Good Bye Good Dog

Not feeling good.

We had to let Morgan go today. She has been such a loving, wonderful force in our family but we knew around the holidays that she wasn't well. She was so, so skinny, sleeping a ton and developed a wheezing when she breathed and an epic cough when she'd move around. The vet confirmed our worse fears...the big C. She had a tumor in her lung that was inoperable. So we started figuring out how to make her life amazing, while at the same time absorbing the fact that she was going to be leaving us.

Twelve and a half years ago, we were blessed with a little 4-legged angel. It was 2001 and I had finally talked Scott into getting a dog. He just had a short list of requirements: no barking, short hair, not hyper, loves water, mellow (did I mention, not hyper?) and under 60 pounds. That's a pretty tough list. But I figured it out...the Rhodesian Ridgeback! Ridgebacks are African lion hunting dogs who have a mohawk down their back, and they fit all of those qualifications.

She had a great month of love and all she could eat and I hope that was the cherry on a really great life. We knew it was time: she was sleeping constantly, would not eat anything,  and even a good butt scratch didn't get her to lift her head. So we let her go to dog heaven today. It was peaceful and right and loving. But I can't remember the last time I cried so much or was so emotional. It's so hard to let this sweet love that gave so much to us go away. I know we will miss her miss forever.  I guess that's not unusual but it is so, so hard.

Baby Morgan with her namesake. I picked the dog, Scott picked the name.

For those who don't know, at the time I had just been diagnosed with colon cancer and we were newly married. Like new-new. But Scott and my parents figured a dog would help with the healing process and so they found this cute little puppy in southern Missouri. She was supposed to fly to SLC on September 11th at the ripe old age of 8 weeks. I ended up in the hospital on the morning of 9/11 with what turned out to an abscess. And because of all the crazy flight restrictions after the 9/11 tragedy, our new puppy could not make her journey to Utah.

Little puppy traveling to the Wasatch Marine service center where she hung out during the days.

Luckily, Becky was a Delta flight attendant at the time and she pulled some strings and flew to Arkansas to pick Morgan up. Her puppy parents got up at 2am and drove her for hours to make the flight and then Becky brought her to her new home, not quite first class but pretty close. I was completely surprised and Morgan was just a love from day one. She would snuggle on my chest and sleep with me, and lick my face with her little puppy breath. Unfortunately over the next couple of months I was in the hospital more than I was home and Scott was always with me there, or at work, so Morgan had a life on the road, staying with grandparents, friends, our roomie, hanging with Scott at work, or sneaking into the hospital in a duffel bag to visit.

Me and Aunt Tiff with our girls. Never under-rate couch snuggling with your dog.

All of that traveling made her a little nervous about being mobile. She HATED car rides and every time we took her to Lake Powell we had to give her "sleepy cheese" - sedatives tucked into string cheese -  to calm her nerves. Sometimes 2, 3 or 4 times the dosage because she was just so nervous, shaking and panting. Once we got to the lake, she loved to play in the water and the waves. She would swim after ducks until we thought she'd drown, so we got her a life jacket. She would chase kids playing in the lake, barking like crazy. She almost always slept on the bed or the couch and she loved to bake in the sun. She loved to have her butt scratched, in kind of a weird, creepy way where she'd back right up on your knee with this look of ecstasy on her face, almost like a cat.

Dad loves!

Morgan was about 3 when she met her new best friend, Alice - Tiff's dog. They were such great friends and loved to romp around, race around and wrestle. I almost can't bear to think about the next time Alice comes over looking for her and she's not here.

Morgan and Alice playing the chase game. They were tied at last count.

And then they slept. On the bed. The white bed.

Sun bathing.

Morgan and Alice in their last joint photo.

Morgan was always independent. If we didn't have time to take her for a walk, she'd take herself. She would sneak right out the door and head out for a little jaunt around the neighborhood, pretending like she couldn't hear us hollering her name. I remember one of the first times we took her for walk and some ladies said very loudly, "I can't believe someone would do that to a dog." I think she thought we shaved the mohawk in on purpose or something.

Morgan loves her dad. Kisses, kisses.

Me and Morgan at Lake Powell, one of our favorite places to hang out and just be "dogs."

