Of all the numerous things about living away from Canada I miss, trust is more poignant than them all. It is–more than family, friends, air quality or money–the thing that is most likely to cause me to eventually leave China.

When Addie contracted aflatoxin poisoning, it really forced front and centre a sense that I had only peripherally been exposed to through news articles and conversations with Chinese–trust is a commodity China is dangerously short on.

When you put this into the larger context of how much we rely on trust in our day to day lives, the gravity of its absence is frightening. Trust that the water coming out of your tap is clean, that the milk we drink is safe, that the meats we buy are fresh, that the cell phones we use wont explode, that the electrical wiring in our apartments wont electrocute us in the shower.

And further, extending this from the faceless products and constructions of daily life, to the “professionals” we rely on. Trusting the shopkeepers, the police, the vets, the journalists, the doctors — and when they all fail, the judges and the law.

Trust is required for all these things. Trust, faith really, is needed to be able to move about your day-to-day routine. Needed so that you aren’t paralyzed by the thought of what a lack of trust in any of those things might entail.

But my trust is gone. It was whittled thinner and thinner over my time here and then broke completely when a high-end imported dog food we trusted was left to spoil in a Guangdong warehouse.

The painful part is I understand it. I understand why it seems almost everyone in China is only looking out for themselves. Not necessarily pulling the trigger on things that will hurt others, but certainly complicit in evil actions so long as it doesn’t directly affect them or theirs. If no one is looking out for them, why should they look out for anyone else?

Call it history, culture, learned behavior. Tell me it’s not all-spanning, not everyone, not all things. Explain to me that development is everywhere, things are changing, just one more generation… Then rest your life, or the lives of those you care about on that ideal.

I often use the analogy of a single drop of oil in a barrel of water when explaining to Maggie why she can’t trust the Chinese news she reads. It doesn’t matter if 99% of that barrel is water, if there is just one drop of oil, it’s spoiled.

Living in China is like playing the Windows classic Mindsweeper on the “easy” setting. You can click and click and click and most of the time you’ll be fine – but that one random time you’re not — game over.

So, our new dog, Button, is sick. Again, we are forced into a position of hoping we can trust experts telling us what is wrong and what we need to do. We trusted the vet we bought her from that we needed to give her the medicine she suggested to solve the problem. When that didn’t work we trusted a second vet (the most lauded one in Suzhou) that he really had never seen anything like this problem, and trusted that we actually required the litany of expensive tests he prescribed. We trusted that he, one of the truly “qualified” veterinarians in Suzhou, was actually dumbfounded and had no idea what was wrong with her. And maybe he didn’t.

But after digging for just a few minutes online, after our trust in the experts had worn out, we learned that her symptoms fit a perfectly normal and common problem with female puppies and that it was nothing to worry about and rarely something to treat.

So… do we trust that the doctors were both clueless? Trust that they just didn’t tell us the details? Or trust that they, like so many others, simply had their own agendas, and not the health of our dog or the peace-of-mind of her owners, when giving their diagnosis? Trust that maybe they just wanted to string out an otherwise inexpensive problem as long as they could.

And this is “just a dog”. These problems certainly extend to human medicine as well. Doctor’s prescribing unneeded drugs is the norm, not the unethical exception — ordering costly procedures and tests under the guise of caution all in an effort to bump up the bill at a patient’s most vulnerable hour.

In any Western country my thoughts about this would be considered overly cautious at best, and paranoid at worst. But this is China. Whatever wonderful gifts this country has to give, trust simply isn’t one of them.

Button

As mentioned, we recently got a new puppy named Button. Now having had a few days to get to know our newest family member, it’s neat to see her personality shining through.

Addie was the first time I ever raised a puppy, and so everything was new. I had no way of knowing what was “puppy behavior” and what was “Addie behavior” – but now with a new puppy, and armed with fresh puppy-rearing experience, the differences are more easily seen.

Whereas Addie was a friendly but shy puppy, Button is all about adventure. She gets into, under and on top of everything. We have a small set of stairs in our apartment (just three steps), and despite moving in here when Addie was 6 months old, she had trouble figuring them out for about the first week we lived here. Button, at 2.5 months, had them nailed her first day.

