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Fostering Seniors: Sugar's Story |
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A Magnificent Old Girl, shared by Linda Mercer
 I do believe I have the honor of hosting the club's oldest foster dog. Sugar is nine and a half and she came into rescue with Goliath, as I understand it, when their owner, an elderly lady, had to go into assisted living. At first it was assumed that Sugar and Goliath were bonded but it soon became apparent that they weren't. Sugar had been the only inside dog, Goliath the outside dog. Goliath has since been fortunate enough to be adopted.
When Terry suggested that I foster Sugar so that the old girl could live out her days in peace I didn't hesitate of course, but I confess that I had misgivings.
Click Here to see the rest of Sugar & Linda's story.
Prior to this, my experience with fostering was all about dogs that were young, or at most middle aged, and needed building up, either physically or emotionally, but that could be rehabilitated with good care and find a loving forever home. Taking on an old dog is another matter entirely, and when I agreed I don't think I really realized how different it is. No matter how hard it is to part with a young foster to a loving family, you know you are doing the right thing, giving a dog a new future. With an old dog, the only parting is death and that can be hard to contemplate. Nevertheless, I drove over to Terry and David's and picked Sugar up. I was impressed by her size and beauty (she is both very big and very beautiful), and she tried valiantly to jump into the back of the Jeep, just missing with her back legs, so I hoisted her rear end and helped her into the car. She loves, loves, loves riding in the car.
 Having been the only inside dog her entire life, she was not used to pack living and came into my house strong and determined to get her own way. Her first week with us was something of a trial. Sugar terrorized everyone. Aurora, my Beanie, who loves everyone and wants nothing more than to play all day, crept around the corners of the room, cringing every time Sugar growled. Jake, my extremely dominant alpha male, tiptoed everywhere and when he had to tiptoe past Sugar kept his head determinedly turned to the wall so she could see he was no threat. If she was outside on the deck she wouldn't let the others out, if she was inside, she wouldn't let them in. At the end of the first week she jumped on my Westie. Now I adore my Westie, she is my heart and soul and everyone, human and dog, loves her to bits. This was a deal breaker - I could just about handle my other dogs slinking around the walls, carefully looking away from Sugar, but an attack on Missie Moo? Absolutely not.
I called Debbie, our foster coordinator, and told her that this was certainly not going to work and we needed to find another home for Sugar. The next day I called and said I had changed my mind. Why? Because Sugar was coughing up blood. She is heartworm positive and I was sure that this signaled the end. How could I possibly send her on to another foster home if she was about to pop her clogs? Sugar coughed up blood for two days and then it stopped, but she had won her reprieve.
 From the day I picked her up, I had realized that Sugar's back legs were rather weak and I put it down to her age, but over the next month they got worse. The day she stood to drink from the water bowl and slowly and gracefully did the splits, with her back legs splaying out under her so that I had to grab her under her belly and steady her so that she could drink, was the day I called the vet. Rather than put me to the expense of extensive testing on an elderly dog he decided to treat it therapeutically by putting her on Derramax - if it was arthritis or hip dysplasia the Derramax would work like a miracle drug and I should see a dramatic improvement within a very few days. If she didn't respond, it meant it was a neurological condition. By which he meant degenerative spinal myelopathy. Well Sugar is a nightmare to medicate, she can sniff medication at a hundred paces no matter how much "liver-flavored chewable" is in it, and attempting to stuff it down her throat, which I have done with other dogs, resulted in nothing but a near bite. But by double wrapping the pills in slices of ham or salami I managed to con her into eating them (sometimes it took two or three attempts, particularly as she got wise to it and started carefully eating the ham and spitting out the pill!). Sadly, although she was perkier in herself on the medication, there was no improvement in her back legs. She was in a sad way, and I thought that she wouldn't last but Terry told me that she would trust me to know when the time was right and I decided it wasn't quite here yet.
After six months, I realize that there is so much more to Sugar than a crabby old girl with probable dsm. She is feisty and very protective - when she met both my plumber and my pest control tech, on separate occasions, she greeted them enthusiastically at the door, allowed them in and then cornered them in the kitchen, barking ferociously and snapping with those nubby old teeth to the point that they were white with fear (although I was helpless with laughter), and I had to drag her away and confine her to my bedroom. The first time we had a thunderstorm here I was grateful for her weak legs because she is so terrified of thunder that otherwise she would have climbed over the back gate. It took two visits to the vet to get her nails trimmed - the first time a vet tech and I tried valiantly for twenty minutes to hold her but she wasn't having it - the second time, two techs and I took twenty minutes to finally get a muzzle on her so we could get her thumb nails trimmed - they were about to grow into her pads. Whenever she hears an unexpected noise, her floppy ears shoot straight up, her eyes grow round as saucers and she looks exactly like a charicature of a dog in shock. Whenever I try to pull pine needles out of her tail she has a total hissy fit. She is very protective of her food, even if she doesn't feel like eating it herself. She likes to lie in the most inconvenient places, like right in front of the kitchen sink.
But when she wants affection, Sugar will butt her head against my legs and paw at me. She will struggle up the stairs to sleep in my bedroom so that she can watch me at night, and then in the morning will slowly struggle down the stairs again. Once she is up, sometimes with my assistance, she will prance down the yard and sometimes even race Aurora to the bottom gate - its only the getting up and lying down that are a problem. These days, she won't even attempt to jump into the car and will simply lift one leg and wait for me to pick the rest of her up and hoist her into it. The last time, she refused to jump out and waited for me to lift her out of the back of the car. She is occasionally incontinent, there was one time she was finishing up her supper and started to poop without even realizing it - the expression on her face when she turned her head and saw the poop was coming from her was pure shock. She never fails to come and thank me for her supper by pushing her head into me and lifting her leg to paw at me. Sugar is a champion crater digger - if there was an Olympic event for crater digging my money would be on her. Her favorite crater (and she has many) is now so deep that she has to climb down into it and, once settled comfortably, I can't even see her head. Sometimes I tell her she is a total pain in the butt, particularly when I want to brush her and she has a hissy fit and snaps those old teeth at me. She and Aurora have become a team - with Sugar being dominant partner of course - and I have even spotted her pawing at Jake to start a game on the cooler mornings. When I leave for work in the morning, her face is the last thing I see, looking anxiously out of the living room window, and when I come home at night and turn into the driveway, her face is the first thing I see, looking through the living room window with a big grin.
I don't know how long Sugar has left - it may be two months, it may be a year. But one thing I know for certain. God willing, I will be right there by her side to ease her passage to the Rainbow Bridge. And I will ask her, if she can, to wait for me there unless she feels she has to go with her original owner, which I will quite understand. Would I take on another old dog? I'm honestly not sure, but I am sure of this - fostering Sugar could well be the most worthwhile and meaningful thing I have ever undertaken.
Postscript: My Sugar Bear crossed to the Rainbow Bridge on October 14th, 2010. In my heart, hers will always be the face in the window, grinning with anticipation, as I turn into my driveway. Run free, Sugar Bear, just run.
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Last Updated on Friday, 18 February 2011 14:04 |
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