Digging BeeBee’s Grave

I was thinking about my dad when I was digging BeeBee’s grave. He was a great nature lover, but he was the last person you’d want around if you found a chipmunk mangled by a cat or a bird with a broken wing. He’d get so overwhelmed by emotion that the animal would pass from critical condition to beyond hope before the objective part of his brain started to work again.

Because the two of us were so much alike in many ways, I had to practice long and hard as a veterinary student not to let my emotions get the best of me, too. It still isn’t easy, but most of the time I manage to hold it together long enough in those really tough cases to objectively analyze what’s going on, how best to address it, and get the job done. Only after it’s over do I allow myself to break down.

It  hasn’t worked that way with Bee. When problems arose recently, I vowed I’d make a list of all of her existing and potential problems before I called a friend who’s a shelter director about finding a new home for her, and I did. But with each new addition, I realized that the probability of finding someone willing and able to do all I’ve done to give Bee the semblance of a normal life these past two years was about nil. That made me cry. The probability of finding someone who could detect, let alone correctly interpret her unique body language lexicon to pick up subtle signs of change was even less likely. That made me cry even more. Until I made the list, I  didn’t realize creating a semblance of a normal Beebee had required more than 35 years of veterinary and ethological knowledge and a semi-solitary lifestyle in an environment that was, for the most part, amazingly well-suited to the special needs of a deaf, brain damaged dog with multiple physical problems, any one of which could blow up at any moment. The awareness that even that wasn’t enough made me cry harder still.

I knew that reaching adulthood would be Bee’s Rubicon. The fact that she apparently believed herself to be a 100% mentally and physically normal corgi had served us well when she was younger. It resulted in an indefatigable joie de vivre and can-do spirit worthy of a Marine recruiting poster. Although I don’t  think she realize it (or cared if she did), her mind was enabling her body to be much, much more than it should have been.

But when Bee reached 2, that same mind worked against her because it told her that 5-year-old Frica should cede rank to her. From the beginning the other animals have been aware of Bee’s limitations and learned to read her foreign body language and tolerate her rough play and the occasionally accidental, but none the less painful, encounter with the teeth in her grossly misshapen jaw. But Fric ceding her job to Bee would be like Hilary Clinton ceding hers to Helen Keller. To the normal canine mind, there was no reason to do this.

BeeBee couldn’t accept that. Her attempts to signal rank over Fric became more intense and unpredictable with that wonky jaw of hers being the ever-present potentially lethal wild card. This week she launched a sneak attack on Fric and attempted to grab her by the muzzle. This time one of her wayward fangs slammed into Fric’s lower jaw and bent her incisors sufficiently that they had to be removed. Given Bee’s intensity and that she weighs twice as much as Frica, it was a miracle that Fric’s jaw wasn’t broken.

At that point I knew that Bee had crossed the Rubricon, determined to assume what would have been her rightful place had her body been as normal as her mind. But it’s not and the result is taking its toll on all of us, a toll that can only get higher the longer it goes on. While the little dogs and the cat stay out of Bee’s way, she increasing alarm barks and charges at something none of the other animals acknowledge as real. The celebratory zoomies that use to have all three dogs racing around the house or yard playing tag have been replaced by intense, short charges back and forth as if  she’s not sure what she wants, to play or to attack. Because of her increasingly unusual signals, none of the animals want anything to do with her and that frustrates her even more.

By the time I finished the list, I knew that the only answer was euthanasia. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone with rescue-itis taking her, convinced that how good she looked couldn’t take that much time and effort for someone with a lot of love to give. I didn’t want her to go to some well-meaning but naive person like my dad, only to have her or someone else get hurt because they let their guard down for just a minute, or because they just couldn’t believe that such a sweet dog wouldn’t like their Aunt Harriet’s peek-a-poo.

No. Far better Bee and I should make that final journey together later this morning and that I somehow manage, once again, to hold it together long enough to see her on her way to what I hope is better place.

For all I observed and interacted with Bee during our relatively short but transforming time together, I never was able to grasp what her reality was no matter how hard I tried. At most, all I had were glimpses of it. She taught me that sometimes words are useless and that hand signals aren’t much better. And those special times when we connected on a level I’d never connected with any animal before, I realized she made me a lot more than I ever thought I’d be, too.

After I bury Bee, I’m planting a large pulmonaria from another part of the garden over her grave.  Maybe this fall, but definitely next spring it will produce flowers that are half blue and half pink, a fitting monument to a dog who tried so hard to live in two different worlds at once.

Bee last Christmas