Through the Door
Merle skied through the winter, not the deep powder, but flat tracking. At the end of March his back end weakened, both hind legs splaying, so he could barely start on his rounds. He made it to Gladys's across the road and no farther. I knew he must be hurting, because dog poop began to accumulate in the plowed driveway.
He also began to slip on the pine stairs to our bedroom, so I stapled outdoor carpeting to the treads. The added traction helped him for a while, but coming upstairs soon proved too difficult. I moved his bed downstairs, under the great room's large picture window, directly next to the dedicated quadruped couch, which he could not mount either. In fact, he had begun to refuse my help in getting onto it, and he wasn't being proud. It hurt too much when he got off.
At night, I'd look down at him from the balcony, just drinking him in, lying on his green bed. He was still long and golden, still trim, only his face white, and I would marvel at how our dogs manage to stay so beautiful into their old age while most of us do not. I would stand on the pawprints he had left in the polyurethane nine years before—when he had looked down at our newly finished house and exclaimed, "This looks great!"—and I'd say, very loudly, "Goodnight, Merle. Sweet dreams, pup of my dreams."
He'd look up, hold my eye, and thump his tail: "You too."
Then I'd shut off the light.
On the last day of April I woke at 2:45 A.M., hearing him dreaming. His dream seemed more violent than usual, and I walked out of the bedroom door, turned on the light, and stood on the balcony. He lay half off his bed, running in his sleep. I went back to my bed, but shortly heard him walking around the great room, stumbling and bumping into furniture.
Hurrying downstairs, I found him disoriented, walking constantly to the right, slamming into the walls, and getting stuck in corners. He was very agitated. Kneeling behind him, I put my arms around him and held him to my chest as he panted and looked around fearfully.
"I'm right here," I said. "I'm right here."
But he didn't respond. He was displaying some of the same symptoms of the previous summer—lack of coordination, falling to one side, circling, his head tilted to the right, and also nystagmus, a back-and-forth motion of the eyes. But now there was something so profoundly disorganized about him that I couldn't wait until morning to seek help. I called Marybeth. She drove over and gave Merle some homeopathic tablets, but he remained agitated and disoriented. She suggested calling Theo after the clinic opened and getting his opinion.
Settling Merle on his bed, I sat by him until he fell asleep at five. Then I went upstairs and dozed. Shortly, I was astonished to see him standing by my bedside, stomping his feet, panting, and asking to go out. Though he hadn't climbed the stairs in a month, there he was.
I helped him downstairs and let him out—he seemed unable to navigate the dog door—and he peed and had a difficult, protracted bowel movement, leaving a trail behind him.
After I guided him to his bed, he fell asleep while I caught a few minutes of shut-eye on the couch. When he awoke, he gave me his usual happy smile—"Hey, good to see you, where's my breakfast?" I put some kibble in his bowl, and he walked normally into the hallway between the great room and my office, where his bowls sat, and polished off his meal.
"Phew," I thought. "He's back."
But as he returned to the great room, he suddenly curled his head to his left side as if trying to bite his hip, his lips snarling fiercely. He dropped to the floor, his limbs jerking, his eyes bulging and straining. Then he grew quiet and stared vacantly.
Sitting by him, I called Theo Schuff, and he advised me to keep Merle quiet and bring him in that afternoon. In a calm voice he told me that seizures weren't fatal and could be controlled. I put the phone down and sat by Merle, my hand on his shoulder. Despite Theo's assurance, I felt that this was no ordinary illness. Under my hand, I could feel Merle changing states and slipping away. Picking up the phone again, I made a couple of calls and wiped my schedule clean, cancelling a radio interview and my date that evening. They no longer seemed important.
Twenty minutes later, Merle surged to his feet and wandered to his bowls, knocking them over and spilling water across the floor. Without stopping, he bounced off the wall, caroming here and there, and staggered toward his dog door, only to get stuck in the corner. Turning back into the great room, he collapsed on the floor, howling softly, his body clasped in a tight U. Then his lips went back in that terrible snarl and he foamed at the mouth as he writhed across the floor.
