For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been forming a plan in our minds to say goodbye to Gizmo mid-September. We’ve been coming to terms with the idea that we have less than a month left with him, and have been determined to make the most of it. Well, you can make all the plans you want, but things aren’t always going to play out that way. Our plans were thrown out this weekend.
Thursday night Gizmo was just as restless as he had been the past couple of weeks. We were all pretty tired Friday, but I powered through work. I’d planned a Labor Day backpacking trip with friends a while back and decided that I would still go even though I haven’t been sleeping well and we only have a few more weeks with Gizmo. I’ve been spending every waking moment with him and would continue to do so when I returned. A couple of nights away with my friends in nature would be good for my mental health. Colin and Gizmo would have a boys’ weekend, and I know Colin would give Gizmo extra cuddles for me. I packed up Friday evening with Gizmo supervising and happily chewing away on a bone.
I left early on Saturday. My friends and I drove a few hours to the Olympic forest area then hiked up and set up camp. I didn’t know this at the time, but Colin later told me that Gizmo got very depressed almost immediately after I left. Colin spent a lot of time cuddling with Gizmo, and he felt like Gizmo has only been powering through day after day for me. Gizmo’s demeaner that day made Colin start to feel the guilt of keeping him going and it was a pivotal moment for him coming to terms with the decision to let Gizmo go. Colin actually planned to raise the question of accelerating our schedule even more to me once I got back based on how this day went.
On Sunday morning, September 1, 2024, I woke up and joked with my friends that I’d just had the best night’s sleep I’ve gotten in weeks. Then I checked my InReach. Colin messaged me that Gizmo had fallen off the bed and hurt his paw, they had just arrived at the emergency vet, and I needed to come home as soon as I could. I just immediately started sobbing, and a friend came to sit with me in my tent and hugged me for a little while. Colin had slept on my side of the bed so that Gizmo could sleep in the position he’s used to, but it didn’t matter. Colin woke up to a thud. In true Gizmo fashion, he didn’t even complain. He just looked at Colin like “help me back up” but when Colin went to get him up, he noticed Gizmo wasn’t putting weight on his back right paw and it was starting to swell. He thought, “oh no – don’t you dare make me call mom off the mountain. I had one job this weekend!” But it isn’t his fault. Gizmo fell off when sleeping with me a few weeks ago, too. That dog doesn’t have a strong sense of self-preservation and body space awareness, and he has really been wanting to sleep on the bed. I’m just glad I left Colin the car so he was able to get Gizmo to the hospital quickly. Of course, that meant I didn’t have a way to get to him on my own after I hiked out. I first thought that Colin could pick me up since it would take him the same number of hours to drive to the trailhead as it would take me to hike out, but we still didn’t really know what was wrong with Gizmo and he couldn’t leave the hospital yet. I didn’t want to make anyone else end the trip early and a friend offered to let me borrow her car. In the end, another friend decided she had plenty to do at home and wouldn’t mind hiking out a day earlier, so we packed up and hiked out together and she drove me home. I called Colin on the way as soon as I was back in cell service range. Colin still didn’t have an answer to what was wrong with the leg yet, but they had also detected some neurological symptoms. I knew that this was the case since he’s been rolling his paws when he walks and wasn’t responding to all stimuli at his physical therapy appointments lately. The vets just ran some tests while he was there and confirmed that it was due to some degeneration in his spine. Colin and I both knew that there were only two options on the table at this point:
- If the ankle is broken: we have to go to the hospital to say goodbye and have them euthanize him there. He only really has a few good weeks left to live with everything else going on and we couldn’t justify another surgery at this point, especially with him on chemo and having a weakened immune system.
- If the ankle isn’t broken and it’s just soft tissue damage: we can bring him home and make him comfortable, but need to call Lap of Love to schedule his at-home euthanasia for the coming days. We’re out of time. His body is shutting down and we’re very quickly going to reach more bad than good days if we don’t act.
All we could do was hope that the leg wasn’t broken so the end could be on our terms. We hadn’t crossed everything off his bucket list. We wanted to have a peaceful transition at home for him, not a traumatic and sudden end in a hospital. Maybe we could get a little bit of luck in an otherwise shitty situation.
Colin got the news that the leg wasn’t broken and made it home with Gizmo before I did, and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief. When I got home, Gizmo tried to get up to come greet me and yelped in pain. We rushed to stop him from getting up and I cuddled him where he was. I was glad to see he was still in a good mood and demanding his cuddles. That dog loves me more than himself, and will do literally anything to be with me. He’ll keep pushing through as long as I let him. He isn’t going to be the type of dog that tells me he’s done. He never has been. He’s the only Berner I know that doesn’t stubbornly stop and refuse to walk despite the fact he has more reason to do so with all his ailments than any other Berner I know. If I am walking, he’s going to walk too. He’s never told me his limits; I had to learn them myself and be the one to stop him before he hurt himself many times. This will be no different.
After a shower, Colin and I cuddled up with Gizmo and gave Lap of Love a call. I cried on the phone as we scheduled his appointment for Tuesday. We’d have the rest of today and all day Monday to cuddle and spoil him before having to say goodbye. We got him a Dick’s cheeseburger for dinner and cuddled up while watching tv the rest of the day. Gizmo got up and hobbled to the bedroom around 9pm making it quite clear he was ready for it to be bedtime, so we went to bed early with him. Despite falling off the night before and having to go to the vet, Gizmo was very excited to get back up on the bed again. He slept between us so he couldn’t fall off again.
Every time I start to cry, Gizmo just tosses himself at my face and insists I love on him. He makes me smile and laugh and is such a comfort through hard times. I’m not sure how I’m going to get through this really hard one without him, but for now we’re going to make his last moments the best we can and be happy.