She’s now applying this knowledge to get on the ledge where we keep our turtle tank, to get at things on the coffee table and she’s half way to scaling the sofa and our bed.

Button on a Ball

She’s also not quiet. Well, for a puppy at least. She’s not found her bark yet, but that doesn’t stop her from trying. She lets out little whines and yelps whenever she’s lonely, has to pee, has to poop or just bored. This is in sharp contrast to the once a month bark that Addie would let out (startling herself as much as us).

The third difference is a bit of a godsend. Button came pre-installed with Paper Training v1.0. I am guessing the vet we bought her from had something to do with that, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

When we got Addie we lived in a 3rd floor apartment, and there’s just no practical way to house-train a dog by running down 3 flights of stairs. We tried our best to get her to go on paper, but she just never seemed to pick it up – causing us endless cleanups and wet socks. However, after moving into our current place, that has a backyard, she house broke herself in no time.

Because Button hasn’t had all her shots yet, we’re not able to let her wander around the backyard. I was initially nervous that she’d also ignore the carefully laid paper and just go wherever, but her first night here she illustrated she understood that the paper was the proper place to go. She still has little accidents, as puppies do, but she gets it right about 70% of the time – and for a dog that pisses and poops her body weight a day, that’s a decent percentage.

Button on Flickr

A Sleeping Button

It’s been two and a half months now since our dog Addie died, and though it’s rare a day goes by that we don’t think of her and miss her terribly, we’ve started to feel there just wasn’t enough dog hair all over everything.

So, about a week and a half ago we contacted the vet that was so helpful when Addie was sick (she made house-calls everyday to help with giving medication and to check on her condition). When she was here helping us with Addie she off-handedly mentioned she also had a golden and it was about to give birth to a litter. Calling her up we were thrilled to discover that she still had one puppy left and it was ours if we wanted her. Yup, another girl.

I wanted another girl dog for all the reasons we got a girl dog last time – namely, better temperament (read: less barking) and smaller size, two things that are key when you live in an apartment. Maggie would have preferred a boy dog, but you can’t argue with fate – particularly when it rules in my favour.

After visiting the vet’s house, in a rather ancient looking part of town, we agreed we’d take the yet to be named stinky bundle of fur. The fact that she lives in a small pen with a couple of her brothers and sisters and that puppies can’t have soap and water bathes until they’ve had all their shots combines for a rather smelly puppy.

The vet said that we’d have to wait a couple days to take her home as she had just had a shot and they didn’t want to risk the shock that changing the environment can have on a puppy. As a plus though, she said her boyfriend would deliver the dog to us. I get delivery pizza, delivery groceries (incl. delivery beer); delivery doggie – why the hell not?

A couple days passed and we hurriedly called the vet. She said that our pup had developed a slight cough. It was likely nothing, but knowing intimately what we went through with Addie, she knew we weren’t looking to pickup where we left off and get a sick dog. So we waited, and waited and waited. What was just over a week felt like forever, and we had all but given up hope that we’d be getting the new dog.

Maggie holding Button

Then the vet called last night! Were we home? Could she bring the puppy by? Yes! Yes!

And so I’m happy to say we are the proud caretakers of a healthy and beautiful (but still stinky) new golden retriever puppy. We had been stuck on a name, as we wanted to avoid anything too similar to “Addie” and the golden cliches (honey, goldie, etc.). After thinking about it a little while we settled on “Button”, as in “as cute as a ……”

We’ve scrubbed clean Addie’s old bed and a few of her toys we didn’t give away for Button to use. It’s a bit strange seeing another dog in her bed, and impossible not to think about her when we do. But her things, much like our emotions about what happened, have sat since her death in a sort of stasis. Now they can be brought out, dusted off and used/remembered in a positive way.

So now we start again. The hours and hours of training. The cleanups. The endless sweeping. It’s hard starting again, especially after spending so much time doing so and having it end very badly. But at the same time I am thrilled to see what this extremely inquisitive little pup turns into. I’m curious to learn how our life with Button compares and contrasts with the relatively short time we had with Addie.

But right now, I’m mostly curious how I can cuddle my new pup without a nose plug.

