Rest in Peace, My Maserati

Wednesday April 20, 2011

Some sad news, our sailing greyhound is no longer with us.  It’s something we were not expecting at all as we hadn’t even known she was sick and was still pretty young as far as greyhounds go.  I think the story would best be expressed in the letter I sent my family:

Hi everyone.  I have a bit of bad news, Matt and I had to put Mazzii down yesterday.  The doctors believe she had multiple cancers, they just didn’t become apparent until a few days ago.  The (really) sad part was that even just a week ago she seemed perfectly healthy and at 100%. 

 Tuesday night she got sick and we assumed it was something she had eaten, we’ve been giving her a lot of table scraps recently.  She threw up quite a few times that night and was completely dehydrated by the next morning.  We let her drink a ton of water Wednesday, but apparently if a dog gets dehydrated to the point there is nothing in their stomach, if they drink too much water too soon their body can’t handle it and they throw it back up.  When we figured that out Wednesday night we started giving her small amounts of water at a time, but she still wasn’t interested in food.  By Thursday she seemed to be keeping her water down (mostly, and in small amounts), but still wasn’t interested in food.  I called the vet to make an appointment for the next day, but Matt and I just thought that maybe she had a virus and would only need a few days to get over it.  So when Friday came and Mazzii seemed slightly better (she was eating peanut butter and moving around more), we thought she was starting to recover and cancelled the vet appt.

Saturday night Matt noticed that she had a yellowish hue to her and we thought maybe she had jaundice (or a dog version of it), which we knew would be more serious than we thought and we contemplated taking her to the emergency vet.  We decided to hold off for one more day when we found a clinic that was open on Sundays and would be much cheaper than the $1000-1500 of taking her to the ER.  I was unfortunately at work when Matt took her, so I don’t know all of what went on there.  They did some blood work and it came back normal, but when they did an ultrasound they noticed that her gallblader, liver, and kidney all looked enlarged, which were signs of cancer.  They said it was hard to tell though b/c she was still so dehydrated, and at this point hadn’t eaten any real food in five days.  They suggested we take her to our regular vet the next day for a 2nd opinion, but they said it didn’t look good and she wasn’t likely to survive any surgeries.  By this time Mazzii looked terrible, she didn’t even look like herself.  She had dropped about five pounds, all her exposed skin was yellow and her eyes were almost swollen shut.

When we took her into our regular vet yesterday we knew that we weren’t going to be coming back with her.  We had spent the entire day plus the night before not leaving her side, and even let her sleep in the bed one last time after keeping her in the sunroom for the past five days due to her getting sick and ruining the carpet.  When the vet saw her she didn’t even need to do any test to confirm what the other vet said.  She said what we already knew, and that was there was no getting her better even if they figured out exactly what was wrong with her.  We made arragements to have Mazzii cremated and get her ashes back.  I’d like to take her on the trip with us and leave little parts of her everywhere we go.

I’m not sure if it’s fully sunk in for Matt and I yet, it all happened so quickly.  We’re taking it pretty well, although there’s still reminders of her everywhere.  There’s so many times (and there will be many more) where I walk into a room and expect her to be there.  It will be hard getting used to life without her, though I’m sure we’ll be ok.  She was a great dog and we’ll miss her terribly.

She really was a great dog.  And not because she was the first and only dog I’ve ever had.  She was a part of our family, she made us feel whole.  From the days she was so excited to see us when we walked through the door and we knew she needed us as much as we needed her to the times she pretended the only thing she wanted to do was get 100 miles away from us although we all knew better.  She put up with our weekends on the water and even learned to get as excited about the word ‘boat’ as she did for ‘car’ or ‘walk’.

And then there’s just the details of her.  The big doe eyes and the softest fur I’ve ever felt.  How her ears were so silky and how they’d half perk up when something caught her attention.  Her missing toe on her front paw which allowed us to call her gimp.  How she’d lay down right on top of me and slowly slide off onto the bed or couch letting her get as close as possible to me.  The way she’d get an attitude when we’d kick her off the bed at night and she’d actually huff as she plopped down on her dog bed.  How she could sprint a lap around the house in under five seconds and could fake left and then fake right when you’d go to chase her.  There are a million things to miss about her, and I’ll never forget a single one.

But to keep the memory alive, here are a few links to videos of Mazzii:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxZ5QeE-PQg&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAxK71ltpzs&feature=youtu.be