Heartbroken

This post is going to be a hard one to write.  Just over two months ago (March 15th), I had to make the gut wrenching decision to have my sweet Harley put to sleep.  Two weeks prior to that I had taken him to the vet for a quarterly check up (I took him that often because he was on steroids and I wanted to keep tabs on how they were affecting him).  He didn't seem symptomatic to me so I wasn't expecting (or prepared) for a bad report on him, but as it turned out (unrelated to the steroids) he was suffering from age-related kidney failure.  Once I knew what was going on, he went downhill fairly quickly so I took him in for a follow up well before I was expected to only to find that things were much worse than Harley had let on, and that's when I decided I had to do what was best for him even though it broke my heart.

I remember the first time I met Harley.  I had two other dogs, Max and Brewsky at the time.  I also had (and still have) a doggy door.  You see where I'm going with this, right?  I came home one day to Max and Brewsky greeting me at the door like they always did but there was a third dog there as well.  He seemed the most happy to see me of the three, like he'd heard a lot about me and was happy to finally be meeting me.  He was very sweet but I assumed he belonged to someone, so I put him out.

He howled outside my living room window (after I fixed the hole in the fence that had allowed him into my backyard and then my house) for hours.  He started camping on my front porch and howling when my alarm would go off in the morning (even though I liked to snooze for an hour or so before getting up).  He'd be waiting for me when I got home to be let in to play with his new friends.  He wouldn't ever eat anything here though.

Then one day I saw him follow two girls and another dog to a cul de sac a block over.  When he wasn't on my porch a few days later when I came home I drove over to the cul de sac and found him in a front yard chewing on a toy near a water and food bowl.  I knocked on the door to talk to his owner only to find they were only feeding him and were tired of doing that and planned to call the pound on him because his previous owners (who they knew who were) had just discarded him.  Knowing that if they called the pound he would be destroyed, I took him home with me saying I'd find a home for him.  From that day forward, he was my dog.

Harley was unlike other dogs that I've had in my life.  He marched to the beat of his own drum, as they say.  He did things I'd never seen other dogs do.  For one, I had a kiddie pool in my backyard when I got him.  He didn't get in the pool often but he would stick his face in the water and blow bubbles.  It was funny to watch.

Of all the dogs I've had in my life, he was probably the most curious of them all.  He would see or hear something and he had to go investigate.  Whenever I would have workers over to my house he would have to follow them, wherever they went.  If they went into the attic he would sit by the pull down ladder and wait for them to come back down.  He just liked being in the thick of things.

He was unable to tell the difference between real life and the TV - in some areas anyway.  Many years ago there was a movie trailer to some animated movie that had a cat meow - Harley thought it was a real cat and would come running through the living room out the doggy door every time it played on TV.  He'd look over his shoulder to see if Max and Brewsky were backing him up but they'd look at him like "dude, it's the TV, be cool!" and not go out with him.  One night I found the trailer online and played it several times and he came running every time.  It may have been cruel of me but it was funny.  :)

 

 

Harley was a pretty laid back dog but if he didn't like something, he would let you know it.  If I disturbed him and he didn't want to be bothered, he would let out a low growl.  He wasn't aggressive about it at all, and it wasn't even really a warning, it was just his way of letting me know he wanted some "me / Harley" time and I should come back later.

 

A few years ago I had a surgery and couldn't lift anything for a period of time.  Prior to this time I was having to assist Harley getting onto the bed at night.  Since I wouldn't be able to do that for a while, I moved the ottoman from my sofa to the foot of the bed for him to use as a stepping stone.  I figured it would be there a month or so and then I'd move it back into the living room.  Well, it never made it back into the living room because Harley decided he liked it for a bed - not one on the floor (and I had four of those in my bedroom alone) and not one he had to "share" with me.  I tried to move it back into the living room and it didn't go over well, so it stayed in the bedroom for the remainder of his life.  In the living room he had his own couch (pictured above), in addition to two other floor beds.  Harley wasn't spoiled or anything.  :)

 

The last four years of his life it was just the two of us.  I knew he was in tune with me and my movements but since his death I'm becoming more and more aware of how in tune I was with him.  It's been two months and I still hear things and look to see his reaction.  When I drop or bump into something, I still expect him to come running to check it out.  I was aware on some level I was doing that when he was alive but that I'm still doing it to this day, I realize I was more in tune with him than I really understood.

 

I miss him so much.  There's no doubt in my mind that I made the best decision for him but my head and my heart are still at odds about it.  He has a very special place in my heart and I'll be eternally grateful that I was allowed to have him in my life for as long as I did.  He was 12 years old.