May 22, 2007
Leslie Blanch passes on
The author of "The Wilder Shores of Love" died May 7 at the age of 102 in the South of France, as noted in this L.A. Times obit, Lesley Blanch, 102; author and adventurer. Hat tip: Pamela Barrus.
The obit notes:
The Wilder Shores of Love, Blanch's first book, became an immediate success when it was published in 1954. In it she profiles four women who left convention behind. One, Jane Digby, became the wife of a Syrian tribesman and lived a Bedouin lifestyle.Another, Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, was kidnapped and sent to live in an Ottoman sultan's harem. Isabelle Eberhardt roamed North Africa alone, dressed as a man, and Isabel Burton traveled with her husband, Richard, who explored Africa and the Middle East.
I first read "The Wilder Shores of Love" at the undergraduate library at the University of North Caroline-Chapel Hill, while visiting to give a couple of cultural travel talks there and at neighboring Duke.
It was fascinating for me to learn especially the story of Lady Jane Digby, who was a revelation in that her behavior placed the first instances of especially hedonistic travel sex by women far before the 1960s, more like 1850 in fact. Sometimes when researching a book you almost vibrate with excitement at finding such forgotten pieces of the puzzle. It's interesting that "Wilder Shores" was a pretty big book when it came out, but its message slipped beneath the waves over time.
As I wrote in 
Romance on the Road:
The year was 1847, and the place, appropriately, was Rome. Massachusetts-born feminist writer Margaret Fuller fell in love with a Roman marchese a decade younger than herself. She became pregnant, later married him and had his son.Two years later, again in Rome, Lady Jane Digby romped with an
Italian artillery officer, an army captain and a diplomat’s son over the
course of a brief visit (Lovell 137). This oft-married, sexually adventurous Englishwoman appears to have led the way in what was likely the first
instance of casual travel sex.
Here's something from the obit that I didn't know about Blanch, the author:
(Romain) Gary's popular novel, "Lady L," in 1958 was said to be inspired by Blanch. In it, a worldly grand dame works the social circuit, telling captivating stories along the way. Sophia Loren starred in a 1965 movie version of the book.
Sounds like Lady L needs to go on my movie list.
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:26 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
- permanent link
May 15, 2007
'The picture' of Beau and Lamont
Beau and Lamont in Rockville circa 1996.
Neighbors continue to comment on how much they enjoy my collage on Beau's life, published here (scroll down): The life and times of Beau Belliveau.
Lynda Maslanka mentioned how cute she thought Beau's puppy picture was. Blaire Freed noted instead the rather amazing photo of Lamont and Beau, cropped above, that I took about 11 years ago in the backyard of my parents' former home in Twinbrook:
I still love that photo of Beau and Lamont on the grass, with the EXACT SAME FACIAL EXPRESSION! It's uncanny, and I wouldn't have believed it if it weren't a pre-Photoshop photograph. Beau is such a good-looking example of his breed, and Lamont is a handsome guy, so the picture is all-around terrific.
I replied:
Thank you so much.When I first saw the print, I thought not only are they both so vibrant, and with identical expressions, but also it was an honor to me as the woman behind the camera that they would "shine on," human and animal, for me !!!
- posted by jbelliveau at 11:57 AM in The Neighborhood
- permanent link
May 10, 2007
Bust magazine article on female sex tourists
It's nice to be able to point to a good, balanced article on female sex tourists, such as the one this month in Bust magazine (pdf version available in my media kit, under the Articles section). I wrote the following letter to the editor today:
As the author profiled in BUST's article on female sex tourists ("Ticket to Ride," Apr/May '07), I was delighted at the balanced and intelligent coverage provided by your writer Emily McCombs.A good number of magazines and radio shows have interviewed me since my book, Romance on the Road: Traveling Women Who Love Foreign Men, came out.
While it's always fun being asked to talk about sex, sometimes the results in print have been fairly comic.
Airheaded writers for British publications are especially deft at making quotes up out of thin air that make one sound like, surprise, an airhead.
Bust magazine quoted me accurately. That is rare. Emily asked great questions, summarized the information well, and found rare and exclusive sources for conflicting viewpoints on female sex tourists.
Well done.
Jeannette Belliveau,
Baltimore, Md.
Bust magazine is available at Barnes & Noble, where I purchased my copy.
This letter was prompted by some amazing errors that have cropped up in other coverage of Romance on the Road in the media.
