Saying Goodbye to Champ

To set the record straight, I didn’t want a dog. It’s not that I don’t love dogs – I really do. And, with a few exceptions, they seem to love me too (and dogs DO have a sense for who does and doesn’t like dogs, and who is “worthy” of their affection).

No, the war that I had been waging against my youngest son and his ally in this test of will, my wife, was never about whether I liked/loved/would enjoy having a dog around the house. After all, it was another dog, Katie the Springer spaniel, that had likely played an instrumental role in Leslie and I making the jump from friends that dated into lovers and life partners. My reluctance (and for the longest time outright refusal) was all about lifestyles.

We were a busy family of four. Leslie had a private physical therapy practice that she worked in and ran, I had a full time job at an electronics firm that frequently required me to work overtime, and both boys were active in school as well as in a myriad of extracurricular activities. Leslie was an always willing volunteer with school and charity organizations, and in addition to coaching one or both boys in soccer, I was also the president of the local youth club that they played in.

And the travel. As much as our schedules, vacation time, and our budget would allow (and truth be told we didn’t let that last one have as much influence as we probably should have) we liked to get away and do fun things. When the boys were younger that often meant spending long days, or even weeks a scant hour’s drive away in the domain of The Mouse That Rules Central Florida! In addition to the trips to enlighten and entertain our offspring we also took at least one week each year for a trip without them, to give us time to reconnect, or at least to avoid disconnecting from each other.

Between our busy schedules and travel we didn’t spend a whole lot of awake time at home, as our barely maintained yard and house could bear witness to. I didn’t think that was the right environment for introducing a new family member – one who would require, and had every right to, a lot of care, attention, and most of all, time! It was a very valid and logical argument, and it served me well, and in fact was the final word on the subject.

For a while.

A young boy, especially a determined one, can be quite influential. Persistence was Jason’s greatest weapon in this battle of wills. I had him dead to rights logic wise, and he was a very smart kid. I don’t know if this was something he picked up from his parents (reference the budget vs. travel comment from above) or was inherently his nature, but he wanted a dog in his heart much more than all of the reasons he knew in his head that it wasn’t an ideal situation for him to get one put together.

Eventually he wore down his mother and she defected from my side to his. At that point it became a matter of time. It was no longer if, but when, and the best play that I had left was to try and impose some restrictions and conditions, if not to manage the situation, at least to save some face.

Some of these conditions were to make our transition back to being a dog family again (Jason was just an infant when Katie was last with us) smoother, and some of them were to test his resolve. The latter should never have been a concern. He did all of the required reading on dog training, and pledged his commitment from both time and financial aspects. Jason would have to pay a certain percentage of all costs, including vet bills, out of his own funds. He was, and remains today a very frugal person, so his willingness to part with his hard earned money only underscored how much he wanted this to happen.

I retained a shred of (imagined) dignity and authority by insisting on having the final say on the breed of our soon to be new pet. I had recently read the book “Marley and Me” and we have good friends that had only the year before added a Labrador puppy to their household, so I was already leaning in that direction. All of the reading we had done portrayed them as intelligent, gentle, and displaying many other traits that would seem to make them an ideal match for what we were looking for.

 I would be remiss if I didn’t add that despite doing what I thought was exhaustive and comprehensive research, there was still a “gotcha” in it for me. After our experience with Katie, our aforementioned Springer spaniel, I was delighted at the prospect of not having a long haired dog, as her fur ended up everywhere in our house. All lab owners will be able to attest to how that joke was certainly on me!

We wanted to be able to present his new puppy to Jason on his birthday in March, so the hunt began. We had been advised to avoid the “puppy mill” dogs as one would see in stores at the mall, so we sought out a reputable breeder, and eventually were put in contact with a woman in south Florida that fit the bill, and that was expecting a litter that would be ready to be placed in homes in or about our preferred timeframe.

[NOTE: If we had known then what we know now, we would have likely sought out a puppy that we could rescue from a shelter. While there is no shame in buying a pet from a proper breeder there are untold numbers of fine animals in dire need of a loving home. Live and learn.]

