Endevor (aka Ende) was one of the first pups I ever socialized for the Frost/Lowry Kennels. She'd have been 17 years old if she'd lived to August of this year. She had two littermates: Apollo and Oddessey. Apollo went to Germany with Karl Heinz and was still alive a couple of years ago, but probably not anymore. I'm not sure where Oddessey went.
When Lloyd Lowry brought the pups out to my place, he demonstrated proper feeding techniques...he put the food dish down, and then picked up Ende for the count of fifteen. He said I needed to give her brothers a chance or they'd starve. And when he finally put Ende down, I saw EXACTLY what he meant! She dove into that dish and started inhaling with vigor!
They were probably only six or seven weeks old at the time. Just weaned, but eating solid food for a week or two already.
Ende quickly got too big and fat and wriggly to pick up and hold in my arms, so I put collars on the pups and drop-chained them individually to the chain link fence so that each had their own private bowl and ration. That was how I figured out that you can tether train a pup quick and easy so they transition to a post and swivel set-up easy as pie. Ende taught me lots of things.
I trained Ende as a puppy, but then she went back to the Frost/Lowry Kennel and began her "professional" race dog training. And she was a professional! She ran the Open North American Championship sled dog race several times. Although she wasn't a racing leader, she certainly knew her stuff and ran lead training puppies and younger dogs for many years.
I remember when Ice was just a yearling, (that would have been 13 years ago) I helped handle for Kathy Frost in Anchorage when she was running the Women's Rondy. Ende was in her main race team, but after the first heat of the race, after dinner when they loose dropped the dogs, Ende wandered off. They didn't notice until the late-night drop before bed, and then we all freaked out. Lloyd spent HOURS hiking around with his bum hip looking for her in the middle of the night---to no avail. Kathy did up posters and we all plastered them up all over everywhere in the wee hours of the morning. Finally, we're at breakfast and the phone rings, and somebody has found Ende! She's been hanging out on the bike-skijoring trails across the way from the hotel, but she's hard to catch. Kathy and Lloyd head over there with the big red dog truck, and she comes right over. Whew.
I meet them at the race track, and go visit Ende in her box. Kathy was still undecided about whether she should race Ende that day...she finally chose not to, and I think that was the wise, kind and smart choice. Ende was a tough dog. She was very stoic, and she very well might could have raced 12 miles at top-end speed. But I know in my head and my heart I was exhausted and stressed and I wouldn't have played well that day, so I thought Ende should perhaps get the day off too. Of course, if she didn't race day two, then she couldn't race day three either. But, oh well. The dog was safe on the truck and they never lost another dog ever on a loose drop after that! (Neither have I---mostly because Rich is religious about counting noses whenever we would travel!) Ende taught all of us that lesson.) Oh, and Kathy won the race without Ende anyway! Whoohoo!!!
It was a skijorer who found Ende. And on the drive home from Anchorage that year, a dog ran out across the highway in front of us as we got near Ester. Lloyd pulled over and Rich and I pulled in behind him. The dog was skin and bones, and very skittish, but it was drawn to the dog trucks. I got out biscuits, and Kathy managed to get the dog to try and jump into one of the low boxes on their truck. But rather than double box a strange dog with her race dogs, we then swapped and put the stray in an empty box on my truck. Turns out the dog was Monkey. A dog that belonged to skijorer Chris Terzi, and Monkey had been missing for MONTHS! In the dead cold of winter no less. I thought it was poetic justice and proof positive that what goes around, comes around. Skijorers are Mushers and most are really great dog people.
