Hospice dog refuses to leave family behind
Hospice dog refuses to leave family behind
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00:00We had just gotten a house and it was in a neighborhood where there were still a bunch
00:04of open construction sites and she showed up.
00:06The construction workers were letting her live at the houses while they weren't complete
00:10yet.
00:11She looked like she had been dumped there.
00:12She was hanging around the neighborhood like she didn't quite know where to go.
00:16I tried for a couple of weeks bringing her food and water, trying to catch her, get her
00:19to trust me.
00:20Finally, my husband went out and he was like, why don't you just stay home?
00:24I'm going to take our two dogs at the time and see what she does.
00:26She was so happy to see the other two dogs and it was very like, oh, hey guys, like,
00:30all right, I'm ready to go home now.
00:32Like that was a fun game that I played with mom.
00:34Yeah, that's you.
00:35So she followed them.
00:36He didn't even have to put a leash on her.
00:37She just followed my husband all the way back to the house and came in and was like, all
00:41right, this is where I live now.
00:42And I was like, I cannot believe that I just spent weeks trying to catch you and you wouldn't
00:46even let me near you and now you're just wandering, sauntering into my house.
00:51We went through like the proper channels of reporting her, someone missing her, she lost,
00:55no one was looking for her.
00:57So she ended up staying forever.
00:58Take him out.
00:59Good job.
01:00She is about 15 years old at this point.
01:03We take all the dogs everywhere with us and so she's been on cross country road trips
01:08four times now because we've gone back and forth between living on the West Coast and
01:11living in Washington DC.
01:12She looks at both herself and myself as like the matriarchs of the family.
01:17She looks at our bond as like, hey, we're the moms, we're going to take care of everyone.
01:22I've got the two kids and she was there for all of it.
01:25She was one of the first ones to greet the babies when they came home from the hospital.
01:28She mothers the kids, she mothers the rest of the pack.
01:30I'm giving the kids a bath, giving the other dogs a bath.
01:33She's like, okay, I'm going to stand here.
01:34I'm going to be on guard.
01:35We're doing this together.
01:36She wants to have her pack and her companions.
01:39She really doesn't like it when I leave her.
01:41I don't know if there's still a worry there that she's going to be abandoned.
01:48She's technically on hospice care right now.
01:50Her vets gave her about a month last August.
01:52We had toyed with the idea of getting her through a surgery, doing radiation care.
01:58And after everyone that we saw, the different specialists, given her age, 14 at the time,
02:02we elected not to do it.
02:04Just to give her a couple of happy months, the kids wrote out a bucket list of all these
02:07extra things to do with her.
02:08We thought we were going to have to say goodbye to her last fall.
02:12And here we are now, you know, it's been almost a year, so she's made it a year.
02:19Even when it's just her going to the vet, I have to take our other dogs with us because
02:23she gets nervous.
02:24Like, well, why would you just be taking me?
02:26I want everyone to go.
02:27We're all going to go together as a group.
02:29Her spark is still very much there at this point.
02:32She wants to do everything that she's always done.
02:39She wants to make sure that everyone is okay.
02:41I do think that maybe that is part of the reason that she has stayed alive and stayed
02:46with us despite being ill.
02:48You know what?
02:49Maybe I could bring some shells.
02:51She has a really deep need to make sure that the family is okay and that I'm okay.
02:55Happy birthday.
02:56I feel like I cry all the time now with her being sick and you just never know.
03:01Have a great day, brother.
03:02You too.
03:03I hope she knows that she's always going to be a part of our family, even though she's
03:07not always going to be here.