Life is getting ruff for a great friend

By Lethbridge Herald on September 13, 2024.

Herald photo by AL BEEBER BenÕs days at the dog park are coming to an end.

LEAVE IT TO BEEBER
Al Beeber – Managing Editor

Over the years, I’ve written a lot about my four-legged companions but this will be the last time you have to endure a column about them.

Once again, time has taken its toll and now my beloved Ben dog is soon leaving this earth. 

And once I’ve said my last goodbyes, I will not be getting another to keep last year’s adoptee Izzy company.

I just cannot do it anymore. Losing a four-legged friend is so difficult and if I’m still alive when Izzy has to be laid to rest, she will be the last dog to have a home in the Beeber household.

Ben was supposed to undergo surgery for a couple of teeth extractions today in Coaldale. But I learned earlier this week after getting him into see a veterinarian on an emergency basis, he’s dying.

My Ben dog has Stage 4 renal failure and not much life left in his aging body. 

Saying farewell to Ben in the near future is going to be a private affair. He’s been my baby since I brought him home in early 2013 from Stirling and I want to spend those last minutes alone with him. Just him and me so we can have our final time together with no onlookers, nobody to invade that precious time and space.

This lab/collie cross whose mom apparently got mixed up with a Stirling stray since the other dogs in the litter were all part shepherd, has been a special animal and a special friend.

He clung to me from the first day except for choosing to sleep on a bigger more comfortable bed two days after coming home as a puppy. I hand-fed him for weeks because timid Ben was scared of Roxie and Rio. On my trips to Ontario, he would wait at the living room window for me to return home, not eating for days on end.

 But nearly 12 years later, Ben waits in a bedroom for me until I come home for a mid-morning walk and then when I pull into the driveway after work. He won’t emerge for other family members, who have always pointed out unfairly that I’m the only one in the house he seems to really like. Which isn’t true, Ben just has a special bond with me.

Ben and I developed that bond from the day we met. All the other dogs – Jessie, Roxie, Rio and now Izzy – gravitated to everyone but not Ben.

 Since he was a pup, he’s been my Ben. When I’m watching TV, he jumps onto the bed and pushes me over because he has his own side – the right side. And he won’t lay anywhere else on it except beside me, touching me. Until he gets hot and has to move. But if I leave he follows. Everywhere.

He made the front seat of my assorted vehicles his own since I brought him home for the first time on a blanket sitting on the armrest of the truck.

Age has caught up to Ben. He’s clearly in distress, unable to hold his bladder which began dispersing blood clots recently. He recently endured a urinary tract infection and survived what appeared to be a stroke last winter which left his rear legs weak and the right side of his face droopy. And apparently he’s had another smaller stroke since.

His increased thirst, fur loss, night-time inability to get settled and his weight loss suggested Ben was terminally ill before we actually got the official diagnosis.

Ben still goes for walks most mornings, he still wants to sniff some of his friends at the Riverstone dog park but his fragility is becoming more obvious and more painful to watch. He’s still spunky and frisky but not for as long and not to the same degree.

Cartrophen, a monthly injection for the arthritis in his back legs, has made a difference in the few months he’s been on it but his legs have been getting shakier the past few weeks.

He’s still got that glint in his eyes, although his right is drooping more, and a wag in the tail but it’s clear my baby Ben is now old Ben and it’s time to reunite with Roxie and Rio as hard as it is for me to say goodbye to truly my best friend.

I can’t be selfish because Ben has given me too much over the years and the memories I’ll have with him when he soon closes his eyes for the final time will stay with me until I see him again. And I know the final look from his living eyes will forever haunt me.

Ben isn’t just a good boy – he’s daddy’s good boy and life won’t be the same without him when I reluctantly have to let him cross that rainbow bridge so he can romp freely and pain-free with his pals.

And nobody is going to know except the people closest to me. This goodbye is going to be private. It has to be.