When he had quieted, I picked him up, put him on his bed, and lay with him. Not ten minutes later, he lifted his head and looked me in the eye, seeming to snap out of where he had been. His look said, "Help me."
"I wish I could," I replied, "but you'll have to ride this through. Remember when I had benign positional vertigo a few years ago, just like you're having, and I was bumping into the walls? Was that ever no fun!"
He moaned at me, not pleading, but saying, "This is so strange."
We lay there for an hour. Then he rolled to his feet and walked drunkenly to the glass doors. I let him out. He walked across the deck and onto the grass, falling several times as he made his way to the clump of aspen trees at the corner of the deck, where he lay down on his belly in their shade. Looking at the Tetons, he panted softly. The breeze ruffled his fur and for the first time since the previous day, he looked happy.
In a while, he stood and began walking toward the road.
"Are you okay?" I called from the deck, where I had been watching him.
"Ha!" he exclaimed. "I think so."
Going down the drive, he turned right and started south on his mayoral rounds. Following him, I stopped him within fifty yards.
"I don't think this is a good idea," I told him. "How about taking a day off?"
"Ha-ha-ha," he replied. "I'm fine."
"Are you sure? You're weaving a bit. Come on, let's go back home." I turned him around and walked with him to the deck and into the house, where I sealed the dog door.
Then I went upstairs and took a shower, and when I came down, I found him taking a dump in the middle of the great room. I cleaned it up and as I did he had another seizure, foaming at the mouth and peeing on himself. A few minutes later, he curled into that horrible U-shape and began to bark plaintively—this from the dog who almost never barked.
Calling Theo, I described what was happening and he told me to come right in.
I was there twenty minutes later. Theo started an IV with saline and prednisone, a steroid, and suggested that an MRI might tell us what was going on.
I said, "Let's do it," and he called the hospital, which had an opening at five. To keep Merle quiet in the meantime, we moved him to an oversize crate padded with blankets. As soon as the door closed behind him, however, he began to thrash and moan, trying to get out. Tim Gwilliam, the other vet in the clinic, who had taken care of Merle before Theo had joined the staff, came into the room and suggested that I run some errands with Merle until our MRI appointment. Being in the car with me, he said, might calm him.
It did. As soon as I carried him into the Subaru, he relaxed and went to sleep. But a couple of hours later, just as I pulled into the clinic's parking lot, he seized again. Running into the office, I found Theo, and he hurried out with his medical bag. Merle looked awful, gnashing his teeth against his lips as bloody saliva flew from his mouth.
Both of us climbed into the back of the car and held him.
"Do you want to go on with this?" Theo asked.
For a moment, I didn't understand him. Then I realized what he had meant.
"I'm not putting him down," I said, "until I know what's wrong with him."
"You bet," Theo answered. "Let's wait for the MRI."
When Merle finished convulsing, he opened his eyes and looked at us lucidly.
"I think he might want to pee," said Theo.
We carried him out of the car, but when he tried to take a few steps his legs tangled and he fell helples
sly to his side. Kneeling, I picked him up and pressed him against my chest. He began to bark loudly, on and on without pause. Putting my mouth against his head, I said, "Easy, easy."
For the first time in our life together, I couldn't translate what he was saying. I didn't know if he was suffering. I felt powerless to help him, and I suddenly understood why so many of us put our dogs to sleep. It's legal, and we cannot stand their pain. I closed my eyes and held my dog, trying to hold on to what I knew—his feel, his smell. But I didn't have a clue as to what he was telling me.
We took him inside, Theo gave him an opiate, and he finally calmed down.
A few minutes later, Allison walked through the door. After Brower's death, she had told me that if I needed support when Merle's time came to call her. It was our agreement—while our dogs were alive, we'd be there for each other.
Blond hair in a ponytail, she knelt by Merle and touched his ears. "Oh, my beautiful boy," she said, "you have the softest ears in the world." Then she began to weep.
