It's been 75 days since I've posted.

I just wrote an entire entry dedicated to Jasmine's last day. I've gone through about 25 tissues recounting that experience. I've had half of a glass of wine.

And I accidentally clicked away from Livejournal for a moment, and the entire entry was wiped.

I am so upset and mad and upset and angry and upset.

I don't know if I can do it again.

I will try again tomorrow. I don't have the heart to dump it all out again.

Thursday evening, when I came home from work, there was muddy poop on the floor in the kitchen.

I cleaned it up, and let the dogs outside, where Jasmine had what seemed to be a regular bowel movement. I didn't give it much thought, though, and Friday morning, I was a little surprised and scared when I saw her having problems outside. Poop was just dripping out of her. Sorry to be so graphic, but it's the only way I can describe what was happening.

I immediately called the vet, and she said that they could give us some medication that might help her, but that we would likely need to make a decision soon, on putting her down.

Things had been going so great lately, that I just couldn't really imagine this day actually coming. I was not ready to give up on her yet, and neither was R. He was probably more supportive of the drugs than myself. So, for another $60, I picked up the drugs for her Friday afternoon, and they seemed to start working immediately. The scariest part though, was when I came home from work Friday, and there was diarrhea in the kitchen, which had bright red patches of blood in it.

R had to run some errands Friday night, so I decided to get the majority of the house cleaning out of the way. As I was vacuuming the living room rug, which is a busy pattern of dark blues/browns/blacks, I was overwhelmed by the smell of dog-poo. It was then that I realized I had run over a semi-dried pile of poo, and it was all up in the vacuum, and no telling where all on the rug. It was awful. I had to throw away the vacuum. I sat on the floor trying to figure out where the poo was, but it was everywhere. I scrubbed and scrubbed, but the rag kept coming back dirty. It was like it was everywhere. I was in tears by this time, and was ready to burn the rug. Jasmine thought she was in trouble, and was shaking and hiding in the corner. I had to pick her up and cuddle her a little to reassure her that this was not her fault.

I had to call out Kiwi Carpet Cleaners on Saturday morning to pick up my rug for off-site cleaning. $125 was the final negotiated price. He originally quoted me $284, but I laughed at him and said, "Sorry for wasting your time, but..." Just goes to show you how much of a rip-off those places really are.

Saturday during the day, she seemed to be doing so much better. Solid stools, and a raging appetite. The vet had given me some I/D food, and I couldn't get it out of the can and into her bowl fast enough. It was like a cat mewing at my feet, except it was Jasmine-whines non-stop. She gobbled that food down as fast as possible every time it was given to her.

Saturday night, she pooped in the kitchen, and I handed the clorox wipes and paper towels to R. It was totally his turn. The consistency was a little less than ideal, too.

But Sunday, she still seemed to be doing ok. We gave her more I/D food and her meds, and went out to lunch around 11:30 or so. I had originally locked her up in the hallway behind an ornate fireplace grill (we don't have baby gates in our house), but she Houdini'd her way out of there by the time we got home this afternoon. And when we let her out, she had a major blow out again. :(

It took about 20 baby wipes to get her cleaned up, and R was finally able to see what kind of toll this illness was taking on her body. He agreed that the medicine clearly wasn't working, and that the time has come.

Tomorrow morning, Jasmine will be put down.

I don't know when the soul healing will begin. I don't know when or if I'll post anything else in this journal. I don't know how long it will take me to come to terms with what is happening to her, and what role I will be playing tomorrow. She trusts me to take care of her and comfort her, but I feel so guilty for doing something that the logical side of my brain says is the right thing to do. She is my baby. My first baby. I will always remember her as that.



This was taken just now with Jasmine in my lap, while I've been typing.


Thank you all for reading, and for thinking and praying about Jasmine. She would have loved you all.

Holy Bad Haircut, Batman.

And...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JASMINE!

It's day 53.

I cannot believe it. She's made it 7.5 weeks beyond diagnosis. And honestly, she's not deteriorating very much. I look at her today, and I wonder if she WON'T make it another 6 months. She's a strong little girl, and she's fighting for her life.

She's not doing much of anything out of the ordinary. Besides the fact that I caught her eating dog poop behind our fence. Oh yes. I guess she's not too old to have a few "firsts".

