Hound Dog Blues Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  HOUND DOG BLUES

  “A remarkable book for dog lovers, written with profound understanding of the relationships we have with our ‘journey companions.’ The author’s background of professional and personal experience with grief adds sophisticated emotional wisdom to this story, encompassing the loss of both canine and human loved ones.”

  —Betsy Kelleher, author of Sometimes a Woman Needs a Horse

  “HOUND DOG BLUES, with its easy and flowing prose, takes us across that final river where we lose those whom we have loved best, whether they are of the human or furry type. The author makes us think deeply and lovingly of the precious, daily moments of living through her vivid descriptions of life at the dog park. Peg makes us realize that it does not matter whether we are left with a worn slipper, as was the case when she lost her mom, or a weathered leash and collar, as was the case with the death of her beloved dog, Duke. The result is the same: grief, an overpowering sense of loss, a journey through all the same stages of recovery, and the final act of letting go. But perhaps the loss of a canine companion is the deepest of all, for the unconditional love dogs offer us seldom is matched. A great tribute to man’s best friend, and readers will not soon forget the vivid portrayal of Duke, the ultimate ‘compadre’!”

  —Jeanne Spicher, MA, MBA,

  retired creative writing/language instructor

  “Peg Gould’s HOUND DOG BLUES greets a reader with quiet yet brilliant insights rarely woven so beautifully and emotionally into a loving tapestry. Yes, this is about Duke, her beloved bloodhound mix, but it is much more than that, a song that takes the reader from vital and then grieved pet to vital and grieved family. She spins her emotional thread ever so deftly from childhood through her 60-plus years of adulthood, echoing back periodically to cherished moments. This story is powerful and simply stated in its eloquent recall of how the beloved resonates in us all. The last act of love one can do is to let go, and it was hard to let go of this HOUND DOG BLUES. It will stay with me forever.”

  —Edward Ballardson

  “This beautiful little book profoundly reveals what it is like to go through the grieving process while losing a loved one. We follow Duke, their magnificent bloodhound/Lab companion, in his losing battle with cancer. The intensity of his life energy, then his relatively rapid demise, relate to how we travel this aging path ourselves and with our beloveds. Coping with loss can help us to live our best in this moment. Thank you, Peg, for this courageous memoir.”

  —Beth Wales, Duke’s friend and occasional sitter

  HOUND

  DOG BLUES

  Duke's doggone last ride home,

  a memoir of life and loss

  Peg Stomierowski Gould

  Copyright © 2017 Peg Stomierowski Gould.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Author Credits: Co-author of The Art of Connecting With Nature,” 2016 DogEar Publishing

  Photo credit for the author for chapter photos.

  Balboa Press

  A Division of Hay House

  1663 Liberty Drive

  Bloomington, IN 47403

  www.balboapress.com

  1 (877) 407-4847

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

  ISBN: 978-1-5043-7749-2 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-5043-7750-8 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-5043-8210-6 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017908940

  Balboa Press rev. date: 09/07/2017

  This book is dedicated to my mother, who urged me to marry a gentle man; to Duke and all of those remarkable dogs who have also been journey companions on this good earth; and to my husband Todd, a gentle soul who has loved and cared for all of our dogs as his own.

  The Beasts

  By Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

  I THINK I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d;

  I stand and look at them long and long.

  They do not sweat and whine about their condition;

  They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;

  They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;

  Not one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things;

  Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;

  Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

  CONTENTS

  Diagnosis (1)

  Here And Gone (2)

  Bargaining (3)

  Mortality (4)

  The Look (5)

  The End (6)

  Medicine Wheel (7)

  Carrying On (8)

  Slowing Down (9)

  Forced March (10)

  Moving On (11)

  Body Talk (12)

  Profiling (13)

  Stuck In Drive (14)

  Unbearable Lightness (15)

  Hello From The Other Side (16)

  Epilogue

  PREFACE/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author, in an earlier compilation titled The Art of Connecting With Nature, wrote in Chapter 2 about visiting her regional dog park daily to experience the deepening that comes through sharing nature with her dogs. Her bloodhound mix Duke—so prominent in their adventures—succumbed to disease more than six months before the book’s release by DogEar Publishing in 2016. With this new title, she expands exploration of this recent loss and those of others who were “journey companions” for her over time. The term is used in spiritual care to mean being calmly present without judgment, agenda, and attachment to outcome. In Peg’s eyes, spirituality is everywhere, heaven and hell are here and now, life and death are rhythms of nature, and grief and loss go with the territory.