The puppies were born in January. Soon thereafter Leslie and Jason took a “hooky day” from work and school to make the three hour drive south to see them. Jason fell in love with the only male in the litter, and that one was designated as “his”.

There was at least one other subsequent trip down south for a visit before the long anticipated day when he could come to his new home. The house had been readied, and Cutie, our veteran adopted stray housecat certainly had to wonder what all of the fuss, excitement, and new stuff was about.

Now the pressure to settle on a name for our new bundle of joy was ratcheted up. According to all of our research, he would need to have consistency in what we called him in order to learn everything we wanted to teach him, and while many suggestions for his moniker had been bandied about over the last few weeks, none had felt “just right”. Names of family members, sports heroes, traditional pet names, characters from movies and books had all been proffered and had all been summarily rejected.

Leslie, Jason, and the pup made a stop at a convenience store on their way home from the breeder’s. While Leslie ran inside to get drinks, Jason cuddled with his new puppy and looked up at the sign over the entrance to the store.

“L’il Champ”  

It seemed right. And the fur ball’s floppy little ears perked up when Jason red it out loud. Champ he would be!

Lights in the driveway heralded the return of Leslie and Jason, and the arrival of the plushest and cutest little white fur ball that you could imagine. With the possible exception of Cutie, this little guy instantly had every member of the household wrapped around his…paw.

Despite all of my misgivings, trepidation, and (how could we forget?) logic, Champ soon became an integral and indispensable member of the family. Jason was diligent in his portion of his new best friend’s training, and the love between them was apparent. And how could you not love this bundle of cuteness? I’m sure that many friends of ours must have grown weary of how much we gushed over him at every occasion to do so.

We were worried about leaving him home alone at first, so when she could Leslie would take him to her office with her and playing with him would be the reward for the kids she treated for doing their work! Eventually her landlord opined that Champ was no therapy dog and therefore not allowed to be in the building – what did he know? He eventually assisted with therapy for many special needs children over the years at a variety of venues!

True to what we had read, Champ proved to be a very fast learner provided that we did our part by being firm and consistent. Predictably (and naturally I assume), Jason’s enthusiasm for being responsible for all of Champ’s needs eventually flagged a bit. All of the assurances that had been made to me during the “winning over” period that I would never have to take care of him (which I knew were well meant but impossible) soon proved to ring hollow.

While it’s not much fun to get up from what you’re doing (especially if you’re really busy or being really lazy) to attend to a puppy’s needs, I found that I didn’t mind doing this as much as I thought I would. In fact, I relished the opportunities for my one-on-one time with him. I was not at the top of his “people pyramid” but realized that I wanted to be within shouting distance of that spot.

Weeks turned into months, and months into years. By now Champ had become seamlessly integrated into the fabric of our family life. We had somehow managed to ­not neglect him while attending to our busy schedules. We included him when we could, found eager caretakers for him when we needed to, and learned that he could manage remarkably well on his own on the occasions when we had to leave him for a little longer than either of us would have liked. In short, he was a great pet, and a wonderful addition to our household.

I have a habit of saying something along the lines of “it’s the detours and things that don’t go as planned that makes for interesting stories”. Our time with Champ wasn’t without some of those.

In 2008, as Champ lay on the sofa while Leslie was watching the opening ceremonies to the Olympics, she noticed that he was breathing with what appeared to be some difficulty and drooling prodigiously.  A trip to the emergency veterinarian clinic didn’t yield many answers, but did confirm that he was in some trouble.

Eventually, after a few days and consultation with some local experts we learned that he suffered from a congenital condition that was not too uncommon in some smaller breeds, but was basically unprecedented in labs. He was missing most of the veins/arteries that feed his liver (only had one that was functioning) and as a result not only had that organ atrophied to one third of its intended size, but left him with a great deal of bile and toxic blood in his system that would normally be processed out.

