Yesterday, we had to say good-bye to our sweet, adorable dog Toby, To describe how sad and heartbroken I am would be impossible.
About a year ago (the timeline is a little fuzzy), Toby started having a few issues. Eating and drinking more than usual, a few accidents in the house when he’d always been housebroken before. I chalked it up to the weather, because last winter/spring was brutal and it was constantly raining and Toby hated to go to the bathroom outside in the rain or snow. He had his annual and the vet mentioned that he had put on weight and we needed to cut back on his food, which we did.
Over the next several months, Toby started exhibiting very strange behavior. He’s always had free range of our house, without any problems. He started peeing all over the place, and got very agressive with his food bowl. If I ever walked near it he would growl at me, which he had done a few times in the past after Charlie got mobile and was messing around in his food but it was corrected with training. This wasn’t working this time, and he was drinking out of toilets too, and jumping up on our kitchen table to try to get food. I honestly chalked it up to the new baby, lots of changes and commotion – even though we’d had new babies before and it hadn’t bothered him. He’s always been very protective of the boys and of me while I was pregnant. He continued to get worse with food aggression, going to the bathroom inside, and just generally didn’t look good. Still, I thought it was behavioral and tried to work with him more.
We took him into the vet when he bit me hard. He had knocked over a trashcan to get a dirty diaper out of it and when I tried to get it away he bit my hand hard enough to cause me bleeding and bruising. Toby had never done anything like that before, and not only did it scare me, but I knew we had to do something because you can’t have a dog who is biting and aggressive in a house with three children. It is hard to explain, but Toby was so remorseful after he bit me. It was as though he knew what he did was wrong and he was sorry.
The vet ran some tests and said that his issues could be behavioral, but the tests were showing what looked to be very strongly like the beginning stages of Cushings disease, and his symptoms lined up with the traits. Toby is only 6, and she said while it is more common in older dogs and often mistaken as simple old age, it can manifest itself around age 5-6 and it is more common in dogs like beagles. We spent a long time discussing next steps. We could do more testing at the University of Michigan, we could do surgery (she did not recommend this at all), we could try medications. The hard thing about Cushings is that it is not curable. Once a dog has it, you are just trying to give them the best quality of life. Of course I googled endlessly reading up on the disease, and got tons of conflicting information, so in the end I stepped away from the computer and placed our trust in our vet. She recommended that we just see how things went for the next few months, that the treatment would be very costly and would in her estimate extend his lifespan by a year at the most, and he would probably not feel well during that time. His bladder issues would continue to be a problem, he would probably grow weaker, lose hair, etc. Her other issue was that medications using to treat Cushings often cause terrible side effects.
The vet was supportive of whatever route we wanted to take. She said that there was no wrong decision, that we should do what we felt was in the best interest of Toby and that would be the right decision. I believe what made it the hardest was that Toby was so young. It wasn’t like we were making a decision about a dog who had lived a really long life. In the end, we opted not to do medications. If there were a medication that would have extended his life for many years and would have cured the issue, we probably would have made that decision. I don’t know. I’m sure it will be always a choice where I slightly second-guess myself. I would have done anything to make Toby better, but unfortunately, I felt like there wasn’t an option to make him better than wouldn’t have also made him worse, if that makes any sense.
So we monitored him, and took measures to try to mitigate some of the issues, like not giving him free rein of the house and only feeding him once a day. Some days he seemed fine, some days he would barely get off the couch to go outside. He had lost his zest for life. J and I were talking about our old house and how Toby would just run circles a million times a day. He no longer did anything but sleep. It was not uncommon for me to come downstairs in the morning to the sunroom, where he was staying most of the time, to find that he’d gone to the bathroom all over the place, despite having gone out right before bed. He had two mini-seizures, I guess you would call them, where he got really agitated and was shaking and then slept for hours afterwards. Then he started eating paper and throwing up a lot. And anytime I would touch him, or one of the kids would touch him, he would growl at us. Then he bit me again while I was trying to get him to go outside one day.
It took me a month after that to call the vet. She told me it was time. That it was the compassionate and safest thing to do. I scheduled the appointment for a few days later.
And they were a good few days. All the problems were still there, but I spent as much time as I could just holding Toby (when he’d let me) and talking to him. Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day and he got to do his favorite thing, which was lay out on patio and sleep and look at the birds. I made him a big bowl of rice, chicken, and ham for dinner and he ate it all after not having an appetite for several days. When we got in the car, he was so excited, which broke my heart. He thought we were going on an adventure and I hadn’t seen him that perky in a long time. Or maybe he knew that he wasn’t going to feel bad anymore.
I went back with him during the procedure, and J stayed with the boys in the waiting room. The boys had treats to give him, but he wouldn’t eat them. They got to give him last hugs though, and I know they won’t remember this, but I’m glad he let them hug him.
The vet was very compassionate. We held him as the anesthesia was administered and he took a deep breath and went to sleep. It was very peaceful and quick. I stayed with him for awhile longer and talked to him and told him what a good dog he was. It broke my heart. I’m trying to find peace and not second-guess our decision. I’m angry that he was so young to have this happen to him. I wish that we could have had more time with him, even though logically I knew he’d just get worse and by letting him go now, he wouldn’t get to the stages of severe suffering. My worst fear was that he would bite one of the kids, or someone else’s kids, and then we’d have to make the decision based not out of love, but out of fear. He was a good dog, but pain does terrible things to even the sweetest of animals and I didn’t want him to feel like that anymore.
We will get his ashes in a week or so, which we will keep with us until we settle in a forever house where we can plant a garden for him and bury the ashes there.
You will be missed, sweet Toby. We’ll see you again one day!