Tuesday when I was leaving for work, I noticed that she had very little food left in her bowl, probably about a quarter of a cup. Normally, this would be plenty for her little body to consume in a day before I would be able to purchase and bring home more dog food in the evening after work. But since she's SO. HUNGRY. AND. THIRSTY. from the prednisone, she eats all the time. And drinks water all the time.

So, when I got home from work, I went to let her and Cole out to potty, I saw her munching on something in the grass. I ran over yelling, "Spit it out! Spit it out!" which is a command that she would almost always respond to, believe it or not, but she just kept on munching. I had to grab her and dig it out of her mouth. It was huge and hard, and at first I thought it was a rock or an acorn, and I thought, dang, she must be starving to be trying to eat a rock and then it kinda smooshed in my hand when I finally got it out, and I freaked out. Dog shit. In her mouth. I am wanting to hurl just thinking about it. I ran inside through the garage and laundry room, briefly thinking of grabbing the bleach and just pouring it over my hand in the sink, but resisted the urge, and instead just lit my hand on fire with gasoline and a match. Ha. No, not really, but seriously. My brain thought of all kinds of ridiculous things to do to clean my hand off before finally settling on scrubbing the bejesus out of it with liquid dishwashing soap and scalding hot water.

But my hand is nothing. She had this in her MOUTH. And was chewing it.

Ok, enough. Enough of the poop talk. ::shudders::

Anyway, other than that episode of sheer ignorance and animal instinct, she's been acting sweet and loving. Right now, she's curled up beside me, snoozing and snoring away. She is still very "under foot" in the kitchen and follows me around when I'm home.

Her hair looks a tad bit better. Kate came over tonight and chuckled at her bad haircut and said she looks like she's been going through radiation treatments.

Yeah, it really is that bad. :P

But have you ever tried to groom a dog that won't stand up? I wasn't very good with the grooming to begin with. But trying to do it while she was lying down was a joke.

Anyway, we're in better spirits. Jasmine's doing as well as can be expected, and we're at peace with her diagnosis and fate.

She's lived a long wonderful life, full of many laughs, snuggles, walks, and sniffs.

And Leigh with www.noisydogstudio.com is painting her portrait. I'm honored that I will have her forever memorialized in such a way. It will be a treasure to have.

Here are a couple of videos - the playful video was taken 2 months before her diagnosis in September of 2008.

The sleepy one is of just a few weeks ago.

I almost, ALMOST got Jasmine to play today.

I tried to take advantage of her most playful time, and that would be right after the bath. She showed interest in her favorite soft toy for about 1 full second, then immediately ran into the kitchen and looked at the treat jar.

Hm.

I gave her the worst haircut in the history of bad dog hair cuts today. I'm not even kidding. I can usually do a pretty good shave and groom on her, but this time was different than the previous times. This time, she laid down for the entire procedure. Let me tell you, if you have never shaved a dog, then by all means, do not do it with the dog lying down. She is so crooked, so ...off. I don't even know how to describe how bad it looks. I thought, no big deal, it will fluff out after her bath . Well, it didn't. And she's pink, too, because I shaved her a little too close. Betcha didn't know that dogs are pink under all that fur! :P

Anyway, she's clean, she can see, she no longer has funk in her beard, and her tail is free of knots. I love it when she's clean and smells good. Makes snuggles much more enjoyable.

She's in bed with me right now, making snoring sounds. Just a minute ago, she jumped at a noise that her own stomach made. It was pretty funny.

I've been feeling pretty sick today. I somehow injured my back this week, and I've been hurting for the entire weekend. I also have been suffering from caffiene-withdrawal headaches for the whole week, and then tonight, I got sick after we had dinner. I am falling apart. I'm sitting in bed watching re-runs of Big Love. Jasmine is a big fan of the show, don't let her fool you.

She has always enjoyed being near me, so hanging out in the bed is really nothing new.

Tonight feels almost normal.

Almost.

