Gus is running with Drake tonight. My heart is broken and I’m not sure how it can be true that I’ll never see this toothy grin looking up at me again. I’m heartbroken. Heartbroken this happened so fast. Out of the blue. Heartbroken we didn’t get to have him pass in the comfort of his own home. Heartbroken it’s fucking frozen outside and I can’t bury him under the Death Tree on the farm. Heartbroken because 2 years wasn’t long enough.
If you ever see an ugly shelter dog that just tugs at your heart, listen to it. Take him home. You won’t regret it for a second. We may have only loved him for 2 years but it felt like forever. I wish it could have been forever. He was truly one of the best.
(And while I’ve loathed social media the last few weeks, tonight I’m so thankful that it connects me with so many wonderful people. Thank you friends in the veterinary field who urged me to take Gus in. The emergency vet did an ultrasound and found 3 tumors- 2 on his spleen and one on his liver. Hemagiosarcoma. With surgery he could have lived a few more months. One (or more) of the tumors were bleeding into his abdomen. He would have died at home, slowly bleeding out internally, and in pain. I’m so fucking thankful for you. And while the outcome wasn’t what I wanted, I’m thankful we could let him go in peace.
Gus’s story
This morning hurts. I want to share Gus’s story.
In November of 2019 I saw this sad, snaggle tooth face on the Detroit Animal Shelter Facebook page. His eyes spoke to me. I knew there was something special about him immediately. We didn’t need another dog- we had 3 already, but something about this dirty white dog with big eyes and a snaggle tooth underbite told me he needed us. (And really I think it turned out to be we needed him more than he needed us). We had intended for Gus to be Porters dog. But he ended up capturing the hearts of everyone he met.
Porter and I drove an hour to Detroit to meet “Davul” (his name at the shelter) and when we arrived we were told he was in quarantine for kennel cough and we couldn’t see him. But we could take a look around at other dogs available. We looked around, but knew this one was ours. We drove the hour back home, being told we needed to wait 2 weeks to come back when he was out of quarantine. I called two more times in the next week, inquiring about him, and finally got someone to tell me they’d possibly let me adopt him if we came up and had a plan to keep him quarantined at home. I took the risk of being told no again once I got there, but drove an hour again and finally got someone to take me to the very back of the run down, overcrowded shelter to a dark row of kennels being a huge, dirty laundry “garage” where they kept the quarantined dogs. The minute he came out, I knew he was going home with us. (Continued in next post)
When we got Gus home, he was unneutered, had horrible breath, an awful kennel cough and was underweight. We kept him in our heated pole barn to isolate from the other dogs, rubbing RC, Peppermint snd Lavender on his chest multiple times a day to help with his cough. When we were ready to introduce him to the other dogs, we weren’t sure what to expect. We knew nothing about him and had no idea his true personality. Thankfully he was great with the other dogs, although we had to work with him on not chasing the cats. After the first night inside, he was marking in the house (he was still intact). I immediately got him into a vet the next day to be neutered. At that appointment, we found out he had a mast cell tumor on his leg (which was removable but could be life threatening) a heart murmur, an enlarged prostate and many teeth that were broken, accessed and infected. He needed a lot of love. But we were willing and ready. He already had our hearts.
After his tumor removal and neutering (all of which was terrifying because we were warned anesthesia could kill him if he had a heart murmur), our next hurdle was to have his teeth taken care of. We had to take him to a vet that specialized in teeth and it turned out he had 2 severely accessed teeth, a large tooth in the back that was cracked straight up the middle and needed a total of 10 teeth removed. How long had this baby lived with this? How long had he been in pain? I cried dropping him off for his appointment because it was Covid Year and I couldn’t go in with him. As the vet walked him away from my car he kept looking back at me with his big eyes and all I could think was he worried I was abandoning him. (Continued)
As quickly as we found him, he settled into our hearts and our home. We never allowed our big dogs on the couch it we couldn’t tell Gus no. He immediately became like Velcro to me. Like seriously. If someone else was putting the dogs outside and Gus was by me, he would refuse to leave my side. When I’d go to the bathroom or be behind any closed door, he would press his nose firmly to the crack under the door and sniff so hard it was ridiculous sounding. Everyone who spend any time around him loved him. He had a the best facial expressions snd we always “talked” for him in the dumbest voice, but it fit him so well.
He wasn’t with us for long, but it really felt like he’d always been with us. And I thought we had years more with him. The kids have been begging for a puppy and we told them when Duncan passes (he’s 13, and getting around on 3 legs is getting harder and harder foe him) that we’d get a puppy. We never imagined Gus would be the first to go. We lost Drake, who was very much my shadow, in 2020 and that was really really hard…. we’d had him for 5 years and deciding to euthanize him was so awful- it wasn’t urgent but he was losing mobility in his hips and some days couldn’t walk, but I wanted him to go with dignity. And that was so hard. But Gus… damn it there was something so special about him. This feels ten times harder.
I’m going to miss squeezing his wrinkles under his neck. Hearing him snore so freaking loud. His underbite and snaggle tooth. I’ll miss hearing his snorts and deep breaths under the doors when he’s trying to find me. I’ll miss him pushing open the barn door to the bathroom when I am showering even though it was so annoying. I’ll miss his little groan as he would settle in to sleep after curling into a ball. I’ll miss that perfect divot between his eyes and nose that fit a kiss so perfectly. I’m going to miss seeing is big eyes looking up at me. I’m going to miss seeing the kids with him, him following us into the school room, laying in their forts, following me to my office to sleep on the couch while I work. Damn it. We should have had more time.
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