Warning: This blog is really long, and very detailed about Marley's last days.
Marley Jack Black Ribar. Marlito Conchito Consuelos. Marlino Bambino. Bubba. Boo. Professional Criminal. Mister Boy. Marley.
On Tuesday night, we had to put Marley to sleep. It was the hardest decision that we have ever had to make, but we know we made the right decision. It all started four weeks ago when we started noticing that Marley seemed depressed - he wouldn't eat, and he was very lethargic, and didn't enjoy playing with his best friend Porter like he used to. He had had episodes like this before that he snapped out of after a few days. He'd return back to his fun-loving Marley self.
I miss my little boy. Since we don't have the children that we so desire right now, Marley was our baby. I swear Marley was a real boy sometimes.
It all started about 4 weeks ago. We noticed Marley was acting depressed – he was lethargic, and not eating as much as he normally did. He has had episodes like this in the past, but a couple of days later he would usually bounce back from whatever ailed him. This time we noticed that this “depression” persisted, and wasn’t going away. He wouldn’t play with his best friend, Porter, which was not like him at all.
After a while, we noticed that he would wince if we picked him up the wrong way, then one day he yelped while jumping off of our couch. We took him into the vet to get him checked out. Of course, when we took him to the vet they could find nothing wrong with him during the exam. He didn’t wince when we held him and he just wagged his tail at all of the other dogs around the vet’s office. We learned, though, that dogs will mask their pain when they are around strangers, so we figured that’s what was going on. They did blood tests on him and called us back later that day with the news that Marley tested positive for Anaplasmosis antibodies. Anaplasmosis is similar to Lyme disease – it is transmitted by ticks and has similar symptoms. As we read down the list of symptoms for Anaplasmosis, each one of them matched up with what Marley was acting like. We were so glad to have found our answer (or so we thought). However, the next day the vet called us back and told us that another blood test revealed that the antibodies had not turned into the actual disease yet (kind of like HIV not turning into AIDS). The Anaplasmosis antibodies were not what were causing Marley to act this way. We still decided to keep him on antibiotics to try to kick whatever was going on in his little body.
After the couch episode, Marley never jumped onto or off of the couch or our bed again. However, one day Dave was working at home when suddenly Marley yelped loudly. Dave looked over and saw that Marley had fallen off of the couch. When Dave went to help him, he noticed that Marley would not put any weight on his front right paw. We took him into the vet again that day, and again Marley acted as if nothing was wrong. He walked fine on his paws, and wagged his tail at the other dogs in the vet’s office. The vet asked if we would leave him there for daycare for a couple of hours so that they could just watch what he does. At one point, they set him up on a bench to see what he would do Thirty seconds later Marley attempted to jump off of the bench and did a face-plant. He couldn’t even catch himself with his legs, so he fell flat on his face. The vet concluded from that visit that Marley had something neurologically wrong with him and he gave us a referral to the neurologist at the U of MN vet.
During this time, we noticed that Marley would walk almost sideways to the right. When the vet gave us pain medication to keep Marley comfortable, we would fall over while he was going to the bathroom. We took him off of the pain meds, so he was just on his antibiotics. Most of the time he would lay around – he would yelp if he moved the wrong way. But there were times when he would see people or dogs that he loved and look almost like himself wagging his tail and sniffing them (sniffing showed he loved you). However, sometimes he would also stare off into space for long periods of time, and his body would just freeze up. He wondered if he was having seizures at those times. One Sunday morning, we woke up at 6:00 am to find Marley having a full-on seizure. It was really scary, and we brought him upstairs to sit on the couch with us to try and relax with him. Around 9:30, he had another smaller seizure. We talked with our friends Shane and Julie to see what we should do. We had an appointment with the U of MN vet the next day (which is where Shane works), so he recommended that we just keep Marley comfortable and if he has another seizure we should bring him to the emergency vet and get valium to calm the seizures down. Marley didn’t have any other seizures that day.
We took Marley to the U of MN vet on Monday, April 16. Marley was nervous – he threw up in the waiting room of the vet’s office, but he still wagged his tail at other dogs in the waiting room. When we went back for his history and physical exam, he yelped when the vet student turned his head all the way to the right. He walked with a sideways list to the right during the exam, but other than that there was nothing else the vet noticed. He gave us choices between doing testing like CT scans or an MRI on Marley to try to see what was going on with his brain or his spine. Another choice was to try steroids first to see if that helped, then if those didn’t work we could try the other tests after that. We decided to try the medications first, so they gave us Prednisolone.