When she got older, Kathy and Lloyd decided to breed Ende. BobCat was the chosen stud! They were busy fishing...or maybe they were building their house in Hawaii, so I was the dating service. Ende and BobCat lived at Daisy Acres for the summer. The housesitters were having trouble with the main stud of the Frost/Lowry kennel. Dandy (Ende's father) wasn't well. So I agreed to take him into hospice care and be the one to decide when it was time to send him across the rainbow bridge. He was 13 years old, and had always been a rock eater. We suspected that he had an obstruction, but at his age, I wasn't authorized to perform any heroic (costly) medical procedures to try and save him. He'd eat cooked chicken and rice. (Dandy was FAMOUS for eating well...and, as you might recall, Ende inherited this talent!?) I had Dr. Olson on-call to come out and euthanize Dandy. And then Ende whelped. She had two pups, both females. I had decided that Ende's puppies would honor their granddaddy who was near death, so I named the pups Fine and Dandy. But one of the pups wasn't right. It had trouble crawling to nurse. When the puppies were four days old, Dr. Olson came out to remove dew claws on the pups and euthanize Dandy. But when she saw the old guy, he still had a twinkle in his eye and was interested in life, and yes, eating! So we didn't kill him. I brought in one of the pups and she removed the dewclaws, but when I brought in the other pup, well, she was a lot thinner than her sister, and her legs were clearly deformed, and so, Dr. O opted to euthanize the puppy. She fit in a shoe-box with room to spare. Since Dr. O came out to euthanize Dandy, I figured the other pup must be Fine. And so she was.
A few days/weeks later, I found Dandy clearly in distress. It was time, I loaded him in my car and drove to Animal Control. He was half dead by the time we got there. They euthanized him in the front seat of my car as he couldn't walk and I could barely pick him up. He leaked pee all over my car. (These things happen.) Well, and then there's the story of Fine too...sigh. But this post already WAY too long!
Ende was sold to Susan Butcher a few years later. Kathy offered to sell Fine to Susan too...but I declined the offer. (Fine wasn't fast enough to win sprint races---but I loved her.) When Susan got sick I offered to take any of her Frost/Lowry dogs. I fostered Ende for a while. Susan was trying to sell her for $1500 or maybe it was $2500. Ende had had several litters of pups in Susan's Trailbreaker Kennels. Several people came out to meet Ende, but nobody was buying. I ended up giving her back, but then Susan and Dave's secretary called me and said I could have Ende for keeps. So David dropped her off where Rich works. She was nine or ten at the time. I got an email from a guy in Europe looking for a Frost/Lowry brood *profanity auto removed*. I don't know who gave him my name, but at the time I had both Ende and Puma intact. I explained that Ende had had SEVERAL litters for Susan Butcher, but that "the best" dog from the Frost Lowry kennel was Tiger, who was still with Susan. I explained that Puma was a screamer (screams when bred...it hurts! and one of her pups had weird medical issues Dosie, who I don't think is still alive anymore...Carol Kleckner loved the dogs for at least a decade.) I explained that Ende's first litter also had a deformed pup, and they should contact Susan to find out how the other litters turned out. I also had friends comment to me that sending a 10 or 11 year old dog to Europe as a brood *profanity auto removed* wasn't really a very good thing to do--and I had to agree. I never heard back from the guy. And I had both Ende and Puma spayed not long after that.
Oh, one last tidbit. When Ende was a puppy I was the one to harness train her. I made up a little sing-song ditty. I'd sing "I'll love you forever Endevour..." and, well, it was true. I was honored and thrilled to have her come home to me. She was a good dog. Stoic. Tough. Crabby sometimes. She started looking really bad last fall. I just couldn't keep weight on her. I took her to Dr. O in November to have her teeth cleaned because her breath was so rancid it would drop you from five paces. But Jeanne was worried and refuse to knock her out without drawing blood first for testing. Turns out Ende's levels were horrid. Everything was either WAY high or WAY low. Jeanne diagnosed her with both liver and kidney failure. The dog's system was shutting down, and there really wasn't anything we could do. If she'd have knocked her out to clean her teeth, she likely would have died on the table as her system couldn't handle the strain. She told me to enjoy her as long as I could.
