The rest of the story…

This blog is almost entirely about our filming activities for the Leadership Development Channel, but since I posted in August about our aging, beloved family black lab suffering from seizures, more people have asked me about her than almost anything else I write here.  So here’s the rest of the story.

Shortly after I wrote, Joker went through a three-day ordeal of enduring six (possibly seven) grand-mal seizures, each about six to eight hours apart.  The only available and immediate pharmaceutical intervention is to increase the Phenobarbital dosage to try to contain the seizures, but of course it left her nearly comatose.  She was incontinent and unable to stand without aid and spent her few waking hours wandering in clockwise circles.  – [By the way, I always wondered why always clockwise?  Sometimes I would talk to her and try to gently steer her to the left but it never worked.  It seems to me clockwise-only is pretty limiting navigation – despite UPS’s success with right-hand only turns – and I would always find Joker stuck in a corner or behind a chair because she would dead-end herself.]  – Anyway, the days went by and my wife and I shared our quiet hopes that she would either miraculously recover, or more likely choose her own passing but it never seemed to come.  And Joker became increasingly unable to do much of anything except hyperventilate and drool and well… I’ll spare the details.

One night in late August we gathered the children to say goodbye to her and explained that we had to take Joker to the doctor and that she may not come home.  We euthanized her and it was possibly one of the most painful, heart-wrenching things my wife and I have been through.

We thought we could wait until spring but we’re getting a puppy next week and the kids don’t know.