The vet thought there was a chance that it could be corrected through surgery, but there were no guarantees. And it would be costly. You can’t put a price on the love you get from your fur babies, but I will admit that the estimated price tag for this experimental procedure made me gulp – hard! We had been making an effort to be more fiscally responsible and to shrink the pile of consumer debt we had allowed to accrue, and this would set us back, big time.

I laid there on the floor with our ill puppy, crying with sadness and the unfairness of it all. While I knew that it would be hard to justify the outlay to give him a chance (there’s that damned logic again) I also knew in my heart that he was no longer a hypothetical pet, he was Champ, a full fledged member of our family, and at only three years and change old, not to do anything and everything possible for him was out of the question. We made the appointment to take him to the surgical center on the following Monday.

The greatest gains come after fighting through adversity. The day before Champ’s scheduled surgery Tropical Storm Fay decided to pay us a visit. We loaded him into the car in a torrential downpour. There was very little traffic about and a number of traffic signals were also taking the day off as we made our way to the animal hospital. We breathed a sigh of relief upon discovering that not only were they open, but they had power. The thought of him undergoing this tenuous procedure during this severe weather, with all of its attendant contingencies did leave me a bit unsettled, but we didn’t have much choice at that point. It was an eerie ride home without him.

The fact that we were stuck inside on a miserable day only compounded the anxiety we had while we awaited word from the vet. Eventually we got the call saying that he had survived the surgery (which was not a given), and that we could come and see him the next day, although they would need to keep him there for a few days to ensure that he was properly monitored and had access to any acute care that he might need.

The ferocity of his wagging tail belied the passive look on Champ’s drugged face as we got to visit with him on the floor of one of the hospital’s treatment rooms. He had a large swath of fur shaved off, and a long line of stitches on his underbelly. The procedure had gone as well as could be expected, but only time would tell if the underlying problem had been corrected to the extent that he would lead a normal life.

We were happy to be able to pick him up and bring him home with us a few days later. The precautions he had to abide by while his wounds healed were going to be tough for a dog (and family!) as active as ours. Day by long day passed, and his energy level and demeanor improved. Soon the biggest problem was that he didn’t feel badly enough to warrant, in his mind at least, the restrictions placed upon his activities. Eventually he got a clean bill of health, and was back to being his old self.

Most, if not all dog owners believe that theirs are special. We are certainly no exception. Many times over we feel that his behavior vindicated our choice when deciding what breed of dog to welcome in to our family.

We followed the advice in one of the training manuals we had read up on to have him meet 100 different people during our first 100 days with him, and it paid off as he was never mean towards or violent with strangers. That said, his bark sounded fierce to discourage those that didn’t know him from prowling when we weren’t around.

Once his potty training was ingrained we marveled at how long he could and would “hold it”. Accidents in the house were very rare, and only happened when circumstances dictated him being left inside much longer than we had anticipated, and even then he acted as though he’d let us down, when in fact we felt bad at the thought of the poor boy trying to hang on until someone got home.

At one time Champ flirted with being a 100 pound dog. Despite his size he was unfailingly a gentle giant. On the few occasions we would take him to a local dog park, he would roll over on his back at the first approach by even the smallest dog in the park. Leslie was walking him on our street one time past a neighbor’s house where there were baby ducks in their front yard pond. We assumed that centuries of breeding as a retriever may have predisposed him to want to chase them or bring them to us. On the contrary as they curiously approached him he rolled over and let them sit on his belly!

When Champ would chase a ball or toy into a tight space, or enter a room where there was not enough space to turn around without bumping into something he would walk very slowly and carefully backwards until he was free and clear to turn.

He would bark every time a doorbell rang on television, but not always if our doorbell actually rang.

He would get quite excited and jump up and down when we stood, swayed, and sang “We Are The Boys” at the end of the 3^rd quarter when we’d watch Gator football games on TV. Even in his later years this would often see him being more active than usual.

Champ loved to swim and the muddy pond in our back yard routinely tested his willpower. He didn’t like the bath that always followed those forays into the pond, and given his size, coat, and disdain for baths, it wasn’t always convenient to let him go for a quick swim.