An hour later, along with Theo, she helped me to carry Merle into the MRI wing of the hospital and onto a gurney, where an attendant draped him in a white sheet and wheeled him into a glasswalled room. We made small talk while waiting, the conversation circling back to dogs—the ones we had, the ones we had known—and how it seemed unfair that parrots and turtles lived so long. It got us through the forty-five-minute-long procedure, and then the radiologist came out with films in his hand. He pointed to a bright spot on Merle's right frontal lobe and said, "That's inflammation and swelling. It could be a stroke or a viral infection. I don't see a tumor."
I felt my body collapse with relief.
It was only momentary. At home Merle became inconsolable, moaning, circling, fouling his bed, upon which I had laid towels, and howling mournfully. At least I now had a better idea of what he was saying, for I had called Paul Cuddon, who had told me that Merle's vocalizations were involuntary and due to his cerebrum being disorganized from the seizure. He was not in pain. Paul had then suggested that I keep Merle on the prednisone, to reduce the swelling in his brain, and add a dose of potassium bromide, which would control the seizures. He asked that I Fed Ex him the MRIs.
At 2:00 A.M., Merle was still pacing and howling, and I called Theo again, who told me to bring him in. When we got to the clinic, he put Merle on an IV since he still wasn't drinking, and mixed up the anti-seizure formula according to Paul's directions. Merle quieted after a shot of Valium, but when we got home, he wanted to go outside. I followed him around the aspen trees as he repeatedly fell and regained his balance. Guiding him inside, I led him to his bed, but he fought me, moaning and circling. Unable to calm him and overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness, I finally put my arms around him and laid my mouth directly on his ear.
"Merle!" I shouted.
I felt a tiny pause in his agitation.
"I know a dog and his name is Merle," I began to sing, trying not to break into tears. "I know a dog and his name is Merle. I know a dog and his name is Merle. He's the best dog in the world."
"Ha!" he panted loudly. "Ha!" he panted again as the rigidity went from his body and he sank into my arms and slowly onto his bed, where I lay behind him and held him against my chest. Then, for the first time in twenty-six hours, both of us fell dead asleep.
This was a Friday. During the rest of the weekend I gave Merle his drugs, mixing the potassium bromide solution into balls of elk, which he wolfed, and holding his bowl of kibble before him so he could nibble at the kernels. Every few hours, he crapped on his towel-covered bed, or if he managed to rise and go to his dog door he didn't reach it in time and left a trail across the great room. But as the potassium bromide and prednisone took effect, he began to sleep soundly. I found something rote and physical to do—stacking firewood—that kept me within earshot of him. On Sunday afternoon, as I was working, he wandered outside on his own and lay in the grass, watching me.
I had called the Landales and they stopped by—Scott and April, and their two daughters, Tessa, nine, and Eliza, five. They lay in the grass next to Merle and petted him.
"He doesn't look that bad," said April, a matter-of-fact New Englander whose brassy auburn hair matched her optimism. "Remember, girls, when you would ride on Merle's back? What a strong dog he was!"
"And gentle," Eliza said.
"Very gentle," April agreed.
Tessa, having grown into a coltish, freckle-faced girl, slipped off to their car, where she stood, blinking.
Scott had never been a man of many words and still wasn't. Tall, with reddish-blond hair and athletically built, he almost always spoke in a subdued tone as if to minimize his physical presence. Yet he could let out great whoops of glee and surprise, and I think that's why he and Merle got along so well together—tonally, they were kindred souls.
Merle had hunted with Scott almost as much as he had with me, and I had often seen the two of them face to face—Merle sitting, Scott kneeling—as they touched noses. Now, Scott put his hand on Merle's shoulder and said only two words, "Merley, Merley."
Eliza leaned close to Merle and asked, "Is he having sayzures?"
"Not right now," I said. "Maybe they're finally over."
She reached down to pet him and a reflective look crossed her face. Glancing up, she said, "This must be very sad for you."
By Monday Merle's seizures were over. Going in and out by himself—I left the doors of the house open—he meandered through the long grass along the edge of the mowed firebreak. Again and again, he returned to the clump of aspen at the corner of the deck, where he lay with his mouth open to the breeze while he watched the Tetons. It had become his favorite spot: soft grass, shady trees, a big view.