  In addition to the encouragement of family, friends and others, whose privacy has required but mild disguise, the author acknowledges Mary Oxley of Balboa Press, who at the start of this project did not even realize a dog could get cancer. Her early expression of genuine curiosity, her general accessibility and gentle approach were helpful to the author in a horse-whisperer way. The author also acknowledges Mark Platten, and other co-authors of her first collaboration, for the inspiration to delve deeper, and colleague Deb Acord for her candid and thoughtful foreword.

  Photo by Deb Acord

  Hunter S. Thompson and Dizzy Gillespie, wistful at the
window on a snow day.

  FOREWORD

  Peg Gould and I met many years ago, long-timers in the messy hub of a medium-sized city newsroom. Like most drawn to this career, we couldn’t sit still and shared not only a love for our work, but irrepressible curiosity about what others do. So we had side interests—she was going to massage school and I was in a rock band. Eventually she went on to full-time master’s studies, and I didn’t see her for many years. Then, one morning about a decade ago, she walked through the door of my husband’s hospital room as a resident in chaplaincy training. My husband, Mark, had a rare form of cancer, and in the endless days of his hospitalization, Peg would stop by to check on him, and on us. We were in the throes of worry of what would happen next, of how we were going to get around this ugly obstacle. Peg knew we didn’t want answers. She just listened as we tried to sort out how this terrible thing had happened. After months of treatment, Mark, a musician, was back onstage, and once again I lost touch with Peg. Three years later, his cancer came roaring back, and Mark died in 2010.

  That’s when I took another blind turn in my life and began working at a veterinary clinic. It was an unusual choice for a grieving person—helping people with their suffering animals and with their sadness when they lost them to illness or injury. I discovered right away that the grief that people felt after the loss of their beloved pets was just as life-altering as the raw grief I still felt over the loss of my husband. It was both illuminating and humbling to help them grapple with those feelings I knew so well. Grieving owners, one after another, confessed to me that losing their 18-year-old cat to kidney disease or their 10-year-old German Shepherd to liver cancer hit them harder than when a (human) family member died. They were almost apologetic as they whispered about their sadness to me, as if there was something wrong with equating their loss to my own.

  One day, the door to the animal clinic swung open and a giant black Labrador kind of dog with a bloodhound head barreled through, followed by his owners. It was Duke, with Peg and Todd Gould. In the ensuing years, they came in occasionally, when Duke needed his shots or had itchy ears after jumping into the creek at his favorite dog park. Peg would call the clinic with questions about typical dog ailments or to schedule regular appointments, but one time, she was more concerned than usual. Duke, ever exuberant and unstoppable, may have damaged a leg. They had come to the right place, I told them. Our lead doctor specialized in ACL surgeries, and he would look at it. When X-rays revealed cancer in Duke’s muscular leg, Peg and Todd were devastated. I saw panic and disbelief in their faces. They went home to grapple with the diagnosis and the decisions they would have to make.

  Peg had helped me and my family as we worked our way through grief. She had lost family members before losing this big, fill-up-a-room dog, and now she had to come to grips with how to deal with this loss. It was the same. It was different. How would she get her head around it?

  This book recounts her sadness, her spiritual journey, and her struggle to comprehend what had happened to her beloved Duke and how that loss fit into her life. HOUND DOG BLUES recounts the life of a noble dog and explores the spiritual journey and awakening that comes with love and loss.

  Deb Acord is a journalist, author and photographer who lives in Woodland Park, CO, with her menagerie—Basset hound Dizzy Gillespie, beagle Hunter S. Thompson, cats Chance and Sparrow, and Emily Bronte, a yellow and green parakeet who keeps watch on everyone. Acord has written about the environment, nature, outdoor recreation and animals for 40 years. Her work has appeared in the Colorado Springs Gazette, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, New York Daily News, and numerous other newspapers and online sites. She is the author of five guide books to the Colorado outdoors.

  Duke, we only pray that we really knew you.

  DIAGNOSIS (1)

  So this is how it starts.

  We drive Duke, our big old hound, up the mountain pass in Colorado to a rural veterinarian for an X-ray, thinking he has torn his ligament and that is why he couldn’t easily navigate the stairs at home one weekend. One of our daughters is getting married at a distant bed-and-breakfast, and our neighbor Susan is looking in on Duke and Raven, the smaller female mix we are leaving home with him. Susan notices that Duke is limping when he tries to go upstairs for water. We’re surprised. When he doesn’t improve, we brace for the possibility that he could have damaged a ligament.