Impossible not to draw some similarities between Bill’s loss and our own.

h/t Beijing Boyce on Twitter.

Only a month ago that we began to suspect, and then learned, that our beautiful dog Addie was dying.

These 18 days since she died have been sad, lonely and full of anger at a situation that could never give back what it took from us.

But now, it’s done.

As of this morning, the Chinese distributor of the Optima dog food that killed our dog has paid us compensation and we are closing the book on this painful chapter of our lives.

When, early on, we were told we would need to come up with an amount for compensation, we realized that no amount would equal the suffering and loss we’ve endured. No figure could be attached as a value to Addie, and whatever was paid would never bring her back.

Knowing this, we set ourselves to the task of separating what would need to be a rational and logical decision from the volatile emotions we felt about it. We spoke to a local lawyer friend of ours, and he told us that the last thing we wanted was for this to go to court.

He explained that this isn’t a Western nation, where we might have a case. This is China, and taking it to court would very likely end in frustration and disappointment. Ultimately we’d be lucky if the court ordered the company to pay out anything more than current “book value” for the breed of dog.

He suggested that we try our best to get as much as we can from the company, but ultimately take whatever they will give – as that’s our best chance at receiving any sort of compensation. Dogs (and this might be true in Western law too, I have no idea) are considered nothing but property under the law, and so the best you can expect is compensation for the practical (not emotional) value of that property.

It was with this in mind that we eventually settled with the company for the sum of 10,000 RMB (plus the vet costs, which probably ran about that amount again – but which we never had to pay up front). This figure basically constitutes the cost of Addie (3,000 RMB) and approximately all our expenses in the 10 months of raising her.

In light of the “property” idea, I think the compensation is fair. That it includes an amount, twice that of the purchase price of the dog, which is basically for pain and suffering (something they had no “legal” obligation to compensate for), shows to me that the company is at least attempting to resolve this appropriately.

It’s not enough to bring back our dog, or allow me to forgive what their negligence did, but it never could be.

The important thing to Maggie and I is that we can put this behind us. Each conversation with the distributor, each day we were waiting to resolve this, was just more time when we were forced into remembering with vivid detail the horrible month it has been and the incredible loss we still feel.

Addie was our baby and her death has scarred both of us deeply. I still look for her underfoot, catch myself wondering if she wants to go out and play fetch, and wishing it could have turned out differently. However, at least now we can move forward remembering her life, not her death – remembering all the joy she brought to our home, and believing that the pain of loss makes more vibrant that which we still have.

When all this began I created a Google Alert for “Optima dog food”, so I’d know any time the phrase appeared on Google’s news channel. For weeks there wasn’t a peep, but then suddenly (just after the Shanghai Daily piece) it lit up and I began receiving several notices a day.

Perhaps most prominently, the Associated Press picked up the story, and Elaine Kurtenbach (AP writer) chatted with me for some time about the situation and on what she had discovered about the supply chain (and its convolution):

(AP) … A sales person at Optima Co., the local representative for the product, said the dog food had been sent for analysis, but he would give no details.

“I’m not authorized to speak about this,” said the man, who gave only his surname, Zhang.

Ryan McLaughlin, a Canadian living in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, publicized the problem after his own 1-year-old golden retriever, Addie, fell sick after eating Optima dog food.

“When it’s an imported dog food, you don’t expect this sort of thing to happen,” Ryan, who comes from Welland, Canada, said in a phone interview. “Here we were paying the extra cash to try to ensure she was healthy and instead it made her sick,” he said. Addie died on Jan. 5.

Gu, of the local distributor, said only that his supplier was based in Taiwan.

Zhang said the product his company sold came from “somewhere in Australia.”

The AP article was picked up by a few other news sources, including the Canadian Press (CP), reprinted on CBC.

