A Blow to the Structure

Ruth & I are not at Ruth's Ridge as I write. We're on our first holiday in two years – a road trip to Sedona, AZ for a week, followed by a business stop in Phoenix. Tomorrow, Ruth's conference in Phoenix will wind up and we'll head for home. We were to spend a couple of days in Santa Fe, NM on the way home, but events back in Winnipeg have pre-empted that.

Rebus is dying.



Mr. Bean, Beaner, the ultimate belly-rub slut.

As much as I've had a premonition of his situation for some months, I'm numb at the prospect of losing my constant companion and member of our construction crew on Ruth's Ridge. I can't even begin to imagine the emptiness that will pervade my days when he's gone. Damn, loss is hard.

Rebus has presented strangely since last November. First, it was growling and snarling at me – particularly at bedtime, or if I'd ask him questions... questions that, for years, had initiated special, happy contact between us. A few months ago, we came to the theory that maybe he wasn't getting enough fatty acids in his diet (Corgis tend to lard on very easily), thereby causing mental irritability. A change in foods corrected that behaviour, but he still would have strange, confused and dissociative episodes. Then, about 5 or 6 weeks ago, he had a injury of some kind that had him favouring his left hind leg. For several days he could hardly move. He had shown some significant signs of arthritis, so a five-day course of prednisone was prescribed.

He showed improvement, but his reticence about food from the time we changed his diet (most unlike the food Hoover of old), was worrisome.

Then, about last Wednesday, we got a call from daughter, Claire, to say that his situation was somewhere between urgent and emergent. He'd had a few accidents while staying with Thomas in our absence, but wasn't eating at all, and refusing water as well. A visit to a vet clinic last Friday resulted in x-rays showing a pancreas in stress and a sizable shadow in his small intestine.

Much more significantly, the bloodwork on Monday afternoon told the real story. His creatinine levels were through the stratosphere, his red and white blood counts were very low, and his liver enzymes were high. Chronic renal failure was the diagnosis and death sentence.

I can hardly write for the self-pity I feel over the too-early loss of a companion more loving and faithful than I could possibly deserve. My sole hope, right now, is that Ruth & I are able to get home before he succumbs so that we can lavish him with the love he so richly deserves, thank him for the kindness, devotion and teaching he has offered me, and to wish him God's Speed as he leaves us.

He taught me so much... about patience, acceptance, constancy, a gentle and complete appreciation of what each day delivered. He jangled at my impatience and I was just attentive enough to learn that a quiet approach to things was much better for all involved. How will my days find dimension without his abiding and compassionate presence?