So Ende moved into the house. (I was paranoid about finding her dead and frozen in her dog house out in the yard.) It took her a month or more to reliably figure out the doggy door (ick.) But she liked being inside and warm. She didn't like the other dogs, but we all coped. This spring, she basically moved out into the front yard pen and I'd never even find her in the house. I tried putting her in the back yard pen with BobCat and Puma, but she ended up digging out under the fence, so that told me she wasn't happy there. When I'd let her outside loose, she'd go hover in the dog yard. I lost her a few times in the dead of winter. Rich found her sleeping in an empty dog house. Once, my neighbor's called because she showed up at their place. They fed her because she looked thin and was hungry! For a while she wouldn't eat very well...which was my clue that there was something wrong. But whatever it was, it faded and she went back to inhaling her meals with vigor.
When I went out to feed her her morning meds on Monday, she was shaky and glassy eyed. It looked to me like she'd maybe had a seizure or something. I had a grooming appointment and was taking Sven the poodle with me, so I really didn't have time/room to deal with an old grumpy dog. So I left her in her dog house. When I got home that afternoon she was still shaky, but better although I couldn't get her to come out of her dog house. So I mowed the lawn. After I mowed the lawn I checked her again, and she came out of the dog house, but she was unsteady on her feet. I knew it was time. She refused dinner. Dr. O was taking four days off to get some important projects done in preparation for installing the underwater treadmill, so I thought I'd just take Ende to Animal Control first thing when they opened in the morning. Rich checked the website and confirmed that they opened at 11 a.m.
I went out at 6 a.m. to check on her. If she was dead in her dog house I might need Rich's help to get her out so I could take her body to Animal Control. But she was still alive. I didn't want to make her come out of the house until I had an immediate plan to get her euthanized, so I went back into the house. The railroad people called around nine with the news about Taylor-Swift. At ten o'clock I went out with a leash and asked Ende to come out of her house. She complied...with difficulty. She was not stable on her feet. We trundled over to the car, and I had to pick her up to put her in the back seat. I had grooming stuff in the way back, and a milk crate on the back seat with her. I stopped partway down the driveway and set the milk crate by the side of the road. Ende was more comfortable after that.
Animal Control didn't open on time. There was a family of seven waiting to claim their dog. The mom had a logging chain bolted to a big belt collar hanging around her neck, and the six kids were playing duck-duck-goose waiting for the doors to open. There was another gal hanging around, and I think a couple of people waiting in their cars. Finally, at five after, I rang the dang doorbell. When the ACO finally opened up, I got my paperwork and was the first one at the counter. The gal took the paperwork and told me to go around back.
I drove around so Ende wouldn't have to walk so far, but she was beyond walking anyway. I had to carry her into the building. I asked if they wanted to euthanize her in my car, but they said no. I was having flashbacks to her daddy Dandy and feeling guilty for not making this happen sooner. Ende was actually okay with it all. She's a tough old bird. When a body dies it shuts down naturally. She was "in process" and the universe was protecting her. I was the one that was freaking out. It wasn't until I got her inside that they told me that I would not be allowed to be present for her euthanasia.
I'd paid $18 for the 2009 euthanasia log and had to have the new manager explain to me the new code "OP" that stands for Owner Present! They decided to track the number of owner requested euthanasias they did where the owners chose to be present for the procedure. So I was rather shocked to discover the rules had changed...yet again.
They asked me if I wanted her collar and leash. I said yes. I took them off her, kissed her, hugged her, burst into tears and kissed her and hugged her again, and got up, turned around and practically RAN out of the building. When I got outside I realized that I'd seen Leslie, a volunteer, walking around the building out towards the back yard pens. I ran over to the fence. The gate was locked, but I hollared and screamed through my tears, and Leslie came over towards me. I told her they were euthanizing Ende and they wouldn't let me be with her, and I asked her if she would please go be with her. She headed immediately into the building. Leslie "gets it"...it's not that those people don't know how to kill a dog. It's not that I don't trust them to do it right. It's just that life and death are so big and so precious. And we each deserve support through these transitions.
Anyway, yesterday was a really sucky day. Ende is gone, and that's okay. Today I deliver Sven the standard poodle to his new home. And yesterday I got to groom TWO little dogs that really needed me. Life is good, and life goes on. Oh, and I bought Rich a new recliner for Father's Day. I gotta figure out how to pick it up and get it home before Sunday! I'm hoping Brenna will help. She has a truck.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