Paul Cuddon called in the afternoon, saying that he had received the MRIs and what they showed wasn't typical of a masslike brain tumor. He didn't think it was a stroke, either. It could be encephalitis or a glial cancer, a diffuse type of brain tumor that didn't shift the brain within the skull. The prognosis for the infection was reasonable with vigilant treatment. The prognosis for a glial tumor wasn't. Radiation and chemo would only buy time. He suggested a spinal tap to find out which it might be.
With a few calls to Theo and M. J. Forman, another vet in town who had done quite a few spinal taps, I arranged for Merle to have one on Thursday. Then I finished stacking the firewood and by dusk took off my boots on the north porch. Putting my feet in the cool grass, I hung my head between my knees, as tired as I could remember ever feeling. I don't know how long I sat there, but I suddenly felt a wet nose touch my bare shoulder—I must have fallen asleep and didn't hear Merle come across the grass. He had walked around the house from his spot under the aspens and found me. I raised my head, and he placed his cheek against my jaw and leaned into me. I put my arm around his shoulder, and he let out a great sigh—"HAAAA"—giving me a look of complete trust and thanks.
We did the spinal tap on Thursday morning, and I asked to help in the operating room, something not often allowed when the people you love are undergoing surgery. But M. J.—a blond woman with a bouncy disposition—was fine with my being there. A vet tech shaved the crown of Merle's head and gave him anesthesia; Theo held Merle's nose down to his chest, exposing the occipital crest; and M. J. worked the four-inch-long needle into the back of Merle's skull where the spinal cord met his brain, joking, "Now you're going to see my hands shake." I didn't see them move a hair.
It wasn't only the delicacy of the procedure that made her try to interject some humor into the morning. Everyone knew what was at stake: White blood cells in the spinal fluid meant an infection and a potential cure; no white blood cells meant the glial tumor and difficult choices ahead. I stood with my hands on Merle's hips and watched thirty-seven drops of clear spinal fluid drip out of the needle's barrel into a glass vial—M. J. counted them.
After Merle woke from the anesthesia, M. J. and I walked him in front of the clinic. With his white face and partially shaved head, he looked like an aging
punk rocker. At first he seemed animated and strong, but then he began to bump into bushes. M. J. looked concerned. We took him inside, and a few minutes later the call came from the lab, where Theo had run the sample: no white blood cells.
I held the fax that M. J. had handed to me. The columns of numbers bounced across the page.
M. J. said, "I'm really sorry." Then she began to talk about Merle's quality of life and that it might be time to euthanize him. Seeing that I didn't want to hear this, she immediately added, "I'm here if you need me."
"Thank you," I told her, "you did a great job," and I turned to leave. Merle, who was keeping an eye on me, got to his feet. Without any help, he walked out the door and continued across the parking lot to stand by our car.
"God," said M. J., genuinely surprised, "he is a strong old boy."
I bought food in the grocery store, seeing too many people I knew, some of whom had heard about Merle and asked how he was. I had to keep my jaw clenched, telling them about his condition, so as not to break down. Not that I'm averse to shedding tears in public—I've done my share at funerals—but who wants to be a wreck in the produce aisle?
On the drive home, I watched him in the rearview mirror, lying on his green bed, sleepy from the Valium M. J. had given him. Looking up, I saw dozens of peaks we had climbed and skied, and I could not believe that it was all over and time to say good-bye. It seemed like he had just stepped out of the night, dug a nest by my side on the banks of the San Juan River, and said, "You need a dog, and I'm it." Then, alone in the car with him, I began to cry.
I carried him into the house like a frankfurter, simply folding his bed around him. Feeling completely played out, I lay on the deck with my eyes closed. A few minutes later Paul Cuddon called. He had gotten the lab results and wanted to reiterate that the prednisone would keep the swelling down in Merle's brain, while the potassium bromide would prevent any further seizures. Merle would have to stay on both drugs for the rest of his life.