Here's an article in Britain's Eve magazine said my first marriage lasted nine years. It lasted less than two. This fact is significant, nay crucial. The brevity of my first marriage is quite central to what later happened to me on my travels, and clearly described in print in my book, and clearly expressed (I thought) during my interview witih the author. If she is confusing the length of my first and second marriages (the second one is now on year 11), you still don't come up with "nine" years.
The Eve article goes on to say that in Athens I was "sitting in a bar looking at postcards." No, standing in Syntagma Square. Next it says I met a man and "that evening he took me to a secluded bay." No, it was a few hours later, in the early afternoon.
What is strange about the rate of about three mistakes per sentence in this article is that I sent the author a PDF of my book. If she can't quote me accurately, she could have accurately reconstructed every incident we discussed from the text. Oh well.
Similarly, I had a start when I read the original version of this review at PerceptiveTravel.com (scroll down to third item), which said I was twice divorced. Believe me, no one once divorced wants to be thus misdescribed. Fortunately I e-mailed the author, who got the editor to fix this gross error of fact. No explanation for how the error occurred. Again, the first chapter of Romance on the Road is fairly clear, I thought, on my marital history.
It's always a curious exercise to add new articles to my online media kit (here), when they are generally error riddled, barely mention my book itself, full of airheaded misquotations, or rip off giant chunks of the research in my book and pass it off as original reporting, without attribution.
I almost feel I should take a red pen and mark up the magazine pieces before I post them. But since there is supposedly no such thing as bad publicity, they get added to the kit.
Anyway, the article by Emily McCombs was a wonderful exception to the rule.
- posted by jbelliveau at 12:32 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
- comments (1)
- permanent link
May 9, 2007
The life and times of Beau Belliveau
Also known as: Bobo, the Bodacious Beau-Bear, Bugbear, Bugbearian, Little Bear, Mr. Lop Ears, Clap-Clap, Wiggleworm, Lingard Beau Monde, Shingard Beau Monde, Beau Toaster.
Dec. 28, 1989-Nov. 7, 2006
"Beau was very clever, very curious, very different, very special."
-- RoseMarie Moran, early 1990s housemate.
"Where's the other one?" people ask me frequently as I walk Pierre, our 11-year-old sheltie.
Some of our neighbors been holed up all winter and are now strolling outside again.
The "other one" is Beau, our smaller, mahogany-sable sheltie that we had for almost 17 years.
I've had a difficult time writing about Beau's loss, and six months have passed since Nov. 7, when a vet came to euthanize him in our home. This has to do with being busy, mainly, but I certainly owe it to Beau to get his story finished. My earlier post, Dealing with Beau's end of life, was more to do with his loss than his life, but it was somewhat incomplete on his loss as well.
So now I'm telling some neighbors for the first time that Beau is gone. They are freshly sad while I am accustomed by now to his departure, and they brighten up when they see I am chipper, especially given the details of how we were able make his passing as gentle as possible.
Many people seemed to know and like Beau, as I noted in this blog entry, Thank you to FOB (Friends of Beau). Also, people are curious when I tell the story of the mobile vet we had come to our house, and they ask for her card, of which more later.
Beau has been asked for by everyone from the street Arabber who sells us bananas and corn in season to neighbors on more distant alley streets and Lamont's soccer teammates.
Loss of a first pet
It's tough when you know early on with a pet that you love him way too much, because it's such a sappy admission. But I did love Beau enormously. I was the most ridiculous of childless yuppie puppy owners, taking him on walks around Fells Point when he was only a few months old, stopping every so often to let him sip water from a tiny Tupperware container.
In fact, we got a Pierre, from Sheltie Haven Sheltie Rescue, in 1999 ostensibly to take over house-guarding duties, and in reality to have Pierre serve as love shield against Beau's eventual demise. I once edited a Baltimore Sun business story on the importance of "laddering" investments in bonds so that they don't all become mature at once. It seemed prudent also to ladder the acquisition of pets, given our bonds to them.
Around Jan. 7, 1990, I first laid eyes on Beau. He was 10 days old and about the size of a guinea pig. I had wanted a sheltie puppy with a white blaze, like my brother's dog, Conan. But the breeder, Lingard Kennels ("Shetland Sheepdogs of Lingard") in Burtonsville, Md., only had one sable male, and he only had a little white splodge above his nose, not a full blaze.
The puppy was laid in my lap by a kennel aide. I impulsively kissed him on his forehead. I met his unremarkable dam (Natalie, registered as Lingard Kiss) and his spectacular father, Ch. Lingard I Am Magic, who had the kennel name Stripe. Stripe was full of life and charisma, merrily jumping up on the gate of his kennel to greet a visitor, and Beau inherited Stripe's confident extroversion, if not his flawless white blaze.
When he was 6 weeks old, I got a call from Lingard Kennels that "your puppy is ready," and I went to pick him up, receiving some Xeroxed instructions on what to feed him.
The young Beau was ridiculously cute. He didn't look like a puppy, more like a Disney toy so saccharine as to give you diabetes -- tiny dark eyes like the buttons on a rag doll, tousled white ruff, floppy ears. You can see a picture here in his memorial collage.
This collage recalling some moments in Beau's life was e-mailed to many of our friends. I have about 80 replies in condolence.
In February 1990, Beau came along to Upper Fells Point to what would be his home for nearly 17 years. I set up an area, barricaded by cardboard boxes, under the microwave shelf in the kitchen for him to sleep.
The next day, at 6 a.m., piteous howling woke me up.
My new puppy had knocked the boxes apart and was sitting in the middle of the kitchen, front paws neatly together, with an expectant look of, "First I'd like to eat, then I'd like to go outside, then let's play. Let's have a great day!"
It took me a while to figure out what to name Beau, but my work colleague at the time, Kathleen Gaskell Blankenship, came up with Beau as a play on my last name. This of course later gave Lamont a great opening when I was complaining about how vain it was for Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott to name her dogs Schottzie (not only that, but Schottzie 01 and Schottzie 02).
"That is really ridiculous, to name a dog after yourself," I railed, prompting the single-raised-eyebrow treatment from Lamont.
Young Beau was all about playing. Easily for an hour or more when I got home from work, he would chase my wiggling fingers, jumping back and forth over my knees and around my back. The world was his oyster, and he did comical double takes upon first site of anything new: wrens hopping on the sidewalk, my bug-eyed Indonesian masks on the wall.
A full moon, 50,000 miles away, drew growls and barks of alarm, one of the early signs that his brain processed light differently than that of a more placid dog. One day he clambered on the coach, put his front paws on the back cushions and growled at a mysterious spot on the exposed brick. The rehabber had left a drip of glossy varnish on the otherwise matte bricks.
Beau would chase reflections off car bumpers refracted into the living room and growl at moonbeams on the bedroom floor.
He chased a laser pointer with maniacal abandon. Sometimes I ran the pointer from the front of our rowhouse to the back laundry room, and he would fly the entire 80 feet, scattering rugs in the process and sometimes banging into the drier. Later I figured out that I could stand on the field at Betty Hyatt Park in East Baltimore and run the pointer back and forth along the exterior wall of the tennis court and pretty much wear him out that way.
Ceiling fans
His barking, hopping, spinning reaction to ceiling fans, either in our house or spotted through neighbor's windows, was one of his most marked behavioral oddities. My brother Paul theorized that as a sheepdog, he figured chopping ceiling fans resembled the beating wings of raptors coming to snatch a lamb from the flock. It made some sense.
Beau sang marvelously, with sirens or church bells especially, but also whenever a pack member left for work. That was something that our former housemate Rose recalled. Beau taught her Mindy and our Pierre how to sing, but they never really learned and have never sung again since he was gone. "I am here, where are you? Come join me," is the message of the wolf howl, according to animal behaviorist Desmond Morris.
Later, Beau would also bark at anything out of context. One day he saw a tall man in a yellow hat, walking in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. He was out of context. Beau barked steadily. I wondered if there was some way to make money on a clever small dog who knew what was in context and what wasn't but I never figured out a way.
"He's communicating with the Eighth Dimension," my Star Trek fan friend Ed decided. Ed sent me the following nice note upon learning of Beau's passing:
The Beau I knew looked like Beau at one year in the top right photo of the collage. He was a fine fellow -- in addition to loyalty to you and fidelity, he impressed me as almost scary-smart, at least way smarter than me. Not to mention more fleet of paw than anyone I have seen.
"He was the cutest puppy I ever saw," Clay Perry wrote me.
