The vet's office was warm, a comfort on a bright, but chilly day. The drive there was only about 15 minutes from our house. Our dog Yara was panting in the far backseat, anxious, and I tried to calm her, petting her, putting her favorite zebra blanket closer to her front feet, encouraging her to try to relax. I knew the effort was futile, and so did she. She had gotten her front right leg hurt in the hard frozen snow, determined to pee away from the house, where we had cleared her a nice path and space to relieve herself in comfort, but she was stubborn still and had limped way over by the greenhouse, where she got stuck in the snow and got hurt pulling herself free. We thought it was just sprained, but the pain did not get better and the only thing that kept her comfortable was the hemp oil, the pills for the pain did not work. She was 10 now, and had been struggling with hip dysplacia for over a year. Where she once was able to walk for an hour with ease, all she could manage now was about ten minutes, and that wore her out. She came into our lives when she was 3, when we rescued her from a no kill - shelter in Shelton, where she had been brought by the family of a lady who had raised her from a puppy but had come down with cancer and had no one who was interested in taking Yara in, so Yara ended at the shelter. We brought her home on May 7th, 2012, 3 months after our Basset mix Lafayette had suffered a massive heart attack. We had saved Lafayette from the streets on our neighbourhood together with her street buddy Napoleon, a sweet old black Labrador, who died 2 years later from cancer. I thought of all this riding to the vet, knowing what fate Yara most likely awaited, and thought back on holding Napoleon 11 years ago, on my lap as she dozed off before the vet gave her the lethal injection that would stop her heart. We got to the vet, and my eyes strained in the bright blue day light and sun, as my son and husband got Yara, who weighed 119 pounds, out of the car carefully. She limped to some grass, peed, and pooped with strained hind legs, and we gently, slowly walked her to the front door of the veterinary hospital. They weighed her, and way too quickly after all the review, the inevitable decision was made. Euthanasia. She was an emotional wreck, and resisted the tranquilizer like a captured warrior. It took a second dose 30 minutes later, and she finally stopped fighting. The vet and his nurse gently came in and checked her heart rate, and shaved a spot on one of her back legs to find a good vein to give her the lethal injection. The syringe was big, full of a bright blue liquid, and in it went, as my husband, myself, the vet and his nurse comforted her. I was so impressed with their kindness and respect. She became still fast, and he checked her heart and said quietly, gently : "She is gone ..." The doctor and nurse told us good bye, and told us to take our time. We placed her favorite toy, a dangly smiling Christmas elf, close to her paws and face, and petted her cooling body one more time and left, shaking, wrung out. They would cremate her and we would then be able to scatter her ashes in Cannon Beach, where she used to go with us on summer vacations. We said good bye to the people at the front desk, and got in the car, no one said a word.
The hard part was coming inside the house and feeling the now empty spaces that once held her presence, her warm body, her fiery spirit and bark. She was so fierce, I loved that about her. Such power, such passion and strength, in a body that would take her down mercilessly, with hip dysplacia, with legs that struggled to keep up with her energy and fire. The veterinarian said that he had maxed out on all the dosages to get her tranquilized, and that by the time all the tranquilizer, twice, and the lethal dosage had been added up he said : " It came to the dosage required to take down a small horse. " I was so proud of her, so heartbroken at my fierce Amazon, who was so protective of us, so proud of her big back yard, so happy to have a family, so happy to sleep on her big bed at the foot of ours, so happy to go with us everywhere we went. Her big, sweet brown eyes will stay with me for a long time, they were such an incredible contrast to her fierceness that intimidated so many people, until they started seeing her pride diminished as she would limp on her very short walks these last months and weeks and eventually days, and last day. She fought until the end, I loved her so much.
I think I love animals so much, especially rejected and abandoned ones, like my husband and I have taken in for 35 years, since before we were married, because I became myself a reject in my family, and that wounded pride made me fiery, strong and Yara was that way. In those 35 years, 9 adult abandoned dogs had gotten a second chance with us. We rescued them, loved them, they got old faster as they were already 3 or 4 or older when we got them, like Napoleon who already had a grey muzzle when we rescued her off our streets one cold Thanksgiving night together with her buddy Lafayette. Napoleon lived another 2 years until cancer destroyed her, and Lafayette lived another 7 years. There was Fuzzy " Ric " a gorgeous husky, in Texas, who we saved from an abusive owner, there were two small shepherd mixes, Snaussy I and Snaussy II, who each lived 7 years, there was Pollux, a small white Maltese who walked into our backyard one day, no collar, no identification and who lived another 11 years, and Lafayette and Napoleon, and briefly, two wild girls, Honey and Daisy, two young dogs who lived in our neighbourhood and for about a year would visit us, eat and sleep with us and then disappear again, until we heard they had been killed by a speeding car.
In that time, we also have had 3 cats, who lasted from 2 to 13 years, Tommy, Sylvester and Sneakers, who took the dogs in stride. For the first time since my husband and I have been together, since 1985, we are without dogs. It is just our 11 year old stripey kitty Tigger now, who wanders around tonight wondering where that loudmouth dog sister of his is.
I am sad, but also satisfied, we dedicated a lifetime to rescued animals, and our cats too, all were and are orphans. It has been an exhausting, loving, rewarding, heartbreaking journey. Yara will sit in my heart like a deep wound, she was so much like me, strong, proud, hurt, denied, redeemed. I hope there is a place where her spirit can run free, strong, and where she can revisit the times and people that loved her so very much and will miss her, always.
Trudi Ralston
" A society can be measured by the way it treats its animals." Mahatma Gandhi.
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