March 2, 2009
Polo
Born, January 17, 1999, Southampton.
Adopted, March 18, 1999, East Hampton.
Died, March 2, 2009, East Hampton.
Polo saw Dr. Katz on December 23rd, 2008, and later that week the histology report indicated canine oral melanoma. On January 8th, 2009 he saw the oncologist in Westbury and x-rays revealed that the disease had spread to his lungs. We immediately began an eight-week course of a therapeutic vaccine specifically for canine oral melanoma, and the following week added radiation therapy. The prognosis was not good but I was hoping to add some months to his life.
On Saturday, February 21st, we walked about four miles, as we often do, down Egypt Lane to Old Beach Lane, and along the beach, with Polo slightly slower than his normal self but still strolling along happily in the shallow surf. The next day was rainy and he spent most of it on the porch at home. On Monday, February 23rd, as we walked to the Nature Trail I observed some hesitancy in Polo’s walk and I thought that this was going to be his last visit to the Nature Trail, the place he loved above all others except for home. But I was wrong. As I soon found out, his love for the Nature Trail transcended even his increasingly frail condition.
By Monday evening I could see he was going downhill. First he had trouble with his right rear leg and then the front one. On Tuesday he had problems walking, even standing. We had a scheduled visit with the oncologist that day and he had to be carried into the car and wheeled into the office. The cancer had spread to his central nervous system, affecting those two legs. The oncologist was ready to euthanize him but I said no. I kept thinking to myself that he is going to die at home on the grass, with freedom and dignity, the way he lived. Not in some clinical setting in a different county.
We began steroids (prednisone) with an injection Tuesday and oral after that, along with Tramadol for pain, and he seemed amazingly better as far as symptoms, with an appetite and renewed energy. On Wednesday we took a walk although he was a bit wobbly. He was heading to the Nature Trail but I was afraid going that far would tire him too much and turned back. On Thursday he did the same and I decided to let him go all the way to the Nature Trail, and we repeated that on Friday. He even ran a bit on the wobbly legs and jumped into the stream for a long drink of water, although later I had to help him over some small fences that he usually jumps with ease.
I did not know if it would be a day or a few days or a week, but I did know that I wanted him to die in the clear, cold sea air and under the wide, bright East Hampton sky—the only surroundings he really knew in life. I was hoping he’d die naturally, just close his eyes one night and not wake up. But friends told me it doesn’t happen that way with dogs, and I had already made arrangements with Dr. Katz for her to come to the house if we needed intervention. I promised him that except for our walks he would never have to leave home again.
He did not take his oral medications on Saturday, February 28th, so I began giving him an injectable steroid and a pain killer. It was a difficult weekend for both of us. Starting a day or two before, he had to be carried up the stairs because his legs were increasingly weak. Polo insisted on staying out, even in the cold and rain and when he was shivering. He stayed out (always close to the house) on Saturday night. I was angry with him for wanting to be out all the time, feeling he was rejecting me, angry with him for dying, and then upset with myself for being angry. But I knew he was behaving consistently with the way I had let him live. We resolved it on Sunday night when he cried to come upstairs to be with me and then had a peaceful night.
I felt ripped apart with grief but also prepared for his departure from life. The time came on Monday morning. We had a big blizzard Sunday night, so Dr. Katz was not able to get here. I walked Polo out through the snow (about twelve inches or so in the driveway) to where Frank Newbold was waiting in his four-wheel drive and we drove the vet’s office. Another vet, Dr. Hess, a young Israeli woman, came out to the car and tenderly administered the sedative and then the general anesthetic and then the lethal drug. Polo died quietly and painlessly. It wasn’t on the grass, but it still seemed correct: on a Hermes blanket with his head in my hands, under the East Hampton sky.
I buried him in the early afternoon of March 2, 2009, in a grave that was already prepared in a leafy corner of the property. Think of Andrew Marvell’s “Annihilating all that’s made/To a green thought in a green shade.” I took a lock of his hair to drop into the stream at one of his favorite jump-in spots at the Nature Trail, the place he loved so much. I think some hairs will lodge in the stream and duck pond and as they disintegrate some of Polo’s molecules will forever mingle with the earth and water of East Hampton. Other hairs will move downstream to Hook Pond and eventually the ocean, completing the cycle of Polo’s life.