On Friday my Beavis got very sick. He was shivering constantly so hard his little body was just vibrating. He woudn’t eat or even drink. I took him to my room and put him in the bed under the covers with me when I got home from work. I was reading my book and his shivering and trembling stopped as he fell asleep. After a few minutes he started trembling again and I pulled the blanket back to see what was wrong and there was blood everywhere. His nose was bleeding badly. I grabbed a towel and held it to his nose and it stopped after a few minutes.
He continued to have nose bleeds all through the night. My dad sat up with him all night long and just held him. Saturday morning my parents took him to the animal hospital. They put him on antibiotics and fluids and said they wanted to keep him over the weekend and do tests. They wanted to do xrays as well but to do that they needed to sedate him and he wasn’t stable enough for that at the time. The hope was that they would stabilize him enough to do the xrays and run more tests.
I had to go out of town for work on Sunday afternoon but I wanted to go see him first. The animal hospital let me take him out for his walk to use the bathroom and I got to sit with him and hold him and pet him and talk to him for about an hour before I finally had to leave. I told him that I loved him and I’d see him in a couple of days. He cried when I left and I did too.
Monday morning around five in the morning the animal hospital called to tell my parents that he was getting worse. His nose had been bleeding throughout the night and they couldn’t get it to stop. He had lost a lot of blood. His kidneys were failing and he just wasn’t strong enough to fight it anymore.
Mama and Daddy went to get him and take him to our vets office where they put him on some pain medicine and told my parents they didn’t think he was going to make it. They think that he had a tumor in his sinus cavity which ruptured and filled his little body with poison. It was essentially inoperable even if he had been strong enough to handle the sedation and the surgery. Mama held him and talked to him until he stopped breathing. They took him home and let Junebug see him and say goodbye before taking him to the pet funeral home for cremation.
He was my Beavis for 11 years. I loved that dog like nothing else. I can’t explain it. For some of you I know I don’t have to. He was a member of the family just as much as anyone else. And now I’ll mourn him as if anyone else had died. I know he’s better off, not in pain or suffering anymore and I’m glad about that. But it doesn’t make it hurt any less in the end.
He was a good dog, a good friend. He loved us all unconditionally. I’ll miss him.
