I said, “I doubt she’ll notice…

What with the move and all—

She’s in a new house and the movers are showing up at 8 in the morning to unload all the stuff.

Her grand parents are here.

She’ll want to explore the new room and go down the slide.

She won’t notice, at least not tomorrow.”

Of course the first question she asked her mother when she got up was, “Where’s my doggie?”

Tenna, our dog of eleven years, the dog we got six months after getting married; that began our life together and grew old with us; that welcomed both of our children home and let our daughter ride her back like a horsey; that would curl around E on cold mornings while Burt and Ernie taught their lessons about friendship; that would go the door of her bedroom when she cried in the night; the vacuum and napkin of our lives; the one nicknamed Gehenna and Tenna Monster, because as a puppy she had viciously sharp teeth, an obstinate will, and damaged more than one library book was put down late last Thursday evening.

She’d been growing increasingly worse… but we’d thought it was only that we were entering the “expensive phase” of dog ownership. Our last two weeks in Atlanta were rather hellish, especially for young children and old dogs, both need their routines, both need their space to either play or sleep. We thought that maybe the stress of the move had gotten to her and that she would level out after a week or two in the new place. I was going to take her to the public pools; they have bring your dog days, and ever since she learned to swim in the Mississippi as a pup, she’s loved the water.

Over the summer we had noticed that it was taking her longer and longer to jump up on the bed; we thought it was arthritis setting into her hips. So many dogs, especially big dogs, especially Labrador Retrievers, suffer from hip dysplasia and/or arthritis. She’d never had either; it was time. On Wednesday before the move, she simply stopped trying to jump up on the bed.

Though we had kept her slim by never over-feeding her and by exercising her (though I must confess that after G’s birth the walks virtually disappeared), she’d always had the stereotypical Labrador appetite: “Yes.. I’ll eat my food… and your food… and your food… and whatever else you leave out on the counter.” One Easter Sunday in the mountains that T grew up in (though this disturbed my mother-in-love more than me, especially since this was in the days before children), the only Easter chocolate to be found was that which Tenna had barfed up on the carpet in the living room, on the basement stairs, on the sidewalk, and asphalt. More than once we would come home and to find that the Counter Cruiser had struck again. But neither on Friday nor on Saturday did she touch her food. On Sunday, though, she did eat, like a horse… not her regular kibble, but canned food.

As you can see from the pictures, she has always been gentle and loving with the kids…especially our daughter. And, though the 3 1/2 year old E has become, with age and with the move, quite the ornery little girl, Tenna still treated her with as much care and love as she always had. On Sunday, though, we heard a yelp from the dog, a growl, and crying from the girl, at whom the dog had snapped. All day the dog trembled as if in pain. Again, we assumed it was the hips.

I took her to our vet in the ATL on Monday to see if there was anything that they could do for her. After a thorough check, the hips seemed fine. Few 11 year old labs had the joint elasticity of ours. Still, she walked as if her hips were in pain; but, there was virtually no inflammation. She did say that there was evidence that her neurological system was in some way impaired or compromised. Regardless, the vet prescribed the typical old-Lab, hip-pain cocktail of Glucosamine tablets and Deramaxx. And, we spent the $130 on the pills because Tenna, the dog who at nine o’clock every night would retire to warm up our bed in preparation for our own retiring, was old and in pain.

On Tuesday we closed and she seemed fine, except that she kept standing up to scratch a place on her ribs with one of those awkward stance scratches. We’d noticed her doing this after our house hunting trip a few weeks before but thought little of it. That night, like the night before, she slept our bed, not because she jumped in bed, but because I picked her up and placed her there. With the movers at the house most of the day Wednesday, she spent a great portion of it out on the deck. And, that night, she kept tripping over E’s shoes, and anything else that might be in her way.

Because she kept walking into walls, on Thursday we almost took her to the vet before leaving for Lexington, but we didn’t. She’s old. The disorientation is because there’s nothing in the house. She just needs a few days of rest and relaxation, then she’ll be as good as new.

I lifted her out of the back of the Subaru and she fell into a heap on the stoop of the new house. We walked in and the little girl ran through the place ooing and ahing over everything, showing her grandparents this, that, and the other. But her doggie stayed downstairs. She walked into the kitchen, put her nose between the fridge and wall, and peed. Then, she turned to go down the hallway and fell. Tried to get up and tripped again. E said something,in a not very nice tone of voice, about the dog needing to get out of the hallway, and her mother told her that she needed to treat the dog nicely because she didn’t feel very well.

We took her to the vet at 9 p.m. Tenna dozed on and off in my arms until the vet saw her around 12 a. m. She said: “It’s either a massive stroke or a brain tumor… and given her age, her breed, your account, and her symptoms, I think its a brain tumor. If you want you can do a CT scan to confirm, but there’s nothing we can do about her health. If you want to take her home and keep her there, I can prescribe some stronger pain meds, but she will be incontinent and bed-ridden and I cannot guarantee how long she will live… or you can euthanize her.”

We wondered briefly if we should bring her back to a house that was not her home, a house at which movers would show up at 8 in the morning, only so that she could live a few more days doped up on meds. Instead, we decided to put her down; cremate her in a mass cremation and have her ashes spread over a farm. Burying her in a backyard that was not her backyard seemed strange. Plus, she was conceived and born on a farm.

T asked, “What are we going to tell the little girl?”

I said, “I doubt she’ll notice.”

But E loved Tenna. In fact, she still tells people about her dog: “Your dog is black,” she said to our neighbors on Friday, “But I have a dog. She’s chocolate. Her name is Tenna.”

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