We got Marley home that day and he was really tired out from his day. He curled up and slept the rest of the day, but we noticed that with the Prednisolone he perked up a little bit that night and even wagged his tail at us and tried to jump up onto the couch. We were encouraged. However, the next day Marley looked pretty bad. He curled up underneath the desk in our office and we couldn’t un-curl him. We would try to bring him outside, and he would just fall over and curl up into a ball. He didn’t go to the bathroom at all that day. Our neighbor was outside and tried to help Dave get Marley to stand up to go to the bathroom, and he just couldn’t do it. Our neighbor told Dave that she needed to go inside before she started crying. She said it was just too hard to watch Marley like that.
Dave spent a lot of time with Marley that day before going to work. He lay on the floor next to him and petted him and talked to him. Dave wasn’t home when I got home from work, but I also spent some time lying on the floor next to Marley, hugging and petting him. I went out for supper with some friends that night, and when I got home around 9 pm, both Dave and Marley were there. Marley didn’t lift his head when I came into the house, but he did look at me with his pretty brown eyes and gave a small wag with his tail. About fifteen minutes after I got home we decided to try together to get Marley to go to the bathroom outside. He couldn’t stand up, and he started paddling his legs like he was uncomfortable and trying to get into another position. We couldn’t get him to go to the bathroom, so we brought him back inside.
We got him back inside and he lay on the floor for about five minutes when he suddenly lost bladder control and peed on the carpet while laying there. We were sure that this meant he was about to die. We put a blanket underneath him to make him more comfortable. He started panting heavily, then suddenly he started having a seizure and convulsing. Every couple of minutes his breathing would change, and we would think that meant he was going to go any minute. After 15 minutes he was still convulsing, so we decided to call the emergency vet in Eden Prairie. They told us to bring him in right away. As Dave was on the phone with the vet, we saw Marley’s convulsions get so violent his entire backend of his body was springing off of the floor. We wrapped in up in a blanket and Dave held onto him in the backseat while I drove us to vet’s office.
We got into the office, and immediately the vet tech came over to us, took Marley and ran into the back room with him. We filled out the necessary forms, and waited for them to come get us. When the vet tech brought us into the exam room, she let us know that they had given Marley valium and phenylbarbitol. The vet came in and explained our options. They could keep him there overnight to observe him, or send him to the U of MN for an overnight observation and testing, or we could make the decision to put him down. The only option the vet would not let us take was to bring him home, which we didn’t want to do anyway. He also explained to us that Marley’s temperature was 104.9, and when dogs’ temperatures go to 106, there are signs of brain damage. Marley’s temperature could easily have reached that high while he was convulsing so violently. He said that since Marley hadn’t responded to the antibiotics or the steroids, he didn’t know that there would be anything else the vets could do for him. It sounded to him like it was brain cancer or some other untreatable disease.
He went to get an estimate for how much it would cost to keep him there overnight, but when he came back in we decided that our option had to be to put him down. We cried so hard as we were telling them our decision. My heart and my stomach hurt so bad, I could barely talk. The vet told us that he appreciated our decision, and they brought Marley in so that we could say goodbye. He was still twitching – the medication hadn’t even done the trick to totally take away his convulsions. They left us alone for as long as we needed, but we only took a few minutes. We had already had our times with Marley earlier that day, and he wasn’t even responding to our voices or our touch.
We told them they could come back, and the vet explained how the procedure would go, and told us we could stay there if we wanted to. We did stay there, and held onto him and petted him as the vet injected the medication. We felt his whole body relax as it worked through his system. For the first time in a month, Marley’s body finally relaxed. The vet left us with him alone for as long as we needed again, and we cried together while we gave him kisses and hugs goodbye. It was the last time that I got to smell his “Marley scent”. I loved the way he smelled – especially his paws. The vet and the vet tech told us how sorry they were for our loss, and they were so kind. We were so appreciative of them that night.
We talked with all of our parents on the ride home to let them know, and when we got home we called Aaron and Nik. We felt bad because it was so late, but we knew they would want to know. They asked if we wanted to come over, and we said we wanted to and that we needed some bug hugs. We spent lots of time crying with them, and hugging Porter (Marley’s best friend). Then we told some funny memories of Marley, and they made us laugh with their great stories. It was exactly what we needed. On our walk back to our house we saw the bunny that Marley was always trying to catch in the bushes by our house run off. It made me smile, thinking of how desperately Marley had always chased that bunny – he even broke one of collars off while he tried to catch that bunny while he was on his chain one day. I'm sure dog heaven is well-stocked with bunnies, and that makes us smile :)
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