Sidney
Yes, he stole our hearts. We’re not new to the terrier rescue program. Before Sidney, two Scotties. Muffy and Buster. Both old, in their teens, and both died about two years after they came to live out their days with us. They were Scotties, old terriers with the remoteness that seems to steal over them all over the years, kind of like me. We loved them and they kind of loved us, Buster especially, and then they expired.
The two year thing weighed on us. We’d given up on rescuing greyhounds after seven gorgeous couch potatoes. They are too big for us now. Both of us are not exactly frail, but when they start to fail, as they do, we are not strong enough to cope. But our greyhounds, with one exception, lived with us for a lot more than two years. So when we saw a rescue cairn, who was billed as 6 to 8+ years old, we jumped at the chance. We can have him for more than two years! He had beautiful, incredibly white teeth, something we’d never seen in our greyhounds. We figured he might be as young as six. We were wrong.
Two years. Rescues. You inherit everything that has ever been done to them you can’t undo. Sidney was handsome, fat as a pig, and he could look you straight in the eye, though he didn’t want to give you a kiss. He’d been spoiled and at some point had a bad experience with a man. I reached for him and he instinctively backed away. This got better over time, but unlike every other terrier I’ve known (~10?) he didn’t have the slightest idea how to play. Wasn’t interested. But he was a champ at riding in the car and going for a walk. I’ve got pictures and videos to prove it. Maybe I’ll come back and post some later, but not now. Don’t feel like it at the moment.
Two years. A few months ago, he suddenly, completely out of the blue, had a seizure. Legs kicking, jaws snapping, body out of control, some pee, and then a quivering lassitude for an hour or so afterward. There were several more of these for several days, but then he seemed to return to normal.
We’d had him on a diet, got his weight down from 36 to 28, which is a lot. He got more affectionate. He seemed to understand English, a terrier trait I’ve always prized in wonder and admiration. We were back on track. Until the terrible three days before he died.
New seizures in rapid succession. But now the aftermath was not torpid but obsessive. He walked and walked, in circles, headed into blind corners he could not back out of. We crated him to keep him from harm. Where he barked, barked, barked, ear-piercingly, all night long, sometimes even shrieking like a person in pain. I sought out a vet who hadn’t gotten his degree in Costa Rica and he agreed to see us the next morning. Only he didn’t show and the snotty vet techs made me lose my notoriously short temper and we came back home. Pat made a new appointment with the local Costa Rican vet three days away, but we never made it that far.
The next morning he was supine and still in his crate. I let him sleep, thinking he’d maybe been through the worst and, exhausted, needed to recoup. After a few hours, I plucked him out of the crate. He continued sleeping on the couch. I woke Pat because I was now becoming alarmed. Then he finally stirred, got shakily to his feet and tottered across the couch onto my lap, where he collapsed as if in relief and continued breathing, rise and fall of his breathing, until he stopped. Breathing. He died there on my lap. I felt for his heart. It was not beating.
Throughout the three days, I kept whispering to him, in English, I love you we love you I love you we love you, we’ll get through this. But we didn’t. Two years. Same as the Scotties.
Now we have the pug, Eloise, 19 going on 20. She’s survived all of them. But like us, she’s still looking here and there for Sidney. Who is no longer with us.
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