  In the vet’s office, it is awkward, even with four of us holding him, to get Duke comfortably situated on a cold steel table for the scan, and he bares his teeth to the gums in pain and warning. When the vet examines the X-ray, this respected animal doctor concludes he doesn’t need to see any more tests. So sorry, he conveys gravely and sincerely, he’s near certain he is viewing osteosarcoma in a distal femoral bone. That means Duke has bone cancer in his left back leg. The vet points out the tumor’s shadow, and we nod numbly, not fully comprehending. First there’s denial. What? Cancer? Duke? Are you sure?

  We’re in shock, since we’ve never associated one big thought, Duke, with the other, Cancer. Yet a longtime acquaintance with veterinary experience in pain management had informed us shortly before this that her family had just lost their dog Yella to a similar condition. We were saddened; Yella had romped a few times with our dogs, and had been a fixture in their children’s life almost from the beginning. So, hoping for reprieve, we forward Duke’s X-ray. There is silence, and no one suggests our veterinarian is wrong.

  After Yella’s leg was amputated, we learn, her bone cancer spread rapidly to her lungs. Our friend is not recommending that we put the older and bulkier Duke, almost 12, through that. He is a giant black Lab with a bloodhound face and jowls, so an improbable mixture of two large breeds, one known for distractibility and the other for persistence. When he chases a ball, it’s hard to predict which compulsion will prevail.

  Cancer, we hear, is happening to a lot of big dogs.

  In her caring note to us, I notice that she speaks in terms of weeks, not months, about Duke’s prospects. She is a scientist, and a realist to the bone. Even before diagnosis, as a preventative strategy, this lady had been training Yella her whole life to sit still for blood draws and catheters in case she ever needed them.

  She recommends that, for Duke, we might want to seek a prescription for oxycodone for his last weeks. (We’re still in denial and not hearing the tough odds well. As it happens, Duke lasts not even two months and is gone before Christmas.) Our friend also mentions anxiety drugs. It is very stressful, she notes, for a dog who is struggling with disease symptoms, to not be able to do normal things—maybe for Duke, completing the walking loop at the dog park, whereas for Yella toward the end, it could mean just breathing without strong effort.

  On top of all this, she outlines the pros and cons of various discomfort and sedation capsules that may help Duke out. She kindly affirms that she feels our pain and warns that the weeks ahead will not be easy. Between the lines, her highly detailed note is so deeply emotional, I’m surprised; I don’t know why. It’s a big responsibility caring fulltime for anything, and a dog fallen ill is no different; she talks about making choices for him like we would for a helpless baby. It’s so sobering, I gloss over half of what she’s saying, in part because I don’t know the pharmaceutical references yet, am moved by her distress over the still fresh memory of Yella’s demise (and wondering whether we could have offered more comfort), and am starting to realize the trauma we are facing.

  And so we drive back down the mountain pass in silence, grappling with the realization that’s that—our days with Duke are appreciably numbered. Besides being shocked—cancer is not a frequent house guest—we’re tired and glum. I’ve lost both parents to heart ailments, Mom in New York before I was married myself. When we lost my father-in-law to throat cancer, we had the privilege of participating in at-home hospice care for him; we had embraced this priority by undertaking a prolonged stay in the little white house on a cul-de-sac where Todd
had been born and raised in California and where his folks still lived. Other losses weighed heavily as well. Fortunately, despite living in a different state, my husband has been blessed in sharing long visits by telephone with his elderly mother for decades after his own children were grown. And still, for both us, lessons and scars from dealing with loss have been with us for a long while.

  So why is there still the sense of being ambushed when it seems now Duke is about to go down? For weeks, I ponder the idea that maybe this is how it goes for pets and people alike: You walk into some antiseptic medical or wellness office full of people in white coats, thinking you’ll dodge the odds like the healthiest of your buddies … and then suddenly you don’t … or it seems you might not. Some cold clinical machinery or document registers your new reality … as a patient with a pathology report. You’ve opened some hidden door so wide that cancer has crept in where strength and hope had thrived. You are sentenced over the next weeks, months, or years to be constantly fighting a dread disease, struggling to survive, find a miracle cure, or at least a hopeful remission. The clock stops. You feel despondent. Helpless. Too late. Poor Duke!

  Stoic in suffering, but is that a tear?

  HERE AND GONE (2)

  Grappling with death and loss, and handling end-of-life care compassionately, have been on my mind for decades. When Mom died shortly after her sixty-seventh birthday–collapsing in my arms–I was devastated. Really I had not contemplated the possibility until a year or two before, when her heart disease became apparent. At the time I was climbing the career ladder at my first newspaper job after college, and it was difficult to know with any certainty the best measured response to her declining health with age. Plenty of people live with heart ailments, and we were hoping she would be one of them. We were close growing up, and I shared her interest in the psychological dimensions of life, including connection, displacement, grief and loss.