Here’s a partial aggregation of where the story was reported (those that include mention of Addie are noted):

• Shanghai Daily: Emergency recall of dog food after pets poisoned – Jan 12/09
• Associated Press: Shanghai seller stops sales of suspect dog food [Mentions Addie] – Jan 13/09
• Canadian Press/CBC: Pet food suspected of killing dogs in China; distributor suspends sales [Mentions Addie] – Jan 13/09
• CNN: Australian dog food pulled from Chinese stores in health scare – Jan 13/09
• China Daily: Dogs’ deaths linked to imported food – Jan 13/09
• iNews880: Troubles with cheap brake pads & Chinese pet food  - Jan 13/09
• Xinhua: China quality watchdog denies authorizing imports of problematic dog food - Jan 14/09
• People’s Daily: AQSIQ: China never imported Optima dog food from Australia – Jan 15/09
• Seattle PI: Poisoned pet food is killing Chinese dogs. Is it really made in the U.S. or is it counterfeit? [Mentions Addie] – Jan 15/09

It’s been an experience watching the coverage unfold. Seeing where certain news sources pull their information from. It’s a bit surprising to see how little actual journalism goes into it. Aside from one or two of the articles above, the rest are essentially re-writes based on information found online and/or from other news sources. 

That’s fine if the handful of reporters actually reporting have everything in order – but in most situations, they don’t. They can’t. In a case like this, especially in China, the ONLY people that are going to be co-operative are the victims, and they’re (we’re) generally relying on the media to uncover the truth.

And so you get CNN reporting that Optima dog food comes from Australia (it’s very definitely made in the USA), you get a lot of the reports (bordering on editorials) insinuating that it was fake dog food manufactured in China (it’s more likely that it’s real dog food, but illegally imported from Taiwan), and you get virtually every single one of them pointing out a connection to melamine-tainted Chinese-made dog food that killed dogs in the US in 2007 – then making the obvious jump to the melamine milk scandal of last fall.

Does it surprise anyone that when I close my eyes and think “modern media” I have visions of the Keystone Cops or a Benny Hill sketch playing out in my head?

Don’t get me wrong – news exposure is important and the media are purported to be the watchdogs of evil corporations and gov’ts who are looking to endlessly pull fast ones on the public.

But here’s the rub. The increased media exposure, and in turn pressure on local gov’t, has thrown the local distributor into chaos. Assuming it is the media calling for a one-liner or sound-bite, they are now dodging all calls, including those from those of us that have been affected by this situation and whom, until this week, had been receiving at least a decent amount of co-operation.

Maggie and I had a meeting planned with the distributor on Monday to discuss compensation, but when the Chinese media picked up the story they had to cancel, prioritizing their fires. This only worsened as the week went on and the story grew, until now we’ve been given the rather open-ended “we need to wait and see what happens”.

The distributor informs us that before they can reach a compensation deal with us (and allow us to put this whole tragedy behind us and move on), they need to wait and see if the government takes over the case. If so, it would virtually assure we’ll (a) never see a dime of compensation, (b) this will drag on for months and months, and (c) anyone responsible for this situation that can cut and run, will.

On the plus side, whether we see compensation or not, the increased exposure pretty much guarantees that the company responsible will be destroyed – as I doubt anyone would trust them again – which is a reward of sorts. But then, it just creates a void for another distributor to rise and take its place – one without the black-eye and still-tender reminder to not do something like this again.

Bah.

The site reports:

Since the end of November at least 20 dogs are believed to have died in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou from liver complications. Some pets died within 10 days of showing symptoms.

An agent of Shanghai Yidi Pet Co Ltd, a Shanghai dealer of Optima food, admitted that a “severe quality problem” was found in the batch, and they were recalling the products.

Yidi said pet owners should return the contaminated food to be exchanged for other brands.

Yidi purchased the batch of Optima dog food from a Taiwan supplier, according to an agent who declined to be named.

An imported feedstuff registration list posted by China’s Ministry of Agriculture shows that the Optima dog food’s production enterprise is Australia-based Doane International Pet Products.

But Tan said her purchase order said the food was made in the United States. “American-made Optima is a very famous brand. That’s part of the reason I chose it,” Tan added.

The confusion over where Optima is actually made is rampant in the Chinese forums discussing this as well – with most claiming Optima is made in Australia – but Optima’s Web site clearly indicates that it is “Made in U.S.A.”

