The Courage to Love: When a Rescue Dog Breaks Your Heart
Content Warning: This article discusses the loss of a pet and may be distressing for those who have experienced similar loss or are sensitive to this topic. Please proceed with caution and take care of your emotional well-being.
The great Suzanne Clothier says it best:
“There is a cycle of love and death that shapes the lives of those who choose to travel in the company of animals. It is a cycle unlike any other. To those who have never lived through its turnings and walked its rocky path, our willingness to give our hearts with full knowledge that they will be broken seems incomprehensible. Only we know how small a price we pay for what we receive; our grief, no matter how powerful it may be, is an insufficient measure of the joy we have been given.” ― Suzanne Clothier, Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs
It was late on a Saturday night.
Of course it was.
Our car was in the shop, so we didn’t even have access to transport.
We didn’t think it would matter for a few days.
Turns out we were quite wrong about that.
I had just returned from a trip and felt that Florence was a bit “off” that entire week.
I couldn’t put my finger on it.
She refused dinner a couple of times.
She didn’t eat her chewies (but wolfed down a dish of cat food I gave her instead).
That was a good sign.
Wasn’t it?
But then she needed to take a break when we were out for a walk.
Not unheard of.
She kept herself to herself even more than usual.
Also quite common for this fiercely self-sufficient rescue dog, who’d suffered who only knows what traumas in her past.
Nothing major then, just little things.
Angels Really Do Walk Among Us
I’ve written about Florence at length over the past few years.
She was a traumatized rescue dog who somehow ended up in a shelter in Romania without any real hope of getting out.
Until a kind-hearted soul working with one of the rescue organizations in Finland spotted her and took it upon herself to find a way out for Florence.
I am forever grateful that she thought of me.
We’d adopted a dog 6 months prior from the same organization and she was aware that I had a lot of experience with fearful rescue dogs.
She sent me a message along the lines of…
‘There’s this really scared dog. I’d really love to help her. I thought of you. Is there any chance you might consider her? Don’t feel obliged of course.’
Needless to say, the seeds were sewn and it was an immediate ‘yes’ from me.
Didn’t matter how old she was, what she looked like, or what her personality was like.
She needed help and we were here to provide it.
We began the paperwork to get Florence on a transport from Romania to Finland.
The Most Shutdown Dog I’ve Ever Seen
Florence finally arrived in October 2020, along with 37 other lucky dogs who were being homed with families here.
I was so excited to meet her, but when they brought her out I was rendered almost speechless.
She was practically catatonic with fear.
I’ve seen a lot of traumatized dogs in my time, but this one was something else.
She was so shut down she wouldn’t even look at me.
She flinched if you tried to touch her.
Oh my goodness, I thought to myself. I might have taken on a bit too much here.
And I’ve lived and worked with a lot of rescue dogs.
But I’m nothing if not committed to these lost souls, so I had to find a way to make this work.
Luckily, always food motivated, Florence seemed happy enough to take treats from me.
That’s how I knew we had a starting point.
So there we sat, quietly on our blanket and ignoring each other as I attempted to show her that she could trust me and I wasn’t going to force her into doing anything she wasn’t comfortable with.
Well, until it was time to leave at least.
Because when it was time to go home, Florence was so terrified she wouldn’t actually walk and we had to carry to the car.
Would she react aggressively? We had no idea, so muzzled her just in case.
Turns out there was absolutely no need.
Florence reacted to literally nothing.
What’s This Big Blue Expanse Above Me?
When we got home, Florence was too scared to jump out of the car.
She looked at the sky and the tall pine trees in wonder, as if she’d never seen anything like it before.
After an hour of waiting outside with her in the cold, even feeding her dinner in the car, my hand was finally forced and we carried her into the house.
She didn’t come out again for four weeks.
During that time, I worked diligently to build her confidence and gain her trust.
But although she started to venture briefly out of her room, she was still far too scared to leave the safety of the house.
In the end, we decided we would need to carry her outside to kickstart her walking program.
Predictably, she was terrified, cowering in a corner of the yard and wary of me standing so close to her holding the leash.
Enter the trusty long line, which enabled me to stand 30 feet away and not scare her to death, while still making sure she was safe.
I also recruited another of our dogs, Roman, to help show her she could trust me and that walks were fun.
Initially, she spent a lot of time lying down, trying to hide in ditches and under trees.
This meant I spent a lot of time standing frozen out in the cold waiting till she was ready to move again.
We worked on this for a few weeks and our walks gradually started getting longer, with less lying down, more sniffing, more positive body language, and Florence accepting a shorter 6-ft. leash, which I used for safety reasons.
On and on we went, trudging through the wind, rain and, eventually, snow, building Florence’s confidence and allowing her to explore the world on her own terms.
Within six months, was bounding about through the forest, off leash, completely confident in herself, in me, and her environment.
It was a joy to watch her incredible transformation.
When It All Started To Go Wrong
Florence rewarded me with her trust for almost four years.
Till it suddenly all went wrong.
Going back to that fateful Saturday night.
Florence didn’t want to eat her dinner.
She refused to go for a walk.
She wasn’t even tempted by some yummy cat food.
Something was off.
She got restless and kept moving around, trying to get comfortable.
I kept an eye on her, checking her gums (which were a light pink but about the same as our other dogs’, so I wasn’t unduly concerned).
But then she tried to get up to move and instead of walking, she stumbled and staggered.
That’s when I finally knew something was seriously wrong.
Her stomach looked like it was starting to bloat.
I started frantically googling while my husband called the vet.
They asked all the usual questions — has she vomited, has she had diarrhea, etc.
Didn’t matter. By now, I knew this was serious and we had to get her to the vet immediately.