I came home from work a little early yesterday, putting me home about 2 hours before the dogs' normal potty time. Usually, this isn't a big deal, but I'm sure Jasmine was thankful. She drinks SO. MUCH. WATER now. She's drinking water right this instant. But, the best part of the day, was when I walked into the laundry room from the garage, and she made a sound that I rarely hear, and honestly thought I'd never hear again. It's a bark that she only makes when she's terribly excited, and it sounds more like a "woo-woo-woo", than a "bark-bark-bark". My heart melted. I burst through the kitchen door and scooped her up, where she licked my face - also a rare occasion. Seriously. She licks faces about as often as she willingly takes a swim in the pool. Yesterday, was a good day.

When she was still a puppy, and I would come home from work and burst through the door to see her, she would come running to me, and would be so excited that sometimes, she would tinkle all over me if I picked her up. It was awful, and I thought it was something I would never be able to break her of. I tried everything - locking her in her kennel during the time I was gone, and then taking her kennel outside before letting her out of it, or taking up her water while I was gone. At one point, I had old towels near the entrance to the kitchen (she was locked behind a baby gate) so that she would get it out before I actually picked her up. But those days passed, and she grew into the perfect little lap dog, never having an accident. I am being completely honest and serious when I say that Jasmine has probably had less than a dozen accidents between the time she was completely potty-trained and this last month. That's 12 years of a pretty spotless record.

Jasmine is still doing about the same otherwise. She's getting a tad wobbly. When she stands up, her back legs shake, and seeing it makes me want to crumble to the floor, to her level and burst into tears.

But I cannot do that. Because Jasmine is very in tune with my emotions. She always has been. I've cried enough around her. It disturbs her. I think she knows something is wrong.

She's always comforted me when I was upset. When my ex-husband and I were married, we fought a lot. I would usually end up in a teary mess on the floor, and Jasmine was the only friend I had. She would drop whatever it was she was playing with, and would come to me, laying as close to my head as possible, and would sit as still as can be with her head nuzzled up to me. She always knew when I needed her. And I secretly think she was choosing sides.

She's always been so good at knowing just how to mold her life to mine. It's hard for me to remember the years before she came into my life. It's like this poem I read once, about how life is like an empty tea cup. My heart has always had the curve, and Jasmine is the tea that was filled it. She fit the mold. It's unfathomable to consider another dog filling her place. I've said it before - Jasmine will be the dog that all dogs from here on will be measured against.

Tomorrow is bath day. She knows it. I think she's given up fighting. I gave her a bath last weekend, but tomorrow, I've got to give her a haircut as well. Her hair is so shaggy and greasy right now. She likes it that way. If it were up to her, she'd be a ragamuffin for her entire life. She loves to go outside and sun herself in the dirtiest spot on the back patio.

She doesn't fight her baths, no. That would be too beneath her. (Did I tell you that she thinks she's a cat?) No, she doesn't fight, but she does hide. And it's like pulling teeth to get her to come out of her unreachable hiding spot. Once, when she caught whiff of her bath time, she hid so well that I couldn't find her for an hour. A whole hour. I had gotten to the panicky point where I thought she must have gotten outside! I went running up and down the street, knowing that it couldn’t be possible, that I must be crazy since I knew that I hadn't opened the door for her to escape. I finally found her hiding under the lower rack of clothes in the back of the closet. She must have been pretty proud of that herself for finding that spot, because it's where she chose to hide a few more times in the future. :)

No, I don't expect she'll put up much of a tussle tomorrow. The only thing she's ever been fussy about is getting her toenails cut, which we'll also be doing tomorrow. But I suspect that she's a little too fatigued to even put up much of a protest there either. We'll see.

A friend of mine on Twitter turned me onto a woman who is doing a project about dogs. Her link is here.

Noisy Dog Studio

I'll be submitting Jasmine, and her story. I would love more than anything to have a painting of her. That would actually mean the world to me. I hope that she is chosen. I hope that I have done her justice in telling her story.

In closing for this entry, I'd like to leave you all with some pictures of Jasmine through the years.

1999 - She was 2 here. And she had a litter of puppies with Chewie (the little yorkie I used to have).



These were the two surviving puppies from her litter of 3. They were named Levi & Phoebie.



Size comparison. That's Phoebe.





2001 (You have to cut me some slack on that couch. It was my maroon/green era.)



2002



2003











2004








2005













2006









2007







2008

Jasmine's 12th birthday is coming up. January 19th. I hope she is still here for it.

Things with her are definitely getting worse. She's not the same dog at all.

