making dog treats. I feel like I want to take these handful of antioxidant dog treat recipes and refine them. Plus I can think of all sorts of new recipes to try, but I think I should wait until Jasper finishes off the large quantities we already have in our freezer and refrigerator. Hopefully, next winter I can try making more and better dog treats, but I owe the inspiration for these creative urges to Lucifer Sam.

Lucifer Sam made our lives better and I wish he was still with us. I will always wish he could still be with us just as I wish I could still be with every dog I love who is no longer with me.

The day we let him go

Animals, Dogs, Lucifer Sam, Pets

We made an appointment to have him put to sleep, and waited another day just in case his appetite came back. The following are some final thoughts I wrote down on his last day and the day after we let him move on:

July 9, 2013

Lucifer Sam’s last day with us.

In the morning I woke up and Lucifer Sam was lying quietly in the kennel next to my inflatable bed. It was still early in the morning and Ann was still asleep down stairs in the main bedroom. I’ve been sleeping with Lucifer Sam in the air conditioned upstairs so he would not be alone at night, and this was the last night we would have together.

I took Lucifer Sam out of his kennel and carried him down stairs. We went outside and the mosquitoes were very aggressive in the grey morning air. The pug did what he needed to do and gave me some hope. He hasn’t pooped for over a day until now and I wondered hopefully if he might want some food. Perhaps his bodily functions are only barely working, because he had no interest in any foods I offered him. He poked at the newly opened can of soft dog food with his face and walked away. The chicken in broth with a few bits of bacon usually gets him to at least lap some of the broth, but he wouldn’t come near the dish this morning.

I took him and Jasper into our bedroom to see Ann and placed Lucifer Sam next to Ann. I wish we could be together like this always. Life only lets us have the dogs we love for a little while, and the time is always too short.

Lucifer Sam wanted to go back outdoors again, and walked all the way to the front of the house into the fern and hosta garden. He pooped there again, but I couldn’t find it under all the ground cover leaves. We went back inside and eventually got all the pets into the first floor bedroom with the air conditioner. The main floor of the house is still hot from the day before, so it’s better to keep Lucifer Sam out of the heat. He seems more sensitive to the heat than ever, I suppose, because the tumors are making it difficult for him to breath.

It rained a little and the house cooled down, which is good because Lucifer Sam can breath easier in the cooler air. After I had finished cleaning the newt cage I sat with Lucifer Sam on the futon and had him snuggle next to me in my armpit like I use to do with him when he was a puppy. A few more times I took him outdoors to walk around and seemed to be walking around the yard as if he were having one last look at it. I can’t imagine to know whether he knows if this is his last day or not, but in my anthropomorphic view of him he was kind of saying goodbye to the place he knows and loves.

I sat in a chair with him on my lap for what seemed like a long time, and talked to him about how much I appreciated being with him. I told him we were both in a beautiful place, and that I owed him a debt of gratitude because I could not have found this beauty without his love.

We had already made the appointment yesterday to have him put to sleep at 3 in the afternoon. Time went by so slowly this day that it seemed like we have always been together, and it felt like 3 o-clock was never going to come. Time did pass though and as it came closer to his time I carried him to see each of the cats and asked the cats to say goodbye to him. I asked Jasper to say goodbye to him one more time. Earlier in the day the dogs were sitting close to one another on the futon and they both seemed very sad. I was wondering if they communicate with each other and know that their time together is near an end. I think they do understand something about life coming to an end, and they do miss one another so much when one of them dies.

It is hard to let go

Animals, Dogs, Lucifer Sam, Pets

Lucifer Sam was the most fair minded dog I’ve known and loved. At dog play groups, if one dog became too snarly with another dog, Lucifer Sam would bark at them as if to be telling them they needed to stop. I think he counted treats with his other companion dogs, so if I gave a certain number of treats to another dog he seemed to make sure I gave him the same amount. When we would be together watching movies or other activities Lucifer Sam, made sure he spent time sitting next to both Ann and I so that one of us wouldn’t go the whole time without a Pug dog to snuggle with. Lucifer Sam had a natural sense of fairness more than most dogs and way, way more than most people.