Optima is owned by Doane International Pet Products, as the SH Daily reports, however where SH Daily says it is Australia-based doesn’t jive. According to the company’s history, the company was originally based in Missouri, but moved to Brentwood, Tennessee, after a merger in 1998 with Windy Hill Pet Food. This corresponds with both the company’s Web site registration, as well as Optima’s address. No mention of Australia at all.

I’m generally not one to go looking for conspiracies or cover-ups, but if SH Daily is right and China’s Ministry of Agriculture shows Optima pet food coming from Australia – there is a massive failure in the transparency of the distribution chain.

When this all started (December 22, 2008) I e-mailed Optima via their Web contact form:

My name is Ryan McLaughlin and I am a Canadian living in China.

I have a one year old golden retriever and since we got her last February we\’ve been feeding her Optima Puppy Formula (alternating chicken and lamb).

As I\’m guessing you\’re well aware, the local media and message boards are filling with reports that Optima food is killing dogs due to contaminants that are causing liver failure.

My wife is Chinese and so has been following all this in Chinese, as well as in dialog with our local Optima dealing pet shop, but I\’ve not seen anything online about it.

So, to be blunt about it, are you killing my dog?

Ryan McLaughlin

The e-mail was sent to Optima’s sales department, which seems to use the address sales@nappinc.com (nappinc.com domain expired December 28, 2008) and then was forwarded to Shirley Yu from an e-mail using the domain effem.com – which appears to be connected to Mars, Inc.. Her reply:

Dated December 26, 2008
Mr. Mclaughlin,

What you described in your mail surprises me. Optima pet food is produced in US and only sold in Taiwan around the world. As a business representive of Optima pet food in Taiwan, we have never been allowed to export any pet foods to PRC either from Taiwan or US.

For your information, Optima had been launched in Taiwan for over 10 years, and never have lethal cases reported. Optima is the top 4 brand in Taiwan market and famous for it’s superior quality and palatability. If you have queries about petfood you bought in China, I would suggest you to directly contact the retailer which you buy products from.

Best Regards,

Shirley Yu

My response:

Dated December 26, 2008
Hi Shirley,

When you say “Optima pet food is produced in US and only sold in Taiwan around the world” are you saying that Optima isn’t exported from the US to any other countries but Taiwan? As that seems to contradict what the Optima Web site indicates.

You said you are a business representative for Optima in Taiwan – but did not indicate your company, nor your title at the company.

According to the OPTIMA literature we received from our local pet shop, it lists Natural Pet (in Taiwan) as the distributor for Optima. Are you the only Optima distributor? Natural Pet’s Web site (www.naturalpet.com.tw) very clearly shows Optima as a brand they distribute and shows distribution to Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing in the People’s Republic of China.

Our dog has since been diagnosed with exposure to aflatoxin from Optima brand dog food here in China and is in critical condition, not expected to recover. If someone is selling Optima dog food (widely) in China, particularly poisoned dog food, I would think that your company, Optima and Doane would know or want to know about it.

Ryan

To date I’ve still not received a reply from Shirley, nor from CCing the message to the sales@nappinc.com address.

At the end of the day, I really don’t expect this convoluted path to lead anywhere, nor do I believe that Optima, Doane, Natural Pet, Shanghai Yidi Pet Co Ltd, or whoever the fuck is actually responsible for killing my dog to owe up to the true responsibility of that action. How can they? Money? Apologies? None of it will bring back Addie. None of it will fill that which they have taken away from us. And really, none of it will ever allow me to forgive them.

Tomorrow we meet with the distributor to come to some sort of compensation agreement. Part of me wants to fight as hard as I can and reign what fire I can down on the parties responsible for killing a dog I loved so deeply, but another part of me looks forward to being able to lay this all to rest so we can move on and begin to heal.

Ultimately, I know that if I travel down this road of seeking retribution and justice, no matter what I am able to do, I will only find disappointment.

One step in that process is laying her to rest. You would think that with everyone and their cousin having a dog in this city that there would be a well-developed system for handling the dead bodies of our four-legged friends. Nope.