She doesn't want much to do with me anymore. She follows me around a little, but mostly it's just long enough to determine if I'm getting a treat for her.

She isn't showing signs of being gastrointestinally sick yet. This is good, but that doesn't mean that she isn't doing poorly in other areas.

Yesterday, I tried to get her to jump on the ottoman. This is usually something we couldn't break her of doing, especially if I had a blanket on the chair with me, since she knew that it was an open invitation to sit with me in the chair/ottoman. Now, though, she can't even lift her front legs off the ground enough to jump. It's quite pathetic.

We had to start locking her out of the bedroom at night, which has pretty much taken my heart out and stomped on it. She has never in her life not slept in the bedroom with me, if not in the bed. She's just snoring so much that we can't sleep at night. It's so loud that even with the door closed, I can hear her snoring from the kitchen, which is down the hall and past the living room.

I try to make up for this by putting her in the bed with R and I as we watch TV at night before going to sleep. But she doesn't even enjoy being on the bed anymore. She won't come to me when I pat the bed next to me. She just lies down and acts worn out.

She won't sleep in her beds anymore either. I have 3 dog beds for her throughout the house. One is in the hallway outside our bedroom door, with a heating pad attached. The other is in the living room. And the 3rd is in the office. She prefers to sleep on the floor now, or with Cole on his big Orvis bed.

I am beginning to wonder if her snoring is negatively affecting Cole's ability to sleep.

So, the breakdown so far... She doesn't play. She doesn't want to spend time with me. She doesn't sleep on her beds anymore. She cannot jump. She only enjoys food. That's it.

It's depressing. It's a waiting game.

We're still waiting.

R and I took Jasmine to the vet on Saturady morning.

They said she is definitely bloated, and that the bloat could either be gas or fluid. Prednisone causes both. The poor girl looks like she did when she was pregnant.

The fortunate part was that if it were fluid, the vet said she'd almost certainly be showing signs of being sick. As it is, she's eating, drinking and pooping normally, still. Gas isn't anything to really be worried about.

They offered to do a sonogram to make sure, but I felt it was an unnecessary costly procedure that wouldn't do us much good one way or the other.

The vet seemed somewhat pleased that she's doing as well as she is so far. She said to not let the smooth ride thus far give us a sense of false hope. She said Jasmine will most certainly not get better.

I guess I needed to hear that again. Things have been so good with her recently (aside from the lethargy and bloating) that I've been letting my guard down.

The vet also gave her an antibiotic because her breath is atrocious. She said that it may be because her teeth are in such bad shape and getting worse from the steroid. After only 2 days on the antibiotic, her breath is WAY better.

Anyway, that's all the update I have. I'm thankful that I will have 4 days off this coming weekend to spend with her.

On Saturday, Day 23, Jasmine tinkled on the floor twice. Two different times.

This week, she's been having trouble breathing. Snoring all the time. Not just when she's sleeping. She sounds like a little piglet when I get home from work and she's very excited to see me.

I don't know what to do. R wants to take her to the vet and see if they can tell us anything.

Her tummy's swollen all of a sudden, too. Like there's something going on in there that we don't know about. She's still potty-ing normally, and actually hasn't had any accidents since Saturday. We decided to take her water up during the day when we're gone, and at night when we're sleeping, allowing her to tank up for a window of only about 6 hours total per day, but I think this is best, since the prednisone makes her think she's thirsty all the time, and we're gone so long during the day. She'd never be able to hold it all day.

I hate that this is happening.

I watched the Charlie Brown Christmas Special tonight. Did you know that show's been running since 1965? I've watched that cartoon every year since I can remember. But this year, it seems to have a different meaning. I keep thinking, that Snoopy is to Charlie Brown what Jasmine is to me. Who is Charlie Brown without his trusty side-kick and show-stealing Snoopy? Obviously the world will keep turning without Jasmine, but my world will be just as strange and off if I'm missing my "Snoopy".

I'm tired. And I'm tired of playing the waiting game. Sometimes I just wish it would happen. Like ripping a bandaid off. And then I get so mad at myself because I'm wishing away all the time I have left with her. But I want her to be happy during that time. Not run down and feeling bad. I hope the vet tells us that she's par for the course, and that there isn't any necessary things to be done.