Housekeeping: Perimenopausal dreams—I haven’t had any real corkers since the 19th (my brain giving me a break from writing them up every morning, thank you!)—but last night was funny. I dreamed about a vast rank of perimenopausal women all curled up in the fetal position, all of us hot flashing in sync, providing energy like a giant battery array. It was like The Matrix but you probably got a lot more energy out of the system! I also had some oddly mundane dreams about hanging out with friends and having casual conversations. That’s OK. I like mundane. Need to counterbalance all the weird somehow!
***
HARRRRUUGHHHHHH!!!
HOOOOUUURRRAAAAAUUUUGHHH!!!
HHAAARRRUUUUUUGGGHHHH!!!
It was, of course, a Saturday. No vet. And I was sitting in my studio, making pottery, minding my own business.
HUUURRRGGGHHHHHHAAHHHHRRRGGGHHHH!!!
There were terrible noises coming from my back yard. Noises I didn’t want to investigate, but which were persistent, and after a while obviously not planning to go anywhere else.
I got up, went to the back door, and opened it. There was Whitey, lying against the back of my building. I hadn’t seen him in a while. He was skinny as a wire hanger and covered in sores. The terrible noises were him straining to breathe and coughing up bloody, worm-laced pus. He had heartworm and intestinal worms—all the dogs did—but his weakling Pit Bull genetics had betrayed him, and at perhaps three years of age he was dying of an infestation that a more mutty potcake could have fought off for much longer.
It was time to help him go. But it was Saturday. No fucking vet.
Whitey had never let me touch him. I could not catch him, even in his weakened state. He lurched up from the concrete pad and wobbled away from me, hacking and horking and coughing up pools of nightmare. I called my friend Erin to discuss what we might be able to do, and together we decided to call Crispin, who we knew had a rifle.
After some discussion, Crispin said that he wouldn’t shoot a gun inside the town boundaries. It was against the law, and even to put a suffering dog out of its misery, it wasn’t worth the possible trouble.
We called a different friend—Mimi, who lived with her three dogs on a boat moored out in the harbor. She’d had a lot of experience putting dogs down without the benefit of a vet, and she said she’d help us.
She dinghied in to the dock and handed over a small vial containing six pills of 100mg phenobarbitol apiece. Whitey had only weighed perhaps 45lbs when he was healthy, so this amount of barbituate would float him off this mortal coil fairly gently. “He’ll pass out,” she said to us, “then you can just hold his nose closed for a little while and he’ll pass away. I’ve done this a few times. Good luck.”
Erin and I went to the grocery store and bought three cans of the stinkiest cat food we could find. When a sick dog won’t eat anything else they will usually eat cat food.
Back at my place, we mixed the cat food in a bowl with some meat scraps and put in the phenobarb. I added 400 milligrams of oxycodone I’d had left over when I was prescribed it for a bad back spasm a couple of months before, and a couple of Xanax just to make sure. We presented this toxic stew to Whitey, who gratefully gobbled it down while we stood there and cried.
Not too bad, Midjourney, but Whitey was in WAY worse shape than this.
Erin had to go, so I was left to my own devices while I waited for Whitey to pass out.
About twenty minutes later, I went to check on him…
*BRRRR* time’s up!
PostScript: Another cliffhanger! Shuffle Roulette hilariously provides this song: