Atheist prayer July 20, 2008

Pixie’s secret shame caught on camera – the cat, Sid, regards her as his one true love

The blogger and her muse in happier, healthier times (this spring)

Self portrait of me and the kids (Pixie and Dozer) from a couple years ago

The blogger and her muse in happier, healthier times (this spring)

Okay, maybe I’m not a full-throttle atheist like my dad, but I’m definitely not a believer in anything traditional. Likely “spiritual with a very weird belief system involving parallel universes, past lives, quantum physics, shamanism, doing unto others, spirit guides, and maybe a dash of Buddhism” is the best description, and it’s safe to say that traditional prayer is not something I partake in regularly. Nonetheless, like any good hypocrite, in the throes of tragedy, such as I’m in now, I find myself groveling back to God and invoking the sacred words of my Catholic childhood. Hail Mary, full of grace…

My beloved German Shepherd mix, Pixie, is in the vet emergency hospital on dog life support, bleeding internally. Because I live in a stupid town large enough to have a single emergency vet, but too small for them to have access to an ultrasound, nothing is known about WHY she’s bleeding internally. She’s eight and a half years old and otherwise in perfect health. However, this morning she wouldn’t get up, just laid there panting. And when the doorbell (her mortal enemy) was rung, she didn’t respond. Also, according to the emergency vet, after a dog turns six “all bets are off”. They’re in geriatric pet country, and anything goes.

Anyway, with what she knows, the vet feels there are two possibilities:

1. Pixie has a heretofore undetected cancerous tumor on her spleen that has ruptured, and the blood is coming from there. In that case, they could do surgery to remove the spleen, but that would only buy her another month of life. That’s clearly selfish and cruel, so I won’t do it to her. In other words, if I learn tomorrow that this is the fate of my beloved girl, I have to put her down.

2. The long shot and the great white hope: Pixie has an autoimmune disease that is causing this bleeding. In this case, they would likely do several blood transfusions and then put her on a lifelong course of steroids, wherein she would live a normal life. I never thought I’d wish an autoimmune disease on my dog, but considering my options, all the Hail Marys are for this to come true.

The really weird thing is that i had a nightmare on Friday night about my dogs (the other one is an Alaskan Malamute who’s two and a half): I came home to my house and it had a chain link fence. The fence gate was open and the yard was empty, and I knew something bad had happened to my dogs. Someone said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?” and I started panicking and calling “come here, Sweet Girl. C’mon Pixie.” But I didn’t know where to start looking or where she might be. I worked myself into such a panic that I woke up.

I guess that doesn’t actually matter in the big picture, however. For now, I can do nothing except try not to think about it, and try not to fret and bawl and get terrified and start dwelling on how much that dog means to me and how much we’ve been through together and how I feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest and thrown into a volcano. Thus, in the spirit of honoring the most wonderful dog – and maybe even “person” – I’ve ever known, I’ve decided to post a few pictures and maybe even a little video of her.

If you’re feeling particularly generous and regardless of your religious persuasion or lack thereof, perhaps you might say a little prayer on our behalf…