Initially we had planned to bury her someplace near our home here in Suzhou. To do so we would have had to sneak out at night, under cover of darkness, shovels in hand – the picture of a twisted Scooby Doo episode – and bury her before anyone noticed what we were up to. A problem in itself, this awkward affair is compoundly complicated when you consider there are few areas in Suzhou, or any Chinese city for that matter, that aren’t likely to get dug up for development in the next 6 to 12 months.

With the images of Addie’s disturbed remains being churned into foundation for a new over-priced expat sanctuary, we switched our focus to cremation. Problem being that Suzhou has no animal cremation facilities. Always helpful, the vet said he knew of one in Hangzhou and another in Shanghai.

After a bit of hunting (and reading about this scary experience), we found that Shanghai has a big government-invested crematorium for animal body disposal. Only problem was getting Addie’s body to Shanghai.

Peter, the owner of Wàng Wàng Gōng Guǎn (汪旺公馆 – on Sú Xiù Lù/苏绣路) – the vet/pet shop that had been helping us care for Addie over the last week or so, volunteered to take us, all we had to do was cover gas and tolls. A remarkable guy, coupled with their care and service, I really can’t recommend them enough.

After borrowing his friend’s car, and loading Addie’s body (which they were storing at their shop) in the trunk, Peter picked us up and I endured one of the scariest car rides of my life (and I’ve had a few). He spent more time whizzing 140 km/h down the shoulder than he did on the roadway proper. But, he got us there in one piece.

The crematorium is in the middle of no where, which considering its function, probably makes sense. Should anyone need to find it, the address is:

上海市奉贤浦南病死畜禽无害化处理站
上海市奉贤区庄行镇浦卫公路934号
Tel：(021)57462612/57462143
Web: www.pnwhcl.org/p.htm (translated)

If you’re in Shanghai, it may just be easier to talk to your vet about it. I believe there’s inner-city pickup/disposal.

I’ve never been to a crematorium of any kind before, so pulling up to the large tree-lined compound I wasn’t sure what to expect.

We were greeted by a rather helpful attendant who instructed us to park and come into the office. We filled out some paperwork and paid the fee (200 RMB to have her body cremated solo). We were then asked to give him the body, to which it appeared he would then pedal to a large building in the back of the complex with a smoke-billowing chimney sticking out of it.

For the sake of imagery here, Addie’s body had been wrapped in blankets and placed in a large box when they collected her from our home on Sunday, and so wasn’t laying exposed in the trunk of the car.

Removing the box from the trunk the man exclaimed that it was far too big for him to take and that we should drive it the 50m back to the incinerator. This suited us just fine, as we wanted to be there to assure they properly handled the situation (ie. didn’t just dump her in a bin and hand us a cup of random ash).

The atmosphere was about what you’d expect from a government-run facility that’s primary purpose was to dispose of dead livestock (deadstock?). We didn’t get much of a tour, but before carrying Addie’s body inside the barn-sized building, I couldn’t help but notice a huge bin of pig corpses further back on the lot. Kind of creepy.

It didn’t take long once inside for the workers to remove Addie from the box and, still wrapped in the blanket and sheets, put her in the furnace. We were then gently rushed out of the building by the front gate attendant, explaining that the area wasn’t the safest place due to many of the dead corpses in the back having succumbed to disease. Again, kind of creepy.

With 40 minutes to wait for the process to complete and the ashes to be returned, Maggie and I walked around the impressive building that houses the facilities offices, washrooms and … a cafeteria. Have I mentioned, creepy?

The time passed and eventually the attendant appeared with our small urn, wrapped in newspaper and still warm. We got back in the car and returned to Suzhou (in pure Battle For Endor fashion) in a rather somber, but satisfied, manner.

We will hold on to Addie’s ashes until the weather improves and we can take them and spread them someplace beautiful and befitting.

A moment for thanks

I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has given their condolences to Maggie and I during this rather rough time. I’ve received numerous comments, Twitter tweets and e-mails offering support and well-wishes. Thank you everyone, it is truly touching that so many of you, most whom I’ve never met in person, took the time to do so.

Also, thank you to Kenneth Tan and the Shanghaiist for picking up Addie’s tragic story and sharing it with a larger audience. Though it may be too late now, if her story can help save anyone else from going through what we went through, it was well worth sharing.