He was named after a cat from a Pink Floyd song, and his birthday was one day before the birthday date of Sid Barret. Lucifer Sam died a few days after the date that Sid Barret passed away, and there appears to be some poetry in his life and time with us.

He was a dog who cared and loved Ann and I as well as all his other dog and cat companions, and of course we were deeply saddened when we discovered he had cancer.

When Ann first found the swollen gland on his neck, we were hoping it was only an infection. The examinations and tests showed that there was cancer, and we wanted him to have surgery as soon as possible. Lucifer Sam had had cancer twice before, on a forearm and hind leg, and surgery had saved his life in those times. We soon realized that this time cancer would take his life. The cancer started in a place behind a tooth where we could not easily notice a lump. We are at least fortunate that the first two times we could find the cancer soon enough, but this time the tumor could not be found until it was too late.

After Lucifer Sam’s surgery we soon learned that the cancer was advanced and continuing to grow fast. The initial surgery was good to remove remove the early tumors and some necrotic tissue. The hospital staff cared for him well and explained to us all of the benefits and risks for treating his cancer with radiation and vaccines. We
could have done treatments that would have had us going in for medical procedures and appointments nearly every week to treat his condition, and he would have been a great patient. He was the kind of dog who was gentle and cooperative with medical care. Surely, if Lucifer Sam’s cancer had been discovered sooner and the tumors were growing more slowly, then we would have wanted all available treatments.

With cancer it feels like we are living in some sort of medical dark age with limited options being only treatments of symptoms not cures. Treatments are sort of like taking vitamins, because they may improve the quality of life or they can cause more harm. The best hope for using treatments is to have more time, to spend with our beloved dog. We would have wanted more time but the choice is not only about the length of time but also how that time is spent.

We decided that the best remaining time we could spend with Lucifer Sam was not involving lost days to anesthesia and recovering from radiation burns. Instead we would accept the short time we had, and do bicycle rides, car rides, nature trails, dog parks, or just hang out in the back yard. Giving him the best and most time to enjoy the things he liked is the way we wanted to spend our time with him, and we did something with him every day.

Bicycling is something new for our dogs this year as Ann got me a carrier for dogs to pull behind my bicycle for my last birthday. Jasper, our 3 year old Boston Terrier, doesn’t seem to understand going for a bicycle ride, and might prefer to go for walks. Lucifer Sam was over 10, and he took to lying down and watching the world go by behind a bicycle on the first ride.

One day a turtle was crossing our bicycle path and I stopped to try and get Lucifer Sam to look at it, but he kept looking at me as if to ask why we stopped. I think dogs like to be outdoors so much because they can pick up on lots of smells. We nicknamed these bicycle or car rides, “smell tours.”

Lucifer Sam stayed in fair health in spite of the growing tumors and enjoyed his time with us and the other pets longer than we expected. He made time with us all the way through the end of June, but in July he began to seem a little less happy. I continued to think he was doing well, but this was only my optimism. Then he became very ill and stopped having interest in food. I could sometimes get him to eat some bacon bits in diced chicken and warm broth, but sometimes he would even run away from food.

When this downturn began, I thought to myself:  “I know I’m going to miss our Pug too soon, and every day I keep hoping he might feel a little better so we can have more time. I’m beginning to worry that my expectations are too selfish and that I need to let him go. I know I need to let him go. I’ve known that we have to let him go for several months now, but it’s alway harder than I ever imagine it to be to let go of any beloved dog.” Our dog was beginning to leave us.

Lucifer Sam, January 5, 2003 – July 9, 2013

Lucifer Sam, ,

Lucifer Sam on his final day. "Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky."
Lucifer Sam on his final day. “Now there’s a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.”

Lucifer Sam on his final day. “Now there’s a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.”

Words cannot describe the black hole in our hearts that his leaving us has created.

The last days of his life he was no longer the happy dog he used to be. It was time to let him go.

Mothers Saying the Dumbest Things

Politics, , ,

1) The mother of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev going all Cleopatra (Queen of D’Nile) on the interviewers, claiming her sons are innocent of the Marathon Bombing. Yes, she knows everything. She goes over to Dagestan while her son is in college back in the USA and she knows what’s going on in his life. Ya sure.

