Jackson had a huge tumor removed from his neck. The tumor was wrapped around his jugular vein, and the vet said it was quite an ordeal to remove. The histology report said it was a metastasis of a primary cancer; the vet was unable to find the primary tumor, suggesting the most probable place was on his heart. Jackson was given 3 months to live. That was 2008.
Unlike most dogs, Jackson found me. He was a large and obviously friendly beagle running around the neighborhood. I really didn't want another dog at the time, so I let him run. My current three beagles (Sammy, Dixie, Soda) would watch and bark their fool heads off at him.
On a memorable Sunday, this stray beagle decided he needed religion and ran into the church behind the house. A parishioner brought him back out and tied him up outside. He obviously had an oversized personality.
A lady at the vet's office was looking for a beagle though, so after a few weeks, I grabbed him, leashed him up, and brought him to the vet. He told me he loved to bark for the few days I had him. He was still quieter than the neighbors living next door at the time.
The lady at the vet wasn't able to keep him, so when I stopped in, there was a sign looking for a home for a male beagle. I left, but SO and I looked at each other in the car and walked back in. After having him neutered, he joined the family.
Jackson was a beagle's beagle. He was the loud boisterous beagle that everyone thinks of when they hear Beagle. He loved to bark; he just assumed everybody loved to hear him sing. As food time arrived, he would always let me know by singing and getting the other dogs riled up. For years, the ringtone on my phone has been Jackson and Fairbanks barking before food time. He loved to eat. He loved walks - no walk was ever too long for Jackson.
Still, Jackson was also one of the best behaving beagles I've ever had. Even if he was preoccupied, he would usually come when called. Outside of some typical chewing when he first arrived - the dog bed still bears his scars - he was rarely destructive in the house and was house-trained with a solid steel bladder.
Jackson was larger than any other beagle we've had as well. This occasionally caused problems. He had no problem lording over the other dogs to suggest to them that he should get their food. He was just tall enough that he could look out the back kitchen window. After hearing me drive in the driveway, he would always jump up to the window, head tilted sideways so he could watch me walk up to the back door. Often that would mean a walk!
Almost all beagles are adorable, but Jackson was one of the most photogenic dogs I've ever had. He came around when I was doing a lot of photography, so there are no shortage of pictures. His picture has been my surrogate picture at work for years, and has resulted in numerous conversations and questions. Company policy strictly forbids any pictures being used in place of actual employee head shots, but nobody has ever told me to remove it.
I can't imagine how many miles Jackson and I have walked together. As the big rambunctious beagle that he was, he usually insisted on being the dog who was walked. Realistic calculations suggest we probably walked close to, if not more than 10,000 miles together. That is a lot of shoe leather - and paw skin.
In 2008, Jackson was diagnosed with cancer. The most noticeable symptom that I saw was that he stopped barking. Something was definitely wrong. The tumor was removed and diagnosed as Hemangiosarcoma - an almost always fatal cancer. Our vet said the primary tumor was most likely on his heart and the end would come quickly; 3 months at most.
He recovered from the surgical removal of the tumor from his neck quickly. He got extra attention and I told him he was an awesome dog every day. A month turned into two. Two eventually passed the three month mark. Six months turned into a year and the new vet told us she couldn't find any new evidence of cancer.
I didn't understand it, but was glad. Jackson was just happy being a beagle.
I moved into a new house a few years after his cancer. He adjusted, not to the new normal, but to the new Awesome! quickly, but he did have to explore his new surroundings. The new house is in a rural area with no street lights, and shortly after moving in, he took off one evening. I looked for him for a short time, but eventually had to stop. It was just too dark. I got up a few times in the middle of the night to see if he had returned. Around 2AM he finally slinked back home. Cold. Wet. Jackson hated being either of those things.
He tried to run away one more time after the first snow in the new house. I wasn't up to chasing after him and took a shower. He was waiting to come in shortly after, and it was funny to see his tracks in the snow as he had obviously been running around the house, looking in the low windows off of the front porch trying to figure out how to get in out of the cold weather.
Jackson aged gracefully at first. He was less insistent on being the dog to get a walk. Less aggressive with his or the other dog's food. He loved sitting on the couch with me. I could even motion to the other side and he would move if he was sitting where I wanted to.
But those little things started to creep up. Kidney issues showed in his blood work. Thankfully he eats just about anything so the special diet food was gobbled up as quickly as anything else.
He started having issues jumping on the chair. I noticed he would pee a little bit sometimes when walking around. The back legs just didn't work the way they used to. I didn't want to admit it, but I'd been through this before and it was pretty clear he had degenerative myelopathy.
His physical condition slowly deteriorated which was terrible to watch. At one time it seemed impossible that the biggest, loudest, most animated dog I've had would ever get old, but it was happening. His mental facilities started to go as well; on his bad days, he could get lost behind a kitchen stool.
Still, he had some good days.
Eventually his movement needed to be restricted. The degenerative myelopathy had gotten to the point that his incontinence was becoming a problem. The floor mopping approached a daily exercise at times. Jackson's world shrunk to the back yard and a playpen in the bathroom by the back door. He didn't understand his physical ailments, and hated not being in the living room or the bedroom.
SO rigged up doggy diapers for him, which helped some, but they could only do so much. I'm not sure if he had enough feeling in his back legs to be able to tell it was even on most of the time.
Jackson had always despised being carried, but it was increasingly the only way for him to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. At times, he barely moved his back legs and stairs were out of the question.
He didn't want to eat anymore and oscillated between drinking tons of water or none at all. He lost somewhere around 50% of his body weight. While he still liked having his head scratched, it was becoming increasingly obvious that he no longer had his dog's life after nearly 17 years.
It is never easy, and there will always be second-guessing...
It was difficult to watch Jackson over the last several months. It was no milk bone for him either, but he seemed to handle it with a stoicism that only an old dog has. What I realized near the end, was that I was already missing the dog that he was. I will always miss that Jackson.
Still, I'm comforted by the fact that the three months left to live in 2008 turned into nine more years.
I'm not sure if Jackson hit it big on the dog's life lottery, or if I did.
"And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall"
-Pink Floyd
No comments:
Post a Comment