When Beau was four months old, he became the youngest dog at that time ever approved for work with the Pets on Wheels program, which matches dogs and cats to nursing homes, where they visit and cheer the patients. He loved two of the seniors at the old Fairmount Homes especially, and each saved him crackers. He also loved children, and would trot up to them confidently, sometimes putting a paw on each shoulder if they were really tiny and commencing to wash their face.
We had an event-filled time together. He survived my missing part of his first spring to go on a fellowship in Hawaii. When I returned, he licked my face with joy. A little time later, I learned he had a grand sense of humor when he began hiding behind trees at Betty Hyatt Park and peeking around with a grin before hiding again.
One day, when Beau was about 2 years old, I walked him up Pratt Street to Patterson Park. A woman screeched her passing car to a halt and yelled, "Is he a male?" She lived on Madeira Street and had a female sheltie in heat. I loaned Beau to her for a night, and the woman and her partner had made the mistake of roasting a chicken in the oven that same night. Beau was more interested in begging for delectable chicken than mating with the female, and that was the beginning and end of his career as a sire.
When I traveled on my own, I could leave the young Beau with our housemate, RoseMarie. When I went to Brazil for three weeks, Beau slept waiting by the front door for two nights. On the third night, Rose told me, "OK, come upstairs Beaubeau," and he obediently followed. He got to watch the movie "Beethoven" with Rose and her cocker spaniel, Mindy.
Beau and I also traveled a lot. He went camping with me at Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware, and then took a big swing out West to Teddy Roosevelt Park in South Dakota, followed by Yellowstone, where he was riveted to the bison. He followed them visually from our highup overlook, every fiber of his being wanting to herd them.
His intensity caught the eye of some nearby French tourists who announced, "Regardez le chien." Later a coyote walked near to our car on a side road. When I squeezed out of the car to take a closer picture, Beau did his best to escape, nearly succeeding in running free and joining a Rocky Mountains coyote pack.
Le petit collie
Lamont and I took him to Montreal, where he was termed in French a mini-collie or petit collie. Lamont was permitted to take him in the bookstore Chapters and up the escalator to visit my book talk.
Beau also accompanied me on a book tour to Kentucky and Ohio, where Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington had no problem letting him hang out during my talk, crated in their staff room. They love horses in Lexington, home of the Kentucky Derby, and they love dogs too.
Wearing his yellow small-dog lifejacket, Beau went sailing with Lamont and me, and also with my friend Suzanne. He had a lucky and full life.
Only when he was older did he become sedate enough to be a cuddle pup and body warmer. If I got cold in the night I could lay him beside me, his sweet-smelling soft ears by my cheek, his head on my shoulder, my hand on his flank, me ignoring his very quiet "urmf" of exasperation at being pressed into Three Dog Night service.
Into each life some rain must fall, and for Beau it was being bitten by a pit bull when he was about 6 years old.
I was getting ready to visit our neighborhood hardware store and another dog owner was exiting the door. Her dog swung its head at Beau and he didn't react. We checked his body for a bite but couldn't find it.
Later that night, Beau miserably greeted Lamont when he came home from work, walking up to him and butting his head in his chest and remaining still, and we checked Beau again. This time, deep in his belly undercoat, we found two puncture wounds, indicated by weeping clear fluid.
After two operations to repair the necrotic and infected tissue, he was a quieter and more subdued little dog. The pit bull bite really took a lot of the wind out of his sails.
The incident did get him into our local paper, The East Baltimore Guide, in an article about the perils of pit bulls that featured a photo of our sheltie, shaved ribs and wounds visible. He also appeared in the Guide a second time in 1999, wearing campaign ribbons for a mayoral candidate.
Novelist Jane Smiley wrote this in A Year at the Races
A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements: the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together. If the lover isn't ardent, then the story isn't a love story. If the beloved isn't appealing, then the lover just seems idiosyncratic or even crazy; and if they have no adventures, then their love is too easy, and they have no way of learning anything important about themselves and one another.
Beau and I had surface adventures -- Montreal, Ocean City, South Dakota, Yellowstone, pit bulls, and sometimes even our daily walks in Baltimore -- and then we had a deeper adventure when he became geriatric around age 14 or 15.
Becoming an ancient
At 16 he was older than geriatric -- in a word, ancient. "Beau you are going to live forever," Dr. Nesbitt of Essex Dog and Cat said after one visit. But added to his congestive heart failure in his last year was kidney failure. It was tough to treat both, because the first requires lowering fluids in the body and the second requires increasing them.