2) Barbara Bush when asked if Jeb should run for Pres. Although you need to give her credit for not wanting another Shrub in the White House, one of the things she says in her justification of Jeb not running is “…there are a lot of great families…” implying, there are other great families from which to cull the future president of our country.

A lot of great families? What about a lot of great PEOPLE?

This just smacks of the old money, old family mentality. None of that new money (Clintons) or new family (Obamas) riff raff. Keep the well-heeled and manor-borne in office. But Let’s give someone else a chance besides Jeb. There are plenty of good families. Old families. Yes. More old money in power. Gaah.

Sad News for Lucifer Sam

Lucifer Sam, , ,

He has terminal cancer. Earlier this month, both of our dogs started coughing a lot, probably some virus they caught at a dog play (they were both vaccinated for kennel cough). Wondering if they were fighting infections as well, Ann felt their lymph nodes. Jasper, our Boston, felt normal, but Lucifer Sam’s right lymph node seemed swollen. We took him to our vet where they took a fine needle aspirate of the lump, but the results were inconclusive. They sent us to the University of Wisconsin Veterinary Hospital, and discovered that he had a malignant melanoma which had started behind an upper molar and spread to his lymph node. The molar was removed, along with a bit of jawbone surrounding it, as well as the lymph node and some surrounding tissue. Unfortunately, the margins of the excised area were not clean, meaning that cancer cells were left behind, and will most likely regrow in the near future as this is an aggressive form of cancer with a poor prognosis.

He spent two nights in the hospital, where he recuperated very well and probably won the hearts of the people there. He is at home with us now. We take him back to get his stitches removed next Tuesday. Each day he gets better and is more active. Even the first day he came home he tried to spin for his food as both he and Jasper do (we didn’t train Lucifer to do this, he just taught himself, and Jasper learned from him). But we realize that even though he may come back to normal and make perfect multiple 360s before every meal, that will be short lived with this horrible disease.

The doctor at the UW told us that Chemotherapy does not respond well with this form of cancer. The other options are an experimental vaccine which is very expensive with only a 20% rate of success, and radiation therapy, which sounds like a horrible ordeal to put a 10 year old dog through. We will try to give him as much comfort as possible in his final weeks, months. or wishfully, years. Stan is concocting dog biscuits for him that are high in anti-oxidants (made with Aconia berries) which might inhibit cancer growth.

We will remember the fun times at Pug get togethers and dog parks, where he happily joined in on running herds of Pugs with his “squeakbarking” and his constant food begging when anyone brought out the treats. We’ll remember how he loved to travel with us when we went to Colorado, like all the dogs we’ve had. And mostly we’ll miss his velcro-ness, a constant companion to Ann when she tried to work during the day (sometimes having to extract him from her side and relocate him to a different place to sit so she could work) and to Stan on the couch/futon in the evening, loving to snuggle under blankets.

It seems too brief of a time to have had such a wonderful dog. It was February 17, 2003 when we lost our first Pug, Hieronymus. And only May of 2010 when we lost our first Boston, Plato. This is too short of a timespan for hearts to heal. If Lucifer Sam hadn’t come down with a cough and Ann hadn’t felt his throat, the progression of the cancer might have been worse.

We do not know how much longer he will be with us, and we will appreciate every remaining minute of his life.

Odd Dream with Animal Farm

Dreams, , , ,

Very weird dream, lots of detail, but hard to remember the sequence of events, so here’s just snippets:

In a motel with people. I can’t remember Stan, but I remember another guy, short, brown hair, much younger than me, no idea who it was. We were at one point sitting very close to each other and I put my arm around him and start petting him, but it wasn’t romantic, more like the way I’d pet my dogs. But I didn’t want it to get romantic for him. I remember being on a bus and traveling through what looked like travel promo pictures of Northern Africa…Morocco…minarets and palm trees, but lots of lakes as well, which was odd. I loved all the water. We had to deliver stuff to some place, some stuff wrapped in pink styrofoam insulation sheets. I have no idea what we were delivering. I was driving the bus and when I pulled into the place we were supposed to drop off our load, I couldn’t stop the bus. I pulled up a driveway and kept applying the break, but the bus kept inching ahead very slowly, so it went up on the curb. Then I had to maneuver it to prevent it from smashing into a building. It was very strange.

