“Big Dog”

July 7, 2019

Today is my wife’s mother’s birthday.  Nell is 85 years old.  Dorothy and Hannah took her a special cake to celebrate.  She said that this was one of the nicest birthday cakes she had every received.  It had blue, pink and green flowers made of buttercream on top, from a fine local bakery, Strossner’s.  The piece I shared last evening was delicious.  We are all happy that Nell is so happy on her birthday and we pray she has many more.

Thinking about birthdays reminded me that my daughter’s Great Dane, Finn, is 2.5 years old.  He has been a delight to us all.  He has a good and generous heart, except regarding his food, which he does not share, but otherwise he has no faults which I can find.  He is a beautiful gray color and has a long droopy face, long nose and long legs.  I have found he particularly likes to have his ears rubbed, which I try to do at least once or twice a day.

Over the past few weeks I have been staying up with Finn most of the night.  The heart specialist veterinarian in Charleston, where Hannah and Dorothy took him last week placed him on 125mg of Lasix three times daily, after three days reduced to twice daily.  At the time he started these meds he had fluid building up in his lungs. He is on another heart med to help contractility, plus Spironolactone and Lisinopril.  With this amount of medications and diuretic he urinates a great deal, after which he drinks a great deal of water.  About every 2-3 hours he needs to be let out to release a lot of fluid edema through his urine, which he does to protect his heart.  The cardiologist said his left ventricle is extremely enlarged and the right atria also.  The fluid builds up in the lungs as the heart works hard to compensate for the dilated ventricle and makes it difficult for him to breathe.  This is called in both humans and in dogs congestive heart failure.

You have by this time surmised that our dog Finn does not have too long to live.  Three different veterinary doctors have told us in a sudden burst of excitement while playing or running or on some other occasion the heart might simply give out and he will die suddenly.  Is there any cure?  No, except for a heart transplant, which are not done in dogs.  Is he suffering at the moment?  No, as long as his fluid is managed he eats, lives and plays well, but in the heat he can easily tire.  Are we upset?  Yes, horribly.  Hannah cried most all day on the day after coming home from Australia.  She had exams in the Vet School so we did not tell her the bad news until she got home.  What are we going to do?  The same thing we are doing every day, dosing his medications, letting him play, providing affection and a safe home and watchful waiting.

Hannah flies back to Australia on Wednesday, so we are glad she has been able to spend the last three weeks with him and with us.  Finn went with us to the beach and spend a week enjoying Kiawah.  He got to see for the first time the ocean, then his first deer.  He played with Hannah on the beach and had his photo taken more than one time. The cardiologist said, “Do not to attribute human emotions to an animal. Finn lives in today and today is all he knows,” she said.  He knows that he is loved, housed, fed and shown affection and on many occasions he gets to play. These are the things we can provide for him.

I have often considered myself to be an objective person, managing my emotions on most occasions, except when my mother died.  Over the years I have performed funerals for many of my own family group, have worked for years with hospice, witnessed deaths of my patients and my friends, and sometimes participated with a patient or friend in his or her dying hours.  In this instance, I have lost my objectivity.  I have not been able even to write a story for weeks.  I only managed to do one article when I became upset about something in our government.  There is sadness in our home.  I cannot explain it.  It is hard waiting for death to make its way among us.  I normally do not allow myself to get close to an animal, since on the farm when I was a child we ate most everything we raised.  I have never had a dog or a cat until my wife and daughter brought these into our home.  I simply find the emotion all too difficult to deal with. I spend my life fighting against death.  I have come to hate death in most every form and so I fight against it for my patients for as long as I reasonably can.

I remember a long time ago when a young child came to me and asked me this question:  “Will there be dogs in heaven?  My dog died and I want him to be in heaven with me.”  I told him that I was sure Jesus would do the right thing and if he wanted a dog in heaven, I was sure his dog would be there, too.  I wonder now about this same question.  There are no definitive scriptures that says animals like dogs are going to be in heaven, except perhaps where God says, “There shall be a new heaven and a new earth!”  So I might assume that all parts of creation will be made new again, perhaps even a beloved dog.  But then someone will say, “What about all the animals which are not loved?”  And I will respond, “I really don’t know for sure.”

Perhaps, and this is a rather big ‘perhaps’, the love which we carry within ourselves and the memories of persons and creatures we have loved are what make us eternal.  Perhaps it is only the love for God and for one another we get to keep.  Perhaps, instead of loving less because we are afraid of someone dying and leaving us, we should actually love much more!  Perhaps by entering into love deeply we permanently fix that person as part of our being, as part of us, part of our eternal being which God resurrects on the last day.  If we have loved deeply and made our dog part of us, then perhaps he will be with us, too.

I have no way of knowing this, of course.  But there are a lot of things I have no way of knowing.  This may finally be one of those things.  In any case, the promise of God is that we will be full of God’s glorious presence and we will be complete in Him, knowing ourselves and others fully, even as now we are fully known.  And now abide faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love, the love God has for us and the love we have for God in Jesus Christ our Lord (I Corinthians 13).

Perhaps, the one thing we can know for sure is that we are truly loved by our God who sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for the salvation and redemption of us all.  That is one thing we can know!  That is the most important thing we can know.  And if we know only this one thing, that will be enough, I think, for us all! Amen.

Bill Wilson, servant of God by God’s grace and mercies.