Locke

Locke is (as I start writing this) a beautiful black poodle, who has worked for the past 12 years as a guide dog for my girlfriend, who has been blind all her life.

His name means "curly" in German, which is quite fitting for a poodle with curly fur who was born near to Essen and has lived most of his life in Cologne.

He's a "standard poodle" in English, or a "Königspudel" in German - basically the largest type of poodle there is - as tall as a labrador, but not as wide. Labradors are often 30-35 kg in weight; Locke has for most of his life been 25 kg.

According to wikipedia, "standard poodles in UK, Denmark and USA/Canada surveys had a median lifespan of 11.5 to 12 years". I started writing this the day after his 14th birthday; the first three entries are retrospective.

His normal (ie: for the past 12 years or so) daily habits are to go out to the local park for a very short walk (enough for a pee and a poo) in the morning and early evening; a longer (~1 hour) walk mid-day, and a final visit downstairs to some grass near the building we live in late at night. He eats twice a day; after his morning outing and before his evening outing.

I work from home (nothing to do with Covid-19; I've been doing it for 25 years), and he's staying with me all the time for now.

The following is a diary of the end of his life.

I'm writing this mainly for extremely personal reasons; I do not recommend that anyone else should read it.

Locke's been coughing quite a bit for the past couple of weeks, so we take him to the vet. He clearly has a sore throat, so they prescribe a combination of some pain killers to keep him more comfortable, and 7 days' antibiotics, to deal with whatever infection is causing the soreness and causing him to cough.

The antibiotics are helping a lot; he's not coughing so often, and when he does, it's much more gentle. He's clearly feeling more comfortable again.

Locke goes for a regular fur cut at the hairdressers, which he really dislikes (until it's over, when he really appreciates the difference).

Poodles do not shed hair, so if left uncut, it just grows and grows, and if not brushed, becomes matted and dirty.

Locke's fur is black, so in the summertime he gets quite hot in the sunshine, and he needs to have his fur cut in order to stay comfortably cool, and in the wintertime, if his fur is long and he gets wet, he gets quite cold, so every 10 weeks or so throughout the year he needs to have his fur cut in order to keep him comfortable.

His 14th birthday.

He's been doing very well as he's got older; he doesn't run around with so much energy as he used to, but he's still quite lively and active. He has lost some weight (24 kg down to 22 kg) in the past 6 months, though.

His normal body weight throughout most of his life has been 25 kg. The vets have long said that more than 26 kg would be inadvisable, as would less than 23 kg. Too much weight puts a strain on his heart, and too little means that he can't cope with an infection, should he get one, as well as he should be able to.

Getting down to 22 kg is therefore bothersome.

A visit to the vet for a routine ultrasound scan on his heart. He's had a slightly leaky mitral valve for several years now (which means some blood flows back into his lungs instead of onward around his body), but this has responded very well to a couple of drugs to reduce his blood pressure (Pimobendan, a phosphodiesterase 3 inhibitor), and to reduce the volume of fluid in his body (Furosemide, a diuretic). We do an ultrasound scan every 6 months or so to make sure the condition hasn't got any worse (which it hasn't, indeed after the start of treatment it actually got better, rather to the vet's surprise).

During the ultrasound scan, something is noticeable in his chest which is not normal.

The vets take some X-rays, and find a shadow of something in his lungs, and something else in his stomach. The shadow in his stomach could easily just be the last thing he's eaten; they're not too bothered about that, but the one in his lungs is concerning. The X-ray from his side shows the shadow; another one from above doesn't show it at all - odd. However, there is definitely something there.

The two vets (a senior vet at the practice, and the ultrasound expert) talk to us about this together.

The only way to find out more about what it is is to do a CT scan. This would involve anaesthetising him (most humans can cope with being in a CT scanner and just tell themselves to keep calm and stay still, but you can't expect that of an animal), and the procedure also requires a contrast medium to be injected into his bloodstream, which his kidneys would then need to excrete afterwards. The nature of the contrast medium means that with less than perfect kidneys, he would need to have dialysis for a couple of days afterwards, in order to get the contrast medium out of his bloodstream again. That entire combination would not be a good thing to do to him.

They also take a blood sample for analysis, to see whether that shows anything informative.

The vet telephones to say that the blood analysis shows that his kidney function is not very good (which is not at all good news for doing the CT scan, because of the contrast medium), and also that he's got an elevated white cell count, indicating that he's fighting some infection, so she prescribes a 10-day course of antibiotics. We collect them the same day and start giving them to him (which he really doesn't like, and never has, because they're quite large pills and clearly taste unpleasant).

Locke does what later turns out to be his last job as a guide dog, taking my girlfriend to a local pharmacy where he is well-liked, and often (as on this occasion) given a few biscuits by the pharmacists before he leaves.

He does a good job, as he has for the past 12 years, and comes home happy and satisfied.

Locke has clearly lost quite a bit of weight in the past couple of weeks, and is not eating at all well.