I also had a strange wild animal that was very friendly. I don’t know what the animal was. It was maybe cat-size, but definitely not a cat. I was in a building that had this wild animal farm around it. There were sheep and the sheep were being herded by some animal. When I went outside of the building, the sheep were running into us (us being the nameless people I was with) I took the other animal that was friendly and tried to carry it with me, but it got wild and wanted to escape.

DREAM: The Velvet Underground Vegetable Spread

Dreams, , , ,

Stan and I were in front of a house, looking in. Although it seemed like it was the beginning of some “House Hunters” show, and we were only looking at a house through the the eyes of TV and not part of the physical experience, it changed and it was like we were right there staring inside the house through a large front window. The house seemed like a ranch house that had major remodeling throughout many decades. The kitchen was large and faced the front. All kitchen cabinets were painted brown/light beige in a glossy oil paint, covering all imperfections and many other generations of paint jobs. It was nasty. I don’t think I could ever live in a house with painted kitchen cabinets. I noticed some strange plumbing under the sink, like really old pipes from maybe the 19th century. They too had been painted beige. Nothing in the kitchen was arranged in a normal kitchen layout. The olive green stove was next to the olive green refrigerator on the opposite wall as the sink and other appliances. There were some strange appliances that I didn’t know what they were; I assumed they were trash compactors or some handyman’s desk with drills and widgets. The washer and dryer were also in the kitchen, plus a microwave atop a dishwasher. There were no tables or chairs for sitting down on.

Then people started to appear; older people, not quite aged parents age, maybe more like 65-70 years old or so. But still old enough to have a goofy sense about them. Some older guy seemed to want to offer us some food, and brought out some vegetable dip from the fridge. He said laughingly that it was “Velvet Underground Vegetable Spread.” I thought that was hilarious, and took the plastic tub of spread from him, lifted up the top and spoke into it, “Lou?” Then I said, “Maybe there’s some John Cale in it.” (Get it? Cale? kale? vegetable? Weird how one can make jokes/puns in one’s sleep) But the old people were all being very noisy and didn’t hear my joke. Then Stan tries to say it louder, like “Maybe there’s some John Cale in the vegetable spread” in hopes that would make the old guy laugh. Unfortunately, the guys were old gits and although they were probably the age of the surviving members of the Velvets, there’s a strange sort of age disjointedness that goes on amongst people that they only seem to know about music that preceded them, not music that was created by their generational/chronological peers. Especially music that was as obscure as the VU was at the time they were listening to music in their younger days. These 65-70 year old people in the ugly beige kitchen seemed no different than how I remember 65-70 year old people from 40 years ago.

Then I find the cardboard box that the “Velvet Underground Vegetable Spread” came in and take a look at it. No where on the box did it actually say “Velvet Underground,” so I had to wonder where this guy was coming from, the guy who originally said that. But the box did say something weird. It had the name of my street as the brand or style something. It said “W_______o Street Vegetable Spread.” I went to show it to Stan, telling him that the story gets weirder and weirder.

More About the Paul Ryan Post Below

Politics,

I have been away from WiFi for over a month…long story, my dad died and I was tied up dealing with a very difficult situation which I will write more about later….maybe.

I received a comment to the previous post by supposedly a young, very young, woman that she thinks Ryan is hot as a vampire and that “he’s got her vote.” Because I was not able to approve it or reply to it in a timely manner due to the above, I will simply state that I sure hope her raging hormones means she is a minor and too young to vote.

You do not vote for a political ticket because you think the candidates are HOT. To what I hope would be most of us, this is obvious. Unfortunately, I fear this attitude is more prevalent than it should be. Need I state that this is not a beauty pageant. Too many people, I am afraid, are going to be voting against their best interests because they think this liar is handsome.

Oh, and as far as a vampire? He has the widow’s peak, but he doesn’t even rate. He’s what we would call a “who bit that one?” type. To Stan and I, Paul Ryan looks more like a Chicago gangster from the 1930s. (Welcome Dustbowl 2012) We nickname him “Mugsy.” I actually felt a bit guilty vamping him up here because it’s an insult to vampire-type guys. But I thought the suck metaphor was appropriate.