His favorite all time activity was chasing a thrown stick. If Jason, Shane, or myself threw it we had to chase him to try and get it back. He figured out pretty quickly that Leslie wasn’t as eager to chase him around as we were, so he would bring the stick back to her so that she could throw it for him again.

Champ had run of the house. We were “those people”. None of the furniture was off limits to him. When he was little Leslie couldn’t bear to leave him on the floor while we slept, and thought it was cute to have him in our bed at night, so when he was huge, he was less cute, but still in our bed at night!

As he got a little older Champ began suffering from seizures. They may have been a consequence of his earlier medical issues, but he was prescribed medication to control them and that became a part of his everyday life. He would still have an episode from time to time, but they were normally mild and didn’t last too long.

There were changes in store for him. When he was six years old Jason left for college. While there was never any doubt about the love between them, an active teenage boy doesn’t dote over his dog the way a twelve year old does over his new puppy, so that wasn’t a devastating blow to Champ, and their reunions when Jason came home for a visit were always joyous ones.

The seismic shift came a little later. Leslie moved to St. John. At first she came home every few weeks, but then the visits got fewer and further between. And little by little, things around the house were going away. It was  trickle at first, then at the end there were all kinds of new people coming over and leaving with some of our stuff.

Of course he had no way of knowing, but Champ was on his way to becoming an island dog. Leslie’s move was just the precursor for pulling up the family’s long standing roots in Melbourne and establishing a household in the Virgin Islands!

In late October of 2013 Leslie returned to the only home Champ had ever known and a couple of days later they, along with Shane, embarked upon a two airplane ride (Champ’s first) where I met them outside of luggage claim (judging by the greetings he was getting from people leaving Champ must have been a rock star on the flight) and put him in the car to catch the barge to St. John and eventually end his long travel day.

We often wondered that if Champ could talk, what he would have to say about the move. On the one hand, he was leaving behind the only home he had ever known. He had a large, flat, and grassy yard, a pond to swim in, and neighbors that knew and loved him. He had apparent truces with all of the other animals in the area, including ducks, squirrels, and rabbits who seemed to ignore his presence once they knew that he was not a threat.

He moved to a place with no carpet on the floor, where he had to walk up and down steps to go to the bathroom, where there was no air conditioning. He got attacked by a couple of dogs the first week in his new home (fortunately he wasn’t badly hurt) and there were strange new animals such as chickens and iguana everywhere!

We knew in our hearts that given the choice to stay behind without us, or to move to this new and strange place with us that he would choose the latter – at least that’s our story and we’re sticking with it. But we certainly knew that we’d never willingly leave him behind!

Soon Champ had adjusted to his new life. There were new and interesting roads to check out on his walks, and even new places to swim. Several times we would get in the car and drive to the ACC where another dog, Patches would join us for a walk.

Then she started coming over for sleepovers. And then one time she came over and never went back to the ACC. Champ was a big brother. It’s hard to say if he relished his new role or not, but at the very least he tolerated and adjusted to it. Being a shelter dog, Patches was very demanding of attention. Attention that Champ wasn’t used to sharing. But he seemed to understand, and as long as he wasn’t totally ignored (no chance!) he could live with the new arrangement.

And then it was time to move again. It was only across the island this time, so no planes were involved and there wasn’t as much stuff to deal with as there had been the last time. At the new place there was a lot more space, less traffic, no crowing roosters 24/7, and better breezes. There were still steps to go up and down outside the house and, for the first time, stairs inside as well. Those narrow winding stairs leading up to the bedrooms were just too tough for an ageing dog to negotiate, so Champ became a downstairs dog.

Champ was our alarm clock. For years he had been on a schedule where he would eat at 5:00AM and again at 5:00PM. As it neared either of those times he would get excited and let everyone know it. Leslie would usually get up and feed the dogs, then stay downstairs and either watch TV, fall back to sleep, or both. As soon as I started to make my way down the stairs the first thing I would hear, unfailingly, would be the thump of Champ’s wagging tail hitting the floor as he lay on his side at the bottom of the stairs waiting for me to come down and greet him.