We just did are best to juggle the amount of Lasix he was receiving and to avoid treating his arthritis with Ascripton anymore, since that might hurt his kidneys.
There wasn't much else to do except feed him pureed food orally by plastic syringe and reward him with ice cream, yoghurt and begging strips that he would eat on his own.
I think he wanted to live. In his last six months, that required essentially providing hospice care for him, though I didn't quite realize it at the time.
In May 2006, when I was at the BookExpo America in Washington, D.C., Beau wouldn't eat for Lamont. I wasn't surprised, and tried to tell Lamont tricks to the process. I often had to warm his food to room temperature and switch brands often to capture his interest, or tear up begging strips and put it in the food. He would often walk up to his food and lick his chops and walk away. I thought he was being difficult and only later learned that licking the chops is a sign of nausea (poor guy). When he wouldn't eat anything, then I resorted to pureeing.
What would have been easier would have been feeding him one of the Hill's canned prescription diets that goes straight into a syringe without pureeing: the one called a/d Canine Feline. I only found out about this the last week of his life, from Dr. Nesbitt.
He had perhaps only one or maybe two accidents in all of those last six months. I made sure to take him outside whenever he woke up from a deep sleep, as well as three regular times a day. He couldn't safely cross our busy street, so we just curled around the block, just walking up Pratt Street and back. Pierre probably suffered a bit for lack of exercise on our turtle-like walks.
On the Fourth of July, I missed my husband's family's party because they couldn't accommodate Beau in an air-conditioned spot and it was too hot for him outside. I didn't want him uncomfortable. I was largely tied to being home at around 3 p.m. to make sure he could relieve himself.
Beau suffered in the summer heat and had no appetite. He rallied when the weather changed in mid-September.
During these months, before going downstairs, each morning I would pause on the landing outside our room to gather the pets for a rebonding session. "It's another day for you, Little Beau," I would whisper, Beau under one arm, Pierre the other, a cat strolling by requiring stroking too.
He finally crashed noticeably at the beginning of November. I was in a tizzy when I took to Beau to his vet at Essex Dog and Cat Hospital on the Thursday before he died, when Dr. Nesbitt said we could euthanize him right then. He was prone on the exam table, disinterested in the world around him, the worst he'd ever looked.
Bringing Beau home
I called Lamont to ask what to do. He said to bring Beau home. I was happy to do so. Euthanizing our cat Oliver exactly a year before at Essex Dog and Cat had been rough (see Goodbye to a fine grey boy).
"He's just old," what Lamont said, what I wanted to hear, but you could smell the uremic, or ammonia, smell in the living room, where Beau spent the day, and our bedroom, where he spent the night, and know this wasn't just age, it was kidney failure, and it couldn't be comfortable to have those toxins overwhelming your bloodstream.
I began to call local vets to get the numbers of mobile vets who might do home euthanasia. Only two returned my calls.
Patti, the wife of Dr. Patrick Maizels of Harford Mobile Veterinary Services (410-937-9463), was one. She was a fount of tremendous information about hospice care for dogs with terminal illnesses. Only then did I realize I had in fact been offering hospice care for months, and doing so without expert guidance, which apparently is the norm for many pet owners, who improvise their way without good information from their regular vet.
She said that canine kidney patients have a lot of acid in their blood that creates ulcers at the back of the throat that spike after they have eaten and more toxins enter their bloodstream. The ulcers recede after a few days and the pet feels like eating again, repeating the cycle. She also recommended Hills A/D pet food and stage 2 baby food (without onions). "They really have to like what's in front of them," she said, "anything else makes them nauseous."
We set up an appointment for Dr. Pat to visit Wednesday, but I later switched to the other vet who returned my call, who could make it to our house earlier.
Dr. Lisa Tuzo (443-631-3800) also called and confirmed what Patti had told me: the up-and-down state of kidney patients makes it enormously difficult to determine the right time to euthanize. "The animal rallies so that euthanasia is hard to plan," she said, but "It's better to be one day too early than one day too late." That made a lot of sense. The animal could well be flat-out miserable, and it was not going to get better.
She said the main sign of time for euthanasia was when the pet's eyes became miserable and withdrawn. "Letting nature take its course is not kindest, it's not making him die more easily," she said. "Starvation kills kidney patients, and it's extremely painful."