She tried to drag herself up onto the sofa but her back legs would no longer work properly and I had to help her.
The other dogs started getting extremely distressed and kept coming over to check on her.
Poor Florence looked at me — and them — in absolute bewilderment.
She dragged herself back down onto the floor and started whimpering.
She was in pain.
This was bad, and quickly getting worse.
It was 10 p.m. on a Saturday night and the neighbors were either out or in bed.
Our closest neighbors cycle everywhere and don’t have a car in any case.
So we frantically called a taxi, which had arrived by the time we’d got the other dogs situated and carried the rapidly ailing Florence outside.
No Time to Say Goodbye
It was a 20-minute drive to the emergency vet, during which time Florence was fidgety, distressed, and extremely uncomfortable.
The cab driver kept looking around to check on his leather seats (she was half on my lap and half on a big bath towel — his seats were safe, even in our distress, we made sure of that).
By the time we got there, Florence was practically delirious. We carried her in and the receptionist asked us to get her on the weighing scales.
Are you kidding me? She can’t even walk. She might actually be dying.
I dared to admit the very worst to myself for the first time since this whole thing began.
How things can change within the space of an hour.
One minute we were all cozy at home watching the athletics, the next we were scrambling in a cab with one very scared, very sick dog.
I gritted my teeth.
‘She was just here in March,’ I politely told the receptionist. ‘Can you just take her weight from that visit because it’s unlikely to have changed much.’
The vet interrupted this little exchange by calling us into a consult room.
They had a doggy gurney waiting and wheeled Florence straight to the back where they placed her on a heating pad, and gave her oxygen and opioids to help with the pain.
We could hear her howling the whole time.
The vet then sent us back out to wait while they ran some tests.
At least it was summer, so we could go outside (where it was still broad daylight) rather than sit in the waiting room under the wary eyes of the three other people and pets we had bypassed with our emergency.
We paced up and down in front of the clinic, nervously discussing what might be happening and what the possible outcomes could be.
I had a bad feeling. We’d been down this road many times before.
Late night emergency visits.
Going home at 3 a.m. with just a collar, a paw print, and a lock of hair, instead of your beloved dog or cat.
I messaged a couple of close friends, seeking the support I knew they’d provide.
We paced some more.
Then the vet came out to call us back in.
She showed us a syringe full of the deep red blood that was rapidly filling up Florence’s abdominal cavity.
She was bleeding internally from the ruptured mass on her spleen they’d found via ultrasound.
The options were either immediate euthanasia, or operate right now to remove the spleen and hope the tumor a) wasn’t malignant and b) hadn’t spread, with the caveat that if things went wrong, they might have to euthanize her on the table anyway.
What a dire set of options to be faced with late on a Saturday night.
We were simply reeling, and our poor pup was still howling.
The vet said not to worry, the opioids could have that effect.
Her delivery throughout was robotic, as if she’d seen it all before.
Perhaps it was fortunate that we were in such shock by the turn of events as we were barely able to react, other than to opt for the surgery because Florence deserved every chance at life.
We would want the same for ourselves, so why should it be any less for her?
‘Smile, even though your heart is breaking’ — that’s how the song goes, right?
Entering the Void
The vets sent us home, telling us they’d call at around 4 a.m. — 5 a.m. once the surgery was done.
We called an Uber and sat there in disbelief the entire way home.
Our other three dogs were exuberant to see us, but also very confused about the whereabouts of Florence and what had happened.
We tried to remain positive. We talked and paced a whole lot more.
It’s hard to know what to do in situations like that.
Just before 1 a.m. the phone rang.
That couldn’t be good.
Or could it?
As it turns out, no.
Florence had lost so much blood her heart had stopped on the table as they had administered the anesthetic. She had gone into shock. They had tried, but weren’t able to get her heart restarted.
She was gone.
Just like that, our sweet girl was gone.
If you’ve ever loved and lost an animal, I don’t need to describe to you how that feels.
The guilt that you should have realized sooner that something was wrong.
The endless what-ifs.
The obsessive going over the last days, hours, and minutes to try to define the moment when it all went wrong.
What you should have done differently.
The signs you might have missed.
The feelings of emptiness and desolation.
The sadness at watching your other dogs drift around aimlessly, looking for their fallen comrade, not quite understanding.
Or maybe they understand better than any of us.
She Lived Her Best Life — But It Wasn’t Long Enough
I’m writing this exactly two weeks later.
It’s been tough, I won’t lie.
I see Florence everywhere.
The places she used to stop and sniff.
That spot on the corner where she wanted to stop and take a break on what turned out to be our last walk together.
Her empty harness and leash hanging by the door.
Her food bowl sitting on the counter.
The giant gaping space on the sofa where she used to sleep.
We’re all a bit lost without her.
She was the calm one. The quirky one. The anchor for the other three dogs throughout their edginess and grumblings. The one we never had to worry about.
The dog who was once too scared to leave the house, who became the dog who raced to the front door, standing up on her back legs and barking with excitement whenever you picked up the leash.
The dog who never let me hug her, but would come and wedge herself up against me on the sofa or let me sneak a kiss on the top of her head when I was putting on her harness.
The dog who taught me that even the most shutdown of dogs can overcome their fears and live their best lives, if you only give them the time and space to do so.
Rest peacefully my beautiful girl. Thank you for trusting me.
If we’d only had more time.
But of course, there is never enough time.
Would I do it all over again?
In a heartbeat.
So do me a favor, will you? Take a moment to tell your dog, or dogs, how much you love them.
Better yet, show them.
Go outside and play a fun game, get them a new favorite toy, or invite them up on the sofa to hang out with you.
Their lives are all too short, and you just never know when it’s going to be the last time.
