She'd been getting some tumors for about the past year but they'd been small and mostly on her feet. They didn't in any way change how she lived day to day so we just kept and eye on them and looked for signs of her being in any sort of discomfort or distress. We have had a bad experience with vets so we didn't want to deal with one if we didn't need to. On October 20th Kendrick and I came home from a funeral and saw her lying on the back deck. It was a warm day so we had left her and Cha Cha outside while were gone. There was something off about the way she way laying. She just looked like she didn't feel good. We brought her in and set up her crate right next to Kendrick's recliner downstairs so she could be close to us. (She LOVED her crate). She wouldn't drink and she only ate when Easton laid next to her and offered her his string cheese. She was just lethargic. She had only ever been sick one other time in her life, in Florida, after eating rocks and sticks. She spent two days being lethargic before she finally passed all those... treasures... and then she was back to her old self. We kind of figured that our garbage gut pup had eaten something again that didn't agree with her so we just watched her close and cuddled her as much as we could.
But that night after Kendrick and Jack left for a soccer game, she started breathing heavy. She kept adjusting like she couldn't get comfortable so I decided to take her potty in the front yard. She BARELY made it up the front stairs and out the front door. When she got outside, she collapsed on the front lawn and wouldn't move. That's when I knew something was not okay and that this might not pass-I begged and bribed and pleaded for 15 minutes to get her to come back in the house. She just looked at me with pity, like she couldn't even fathom the thought of moving and didn't I know better than to ask that of her? Finally she let out a big sigh/groan and stood up and slowly walked back in the house and into her crate. I was able to get her to drink a little bit but her breathing was still labored so I called my neighbor (a nurse) to come listen to her heart. She said her heart and lungs sounded clear but she was working awfully hard to breathe. I called the vet and was told that after hours veterinarian care costs are double what regular hours cost. I decided not to lift our heavy pup in and out of the van by myself and leave the kids so I resolved to take her to the vet first thing in the morning. I still hate myself for that decision. Kendrick came home and agreed with me that we should wait and then while I was getting ready for bed, he gave her a blessing (he told me this later). In it he told her, "it's okay if you have to go, you've been the best dog for our family..."
I checked on her and kissed her before I went to bed and asked Kendrick to remind me to check on her when I inevitably got up to pee in the middle of the night. Except I didn't get up to pee-I was woken up by a bad dream or something. I don't recall having a bad dream, something just scared me enough that I woke up panicked and with that eery feeling you have after a nightmare. I decided to check on Zoey and when I first walked down the stairs I just knew...
She looked like she was asleep but her mouth was open wide and she wasn't breathing. She was still warm however so she couldn't have been gone long. I went to tell Kendrick (he didn't sleep that night) and then we just went downstairs and sat together while we held our sweet pup and cried over her. I haven't seen Kendrick cry that hard since his dad passed away. It broke my heart. We had no idea what to do about her body. I never wanted to bury her in this backyard. This doesn't feel like home to me. I don't think this backyard ever felt like home to her. I had envisioned burying her under a tree in a backyard she loved playing in. Our backyard is mostly dirt and cement so it had never been a place she really played. I honestly would have rather buried her in my parent's backyard, but at 12:30 at night, they were fast asleep so I couldn't ask them. Kendrick didn't want the kids to see her dead body and I didn't want to take her somewhere and have her cremated. So we finally decided to just bury her in the backyard by ourselves, at 1:00 in the morning, in the rain, using our cellphones as flashlights. It was one the most depressing nights I've ever had. Kendrick and I just sobbed as he dug a hole in the backyard and I held the light.
We decided to wrap her in some of Taylor's old bedding and then we topped her grave with her favorite toy duck.
*This post is very depressing, I know. But as painful as this memory is-I don't ever want to forget it.
After we buried her, we said a little prayer and then we just sat in the rain hugging and crying. We couldn't really sleep after that so we laid in bed and looked at all the pictures we could find of Zoey. And there were A LOT. She was an important part of our family.
The next morning we told the kids. Tay took it the hardest. She broke down before the words were all the way out of Kendrick's mouth. Then she crawled in bed with us and just cried. The boys took it better. They teared up but they got over it quickly. I told them they didn't have to go to school that day and all except Myles chose to stay home. But Myles took a picture of Zoey from our kitchen bulletin board and taped it to his desk.
The first few weeks without her were hard. A lot of mornings I'd find Tay in the backyard searching for Zoey's duck that would blow off her grave at night. She insisted that Zo needed her duck. One time we caught Easton out there digging around her grave. It was just 6 year old curiosity, but we assured him he did NOT want to see what his dog looked like dead. Coming home from work was hard for me. I was used to hearing her sniff the door as I came in from the garage or hear her tail beating on the kitchen floor if she was feeling too lazy to greet me at the door. She would have been 11 years old at Christmas. We had nearly 11 amazing years with her. I don't think we could ever find a dog as obedient and mild mannered as her. And I don't ever want to own another chocolate lab. She just can't be replaced.
We will always love our Zoey Jane.