I telephone the vet to discuss whether we're going to go ahead with the CT scan (the alternative is an abdominal ultrasound scan, which would be far less informative, but is also far less invasive - by which I mean, he would have no problem with it at all).

The vet is somewhat bothered about what I'm saying, and my assumption that by doing the CT scan we can decide what to do about whatever it is that's developed in his lungs. She recommends that my girlfriend and I come in on Monday evening to talk to her.

We take Locke with us (partly simply in order to weigh him on the vet's scales, and partly so that the vet can see how he is, two weeks after she last saw him for the ultrasound scan).

It turns out that he's lost 2 kg (10% of his body weight) in the past 2 weeks - he's now 20.2 kg. He's also nothing like as interested in things, or people, at the vet's, as he usually would be (he has always really liked going to the vet, unlike the hairdresser), and the vet comments on how different he is, both from the last time she saw him, and from the way she's known him for the past several years.

She also makes it clear that when they saw the X-rays on the 27th October, and knew both his age and the condition he was in (having already lost 2 kg over the previous few months), there was no question of performing an operation to remove whatever it is that's developed in his lungs. Another 2 kg lost now, and so quickly, simply reinforces that.

A CT scan would be purely for our information; there is no question of using whatever it tells us in order to deal with the growth in his lungs - he either wouldn't survive the operation, or recover from the anaesthetic, or recuperate from the whole experience in the next few days. One way or another, it's unlikely he would survive the attempt to help him.

For whatever reason, we hadn't understood that from the conversation we'd had on the 27th, but at least it wouldn't have made any difference to the way we treated Locke in the meantime - only to our feelings and understanding about his future.

My personal opinion is that when the two vets together were talking with us, neither of them wanted to be quite so blunt and direct as was necessary to get the message across. The one vet on her own today managed it very well.

We have to accept that he's going to die, and very probably quite soon.

No-one can say whether that means a few days or a few weeks, but we don't expect him to see Christmas this year. He might not even see December.

We decide that Saturday was his final outing as a guide dog, and he won't be working again. We can simply make the remainder of the time he has as comfortable for him as possible.

The vet prescribes prednisolone (a corticosteroid) instead of the pain killers, in order to help him deal with whatever it is that's going on inside his body.

Any treatment we can give him now is only to make his life more comfortable, not to cure his problems.

He's eaten almost nothing yesterday or today, and he hasn't wanted to do the normal distance for his mid-day walk around the local park.

He no longer feels confident about going down stairs (we live on the 1st floor of an apartment building, and there are 2½ flights of stairs down to the front door), so I'm carrying him down the stairs when he shows that he doesn't want to do it himself. I'm sure he just feels too weak to keep his balance and stop himself stumbling, so he doesn't want to risk it. Going upstairs is still fine, though.

In the evening, we hand-feed him some pieces of banana (which he's always liked) and he happily accepts this.

He has much more energy, and is far more lively, than in the past couple of days, and does his normal lunchtime walk, even at the normal speed (which is a fast walking pace for me).

I buy some snack foods (doggy treats) to see whether this will help him eat more, since he seems to have lost interest in normal dog food altogether now.

He eats quite a reasonable amount of this for dinner.

In the evening I write an email to all the people who have got to know Locke over the last 12 years that he's been with us, and tell them that he's both retired as a guide dog, and is very likely soon going to die as well.

Breakfast (snack food - he's not interested in the standard dog food beside it, either dry or moist) works well, and his lunchtime walk goes well too, so he gets some more to eat once we get back (previously he would be fed only twice a day, but right now I'm happy to feed him whenever he will eat anything). The amount he has for dinner in the evening is encouraging, too.

He's slower today, and no longer so interested in even the snack foods.

He's bound to have lost even more weight in the past few days, and must be well under 20 kg by now.

If he makes it to the 27th I'll take him to the vet again, when we need to buy some more heart and kidney pills for him anyway, just so that I can weigh him and find out how much he really has lost. He'll enjoy another visit there, if he can enjoy anything at all.

Right now I have no idea whether he'll still be alive in 14 days, though.

There's a real chance that we might have to take him there sooner, if we notice that he's basically given up (not eating, has no energy or enthusiasm) and there's no point in allowing his life to continue as it is. That's going to be a difficult decision to make, because of course he won't be coming home with us afterwards.

We arrange for some friends to visit, whose children have always really liked Locke, but have not seen him for several years, and we all go out for his lunchtime walk in the park together. It's a nice sunny day, and remarkably warm for November.

Locke is sometimes slow and sometimes faster, although quite often the slow bits are because he stops to wait for the rest of the group to catch up (he's always been very focused on keeping a group together, whether it's 4 people or 20, and he's never liked it if a group starts out from home and then splits up at some point - he feels as though he's lost some of them and not taken care to keep the group together - rather like a sheepdog instinct, even though professionally he's a guide dog).

The walk works out very well, but when we get home he settles down and remains very quiet and still, not even getting up to say goodbye when people leave (which he certainly would have done up to a few weeks ago).