Update: Also thanks to Richard Brubaker and All Roads for elavating the exposure of this horrible tragedy.

Reason. Ration. These are vile words when you’ve lost a loved one. Words that, like some linguistic drug, offer you an escape from the pain you’re feeling by masking it with purpose and order.

But, and continuing with the metaphor, they’re circular. Rationalizing the death leads no where. There’s no reason. It’s just happened and now she’s gone – leaving us with an unanswerable question: why?

I can ask the pet shop why they sold us food that killed our dog. I can ask the distributor why they didn’t take better precautions in the food’s storage, allowing it to develop the poison that killed our dog. I can ask the manufacturer why they don’t hold more responsibility over their distribution network, and why they’ve not even commented on the fact that their product killed my dog.

But none of their answers will mean anything. No apologies or compensation will put substance back in that void that has been left in our home today.

Nothing they do will be able to remove the scar that has been left on me for having to watch my dog die, having to feel with my own hands her heart slow and then stop. She didn’t go to sleep, she didn’t slip away, she didn’t benefit from any of the euphemisms that I now envy. She died.

I can’t put to words the sadness I feel.

It’s been a week, and with three days to go, Addie’s still putting up a good fight. She’s looking a bit worse for wear though, and despite us doing our best to clean her, smells of a rather horrible combination of stomach juices and sweet glucose water we have to feed her. Additionally, her liver failing has caused her to now be suffering from ascites, or fluid in the abdomen.

The ascites is creating pressure on her diaphragm, which is causing her breathing to be a bit laboured. Whether it’s the ascites or another side-effect of liver failure, she’s also continually having stomach/GI cramping, causing her to suffer quite a bit of discomfort.

The hardest thing remains keeping food and medicine in her stomach. The SAMe tablets that she’s on take a long time to dissolve, and it’s a rare thing indeed for her to go through long periods where she doesn’t add a new technicoloured stain to her bedsheet.

Though the above may seem like she’s in bad shape, and she is, I’m still hopeful. She’s been in roughly the same shape for the last two days or so, and the ascites swelling has gone down a bit. She looks tired, and is no doubt in pain, but we’re not throwing in the towel yet.

Obviously the question of when we surrender is close on both Maggie’s and my mind. Maggie asked me today when we will have to make the tough decision to put Addie down so as not to force her to suffer needlessly. My answer centers around that last bit. Needlessly.

She’s young and she’s tough. She has the will to survive this, or she would have already given up. Now, I understand that it may come down to her just not having the physical strength to beat this, but I feel we need to make sure that we give her every opportunity to win.

It’s impossible not to anthropomorphise a bit here, so let me dive in.

I look at Addie’s situation as if it were me. There are a lot of situations where if I was in a lot of pain I would want to die and would hope (if I was not able to express it) that people who love me would help me do so. All of those situations revolve around chronic, unmanageable, quality of life destroying pain.

In the short-term, it would suck, but I would be more than willing to suffer the pain, a lot of pain, to keep my life. Of course, there’s nothing good about it. It’s pain, it’s illness, it’s discomfort, it’s humiliating, it’s tiring, it’s messy. And it’s hard to watch someone (or some dog) endure. But me not wanting to watch as my dog fights for her life is not reason enough, in my mind, for us to make the decision to end it. Not yet.

Maggie, quite logically, asked then how we’ll know it’s time. I really can’t say, other than to say that we’ll just know. I think we’ll know when she’s stopped fighting. She asked if I thought we were unnaturally keeping her alive through the use of medicine/IVs, but I don’t think so. She’s not on machines. Her body is still doing everything itself, and the IVs, nutrients and pills we’re giving her all work to keep it that way.

Basically, what it comes down to for me is – if she’s willing to fight, I’m going to keep fighting for her too. Human or not, I don’t think it’s my right to take that away from her.

The Lighter Side…

It’s New Year’s Eve – let me leave this with a less-heavy message. I’m off to cook up some steaks and baked potatoes, cork a bottle of wine, heat up some mulled wine, kick back and greet the new year with a cigar.

Wishing everyone a very happy new year and a prosperous 2009. 新年快乐!