Our boy was beginning to show his age. He had lost a good deal of weight, which given labs’ predisposition towards hip problems and the stairs he had to negotiate, was probably not entirely a bad thing. His hair had thinned and he didn’t display the energy level that he used to. We believe that the medical issues and surgeries he had when he was young likely had aged him a bit prematurely, and at 11 plus years old, he was no youngster by any measure.

He still had the same bright eyes, the same eagerness to greet and be greeted, and on occasion showed flashes of his youth. He still loved to swim when he was afforded the privilege, and when we took them for walks along the Leinster Bay trail he would often pull whomever held his leash toward the water as if to ask if he could go in for a dip.

I’ve heard it said that animals have a sense of a lot of things that surpass those of humans. Looking back, it seems that Champ may have known before any of us that his time was drawing near. While it was not uncommon for him to occasionally “butt in” when Patches was getting attention as if to say “how about me?, I noticed that Champ had recently sought me out to have his head scratched, belly rubbed, or to lick my face than he had in a long time.

We had openly wondered about his quality of life. He was more and more often having trouble getting up and down the stairs, and spent more time than usual sleeping. More than ever I found myself wishing that he could tell me what was going on, how he was feeling…

Leslie and I went off island for a few days and Jason agreed to come stay at our house and watch Champ. I’m sure that they both enjoyed spending more time together than they had been able to do for quite some time. The report when we got back was good but he did mention that Champ had a seizure that, by description, was longer lasting and more intense than any we had seen in a while.

A few days later I went to watch a friend of ours sing at a local hangout while Leslie stayed at home getting ready to go to work. She sent me a text to let me know that Champ had had another bad seizure. Shortly after I got home he had another one, and then another. These were scary. He lost all bladder control during them, and even when they had subsided his back legs would not work well enough so that he could stand, and he appeared to have lost his sight as well. I let Jason know what was going on and he drove across the island so that he could see him…just in case.

Champ was excited to see Jason but still couldn’t quite stand up, so we just laid there in the floor with him. By the time Leslie got home he was better, and was able to get up and walk around, although a little unsteadily. He seemed to be a different dog than the one that lay helpless on the floor just a couple of hours earlier. Was this an episode that he had just weathered? Leslie opted to stay downstairs with him overnight.

Early in the morning I was awoken by the sound of Champ yelping – a kind of cry that I don’t recall hearing from him ever before. I think he was trying desperately to get up but couldn’t. Leslie said that he had suffered several seizures during the night – of the severe variety. Champ was miserable – dehydrated, disoriented, and unable to perform the simplest of his everyday functions.

We knew what we had to do. We got him into the back of the car and drove him to the local animal clinic. The on duty veterinarian dutifully asked us if there were any measures that we wanted to try to see if we could moderate his symptoms, but I think she knew as well as we did that it was time to ease his pain for good.

Champ went out with the dignity that one would expect from a dog that had lived his life the way that he did. He lay quietly on the treatment room floor, even before the first sedative was administered. He couldn’t stand, but he wagged his tail and gave us farewell kisses. We both laid there with him, hugging him, stroking him, and crying over him until he took his final breath.

It was a fittingly overcast day and we spent most of it in mournful silence,  punctuated by periods of sobbing. It was going to be tough to imagine him not being there where we were used to seeing him and it was still all sinking in.

Every day the pain of letting Champ go gets a little easier to bear. We’re convinced that we absolutely made the best decision for him, and as much as I miss that thumping tail and those face licks, I’m happy that I won’t have to watch him enduring any pain needlessly.

We have great memories of his time with us, and evidence aplenty that he led a fantastic life. It would be hard to imagine a more gentle, loving, and loyal canine companion than Champ was to all of us.

Like I said, I never wanted to get a dog. Shows what I know.