In the evening he eats almost nothing again, although he does happily "hunt the biscuit" around the apartment (although biscuits as such haven't been interesting for a week or so now, and he's hunting for soft dog-sausages and similar things instead).

Going out for a pee after dinner he asks me for the first time to carry him upstairs afterwards, as well as downstairs at the start. He's clearly feeling very weak, which is not surprising given how little he has eaten, and how much weight he has lost, in the past three weeks.

He eats a bit more late at night, but still wants to be carried upstairs again after the final outing today.

He goes out as usual in the morning (he again wants to be carried both down and up the stairs), but he eats no breakfast, just has water.

At mid-day we go out for what is usually a 1 hour walk, but less than half-way round he decides he doesn't want to do the full journey, and turns to come home. He eats a very few pieces of dried chicken & banana snack when he gets back; he's not interested in anything more, and then settles into bed for a very quiet afternoon. I'm glad we arranged to get together with the visitors yesterday.

He has no interest in dinner. He joins us in the kitchen while we're eating, but simply lies down and remains completely quiet. He stays on his own in the kitchen for 2 hours after we leave, which is not at all usual.

Once he returns from the kitchen I take him outside for a pee, and when we get back he has no interest at all in biscuits, chicken & banana snacks, or doggy sausages. He has a drink and settles down again for the evening.

Last thing at night, he goes out for a pee, but when he comes back, he has no interest in anything. He's eaten nothing today, and been very quiet; I think he's telling us "I'm done; it's over".

I'm going to see how tomorrow goes, but if he eats nothing again, and has so little energy for his walk, then Tuesday is probably going to be his last day. We can't keep him going like this, now that he's stopped eating.

I've noticed that I'm finding it more difficult to focus on things which I need to do, and getting on with things which "need to be done, but aren't urgent today" is almost impossible. I'm sure the uncertainty about Locke and the knowledge that he's not going to recover from this are major contributions to that state. Fortunately, despite the difficulties that Covid-19 is causing this year, both my girlfriend and I are working normally (she goes to the office, I work from home), and that activity helps us mentally, if not emotionally, during this time with Locke. I think we'd go completely nuts if we were simply stuck at home with him with almost nothing to keep us occupied.

Sometimes I find myself watching him, just to see whether he's still breathing. That's not a good feeling.

A slow and quiet outing for his morning pee. No breakfast when he returns. The mid-day walk is very short - he doesn't want to go round the park at all.

I phoned the vet once we got back from the lunchtime non-walk and made an appointment for tomorrow evening, which he won't be coming home from. That was difficult.

No food again in the evening, and very little activity. He's clearly ready to simply stop.

Surprisingly, he walked all the way upstairs on his own at the very end of the evening.

His last day, of a total of 5136.

He's breathing more shallowly than usual, moving very stiffly, and takes a long time to lie down when he settles; I'm guessing from a combination of arthritis in his joints, and extremely weak muscles. He has very suddenly become an old dog.

I sit at my desk and drink tea, more to keep him company in the same room we are in every day, than because I can manage to do anything useful for myself. I'm not working. My mind will not focus on anything. I know there is nothing more I can do for him.

He has a small walk in the park at lunchtime (more than yesterday, but nowhere near normal).

In the evening we take him to the vet. He walks in without being carried (slowly, but quite capably), and we are fairly quickly taken to the room where he will die.

He goes extremely calmly and comfortably - he is as cooperative and uncomplaining as ever as the cannula is placed in his arm, and we then lay him down and put him to sleep. He is very relaxed and, I like to think, happy that the discomfort and challenges of his body, and the fact that it can no longer do what he was used to, are being taken away.

Within a minute or two he stops breathing, then his heartbeat ceases, and we say our sad goodbyes that he has had to leave us, but happy knowing that it was clearly his choice for things to end as well, and pleased that we've been able to make the final hours and moments of his life so much better for him than if he'd simply continued from day to day with no food, diminishing strength, and no further interest in life.

We weighed him when we arrived at the vet's. Not only had he lost 2 kg in the two weeks following his ultrasound scan, but he'd lost another 2 kg in the final week after that. He was 18.1 kg at the end, which means he lost over 25% of his body weight in the last 6 months, 16% of which was in the final 3 weeks. His body was clearly at its end.

We are grateful that he declined so rapidly and yet so untraumatically at the end - he didn't suffer for months from arthritis, or struggle with drugs to keep him alive which took away his quality of life. He did an excellent job on his final day of work, just 2½ weeks previously.

We have many many fond memories of his years with us, and we are happy that his end was so calm and comfortable for him.

The vet has arranged for his body to be cremated, and we expect to get his ashes in a week or so, ready to take to England once Covid-19 restrictions enable us to get there.

His ashes have arrived by courier delivery; he was cremated on Monday. The final 1 kg of his body is now in a nice simple container, which we shall take to England and scatter on the Ridgeway, one of his favourite places to go for a good run, and with many fond memories for us of being with him there.

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