Pets are a great way to teach children about illness, death and dying. I will never forget how my little dog moppet taught me how to deal with illness.
We began to
love our dear little Moppet more and more each day. My sister liked to brush her hair. I liked to feel the softness of her forehead
hair. There was a light brown and grey
patch there like that of a poodle. Her
hair would grow and grow and she did not shed much, so we had to take her to
the hairdresser to get trimmed like a poodle does. Her hair styled well because of the wire
haired nature. My sister and I would
spend hours and hours brushing her for fun as we watched the local clown Flippo
on television as he presented movie classics for the greater central ohio and
Columbus area. In between the show
during commercials my brother would get out a rag from the rag box and shake it
up in the air and she would jump up in the air two or three feet and grab it
with her teeth and then tug at it and not let go. My brother relished the growl, the intense
play and the sport of it all. I worried that she would somehow get hurt. One day she did. She lost a baby tooth from the strong tugging
of a thirteen year old boy. Mom then
outlawed strong tugging. Scott had to
figure a way to get her to jump and engage in such a determined way. It was too much to let go of this kind of
fun. He just had to find a way to
instigate the growl, the turn of tail, the wild look. It tickled all our funny bones I had to
admit. My brother was clever. He devised a way to keep the chase on without
the tug. He got out the garden hose and
sprayed it into the air. It looked
white. To little Moppet that arc in the
sky was one huge rag ready to be clamped onto and tugged and growled at and the
chase was on! Up went the water into the
sky. Up went Moppet springing so high in
the air. She spring sprung up up up and
bit the ark of water. Months of rag play
prepared her for this day. She was in
her element. She bit hard, and then….to
her surprise it disappeared. There was
Scott at the other end of the hose grinning.
He had the sprayer nozzle on the end of the hose. He could control the stream of water in an
instant. Moppet looked puzzled. Scott kept playing with her. This was even better than the rag! I thought it was funny too. “Can I try?”
“Sure!” Scott was the generous
type. After a while all the kids in the
neighborhood had a chance to try and Moppet did not want to stop. My mother called us in for dinner and we were
all wet and dirty and happy. We washed
our hands, sat in our seats and were ready for our meal. The dog sat at my feet knowing that tonight
we were having broccoli. She curled up
against my legs. Any other night I would
nudge her away, but tonight we had a special bond. I would eat the mashed potatoes. I would eat the Salsbury steak, but when it
came to broccoli I would gag. I just
couldn’t do it. Moppet and I had a
deal. If she would keep quiet about it,
I would hand her all the broccoli she could eat. No one was the wiser until tonight.
For some
reason, tonight she wouldn’t eat it. I
quickly wrapped it up in my napkin hoping no one see, but my mom saw. I got in trouble. Just as she was ready to make me take a new
bite of a new piece she looked at the dog and saw that she just did not look
right. Something was wrong. She asked my sister to get out a packet of
dog food and feed her, her favorite food.
Moppet heard the crinkling of the plastic and painfully got up and
waddled over to her feed bowl. She
sniffed the bowl, tried to take a bite and started to gag. My mother looked at my dad. My dad looked at my mom. Why could the dog be acting so strange? At that moment my mother had a frightening
thought. The neighbors had just ordered
chemlawn to come and treat their lawn against cinch bugs. This treatment was dangerous and pets were
not supposed to go on the lawn for at least 24 hours after treatment. We tried
our best to stay on our lawn while playing with the water, but come to think of
it, Moppet did run over to their lawn a few times as she had been jumping in
the air. The thought that our poor
little Moppet had inadvertently poisoned herself was too much for my sister to
bear. I was too young to understand, but
when she started crying, I started crying because she was crying. My mother’s eyes started watering, then she
grabbed ahold of herself and got up from the dinner table and stated that she
was going to call the vet right away. As
soon as we all realized something was wrong, Moppet suddenly looked worse. I asked my mother after she got off the phone
with the vet “Mommy, is she going to die?”
The after
hours vet came after my mother told him the signs of Moppet’s illness. Although she didn’t have vomiting, or
diarrhea,or seizures yet, she did have lethargy, gagging and loss of appetite.
We really didn’t know about the heartbeat because a dog’s heartbeat is
different. It sure sounded like
gastrointestinal symptoms according to the vet.
Perhaps they could save her life if they pumped her stomach. She
was already having some neurologic symptoms the way she was acting so strangely,
and maybe she was having heart symptoms too.
We loved her so much. Maybe they
could hook her up to an electrocardiogram just to see. It happened so quickly. This indicated that if she was indeed
poisoned we would have to act fast to eliminate it if she would stand a
chance.. We had read in the paper about
a Labrador retriever who died in one night from a lawn treatment. We were beside ourselves with panic, fear and
worry.
Charcoal, might be an option, but we had to be sure. She had been outside gulping water all
afternoon. We had to take her in just to
be sure.
We filed into the vets
office. The vet was kind. He saw how distressed we all were. He asked permission to talk frankly in front
of the children. My parents explained
that they don’t hide death from us. It
is a part of life. He explained that if
we can get the stomach pumped there is a chance that she will make it. But first he had to examine her. He looked into her eyes and was relieved to
inform us that her pupils were not dilated and appeared normal. He checked her vital signs. Her breathing and heart rate was also
normal. This was one more thing to be
relieved about. He felt her
abdomen. It was as tight as skin on
bologna. It was so hard it felt like she
had stones in her stomach. That was a
problem. So next he gathered her up in his arms and explained to my mother that
he was going to need to have someone to hold her tightly. My father stepped up to hold her. He grabbed
a long rubber tube from the medicine cabinet on the far wall and walked
deliberately and slowly up to Moppet. He
put the tube down her throat and for the next ten minutes we just heard this
slow ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssshowew just hissing out the end of the tube.
The somber look of the vet turned into a grin.
Grins were appearing on every face in the room. Moppets tail began to wag. They set her on the floor and she almost
began to dance with joy. She even wet a
little.