Morgan was a trooper when the kids invaded her life. She was so patient with them picking at her face, taking her food, sitting on her, crawling on her, and generally bugging the crap out of her. She didn't get quite as much love and attention once the 2-legged children joined the family but as always she was patient and loving and fabulous. And she would always get them back by sleeping on their beds, or sneaking their treats. We told them she's now in dog heaven and read them a great book about it. I'm not sure they totally get what happened and that's probably okay.

Hanging on the bow with the new baby.

Tagg loved to hug Morgan. He also like to sit on her. And Sloane loved to give her treats.

Morgan snuggling up on Sloane's new princess bed. She does love these kids.

She wasn't always sure what to thing about these new additions but she loved and protected them, and never snapped once.

I miss Morgan so much it hurts. I know she had a great life, and she was more than ready to go. But that doesn't make it any easier. We loved her and hugged her and kissed her head as she pulled her last breath...and now she can rest and enjoy the dog heaven we read about where she can run and chase ducks and eat treats and play with the kids and nap in the sun. I know she'll be watching over us. And I know we'll always have her with us.

Her favorite to way to ride on the big boat. Better if Scott was sitting in the driver's seat.

We had to dress her up at least once. Tagg's first birthday and she got the crown. For surviving.

Yeah, we made her tube with us. She was not a fan.

dr. mom to the rescue

As a parent, I'm finding that you also have to be a bit of a doctor-slash-private investigator to keep your kids healthy. Every so often I *know* something is not quite right with my kids. It takes me awhile to figure it out but thanks to my mom-friends, the inter-webs, and the teachers at our school I FINALLY put all the pieces together and figure out what's wrong. Today was a great case in point. 

Sloane has had a runny nose since November. We thought it was a cold, although she didn't have a fever or any other symptoms. It was cold season, after all, so that seemed obvious. Around this time, she also developed a weird bad-breath thing. No matter how much we brushed her teeth, she had this sweet yet stanky quality to her breath. I did a bunch of online research so when we took her to the pediatrician the first time, we mentioned the symptoms and asked them to test her for early onset diabetes. Test, negative. Antibiotics, prescribed. And things seemed to get better. 

A few weeks later, the runny nose was back with the congestion. The bad breath, back. Maybe worse. Back to the doctor. More antibiotics. Symptoms went away again, and as soon as the antibiotics were done, the symptoms came right back. Off we went to the pediatrician... again. He suggests nasal steroids since we don't want to overdose on the antibiotics, so we squirted stuff up Sloane's nose twice a day and brushed her teeth like 5 times a day to get rid of the epic bad breath. And things got better, for awhile. But a few days after her treatment was over, the toddler bad breath was back along with the stuffy nose and congestion. And we were stumped...At this point we were thinking allergies, chronic halitosis, or diabetes, or worse

On Friday, Sloane's teacher mentioned the 800lb stinky gorilla in the room. Sloane's breath is now the brunt of mockery in the class. Sloane is the "stinky girl." Luckily, our teacher had a relative whose daughter had similar symptoms. The diagnosis? She had shoved something up her nose. Foreign object in the nose = infected = sweet stinky breath = DUH!!! 

After a little online research and a 2-hour visit to Instacare today, yep...little miss Sloane had a "foreign object" lodged WAY up her nose. It was the size of an olive. A really stinky, bloody, gross and disgusting olive. The doctor thought it was some kind of styrofoam thing. Later, Tagg piped up and said it was Playdoh. Really?! This would have been good information to have while we were at the doctor's office instead of his running commentary about how much blood they were sucking out of Sloane's nose.

So, note to all you parents out there. If your kid has a runny nose, bloody nose, stuffy nose, congestion with no cold symptoms plus bad, stinky breath, take them to doctor and ask them to look for a foreign object shoved up their nose! There is probably corn or a cotton ball or a Lego stuck up in there. Or Playdoh.

The least gross, painful, sad, awful photo from our Doctor extraction extravaganza. She was such a brave, courageous littletrooper. But, yeah, this sucked (pun intended). Big time!

So what I'm saying is...this parenting thing is confusing! And hard. And kind of technical. And sometimes you don't figure it out right away and then you feel like an ass for not figuring it out sooner. But I think as long as you're trying and caring and doing your best, you're alright. And I hope nobody else has to see that nasty, gross nasal olive. Ever. So good luck, mamas and dadas everywhere! We'll figure this out.