She recommended small feedings, every couple of hours. She could visit on Tuesday rather than Wednesday, so I switched my appointment from Dr. Pat to Dr. Tuzo.
Dr. Tuzo agreed to assess Beau, charging an exam price, for whether it was time. By the time she actually arrived, it was clear due by Beau's disinterest in the world and weakness that it was indeed time and he did not need an exam to confirm this.
When Dr. Tuzo arrived, after a morning when I dreaded the noise of every car parking on our street, it was clear that Beau was in a bad way, immobile on his fleece bed.
Running in his dreams
He had however been his younger self in his dreams, able-bodied in his imagination until the very end, including the morning of his euthanasia, when his paws twitched in his sleep as he chased seagulls.
Dr. Tuzo explained how Lamont's mantra, "He's just old," was what I wanted to hear, even though I felt he was deteriorating markedly and in fact not just old. Sure, old dogs sleep a lot, but heavy heavy sleep indicates the fog of kidney failure and that the pet is in a bad way. Lamont feels that "everything living wants to live," and would not be inclined to euthanize a pet. I however did not want Beau to suffer seizures, tremors or undue suffering, which is why the information from Patti Maizels and Dr. Tuzo about end-stage kidney failure and potential suffering was valuable.
My friend and neighbor Blaire Freed helped quite a bit in those last days. She was present when Dr. Tuzo returned my call and helped me process what I had been told. She had bought the 23rd Psalm for Beau in Hebrew as well as food for me, and provided petting time for Beau. She said she thought it was time to say goodbye.
Beau waits on his fleece bed in our living room for the mobile vet to arrive. Behind him is a copy of the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew, prepared for him by his friend, our neighbor Blaire.
When Dr. Tuzo arrived at noon on Tuesday, Nov. 7, I had prepared by putting Beau on his soft fleece bed on the day bed in the living room, where Dr. Tuzo could administer to him comfortably. I put a plastic sheet on the daybed in case Beau lost control, but he didn't. I had made sure that he had a slightly smaller breakfast that morning. He looked nice because I had taken him to Doggie Depot six days earlier for a bath. Senior dogs lose interest in grooming, but I wanted him to go out with dignity.
Dr. Tuzo came in and gently stroked Beau, who was clearly very zonked by illness. She said it was definitely time. I showed her his shiny white teeth, which I had brushed daily for years, and his clean coat, bathed in the past week and brushed minutes before.
Pierre, our housemate's shepherd Sipsey and the cats watched in curiosity, which in Pierre's case turned to distress. With his teeth, he began ripping up loops out of the living room rug. How he sensed the transition about to occur I don't know. Guess he picked it up off me.
Dr. Tuzo prepared Beau with a sedative. She took her time over the next hour. Beau relaxed and after a while she added some anesthesia. She gently flicked his left rear paw, and he didn't react. She said, "I'll send my mother to say hi to him," upon Beau's ascent to Heaven. I was touched and didn't speak. A few tears fell down my face and landed in his still-white ruff.
The vet finally gave Beau his third shot, and his heart stopped. It was a much better situation than Oliver's euthanasia, with just two shots and him vomiting, on an exam table at a vet's office, after a tearful ride with his owners, the year before.
She let me have some time with him and then asked for something to wrap his body in to take to her car. I found a towel and carried Beau out myself.
A thin, fevered body
His little body, thinned from 30 to 20 pounds by long illness, was not cold yet -- in fact it was very hot as though he were in a final fever. He was a bit floppy in a way a living creature is not. I laid him in the back of Dr. Tuzo's vehicle and rearranged the towel to cover him and thanked her. She would return in a week with his ashes.
"You'll be seeing him in the corners for a few weeks," the vet predicted correctly. That night the heavens opened with heavy rain like tears. I got up the next day ready for another round of care for an ancient dog, and it was not longer required. It took me a while to realize that Beau was no longer a burden to me and no longer suffered.
I felt sad but utterly relieved that I had found a mobile vet for his last day.
The vet had let him go via three shots, not two as in a vet office, with the extra shot designed to gently, gently sedate and anesthetize him, so that departing this world was like sinking into a warm and comfortable bath, without fear.
The countdown to the Dr. Tuzo's arrival at the front door was horrendous, but Beau's dying was sweet and perfect for him, in the sense of no uncomfortable final ride to a cold steel exam table. "I've seen dogs stressed by that ride," Dr. Tuzo confirmed to me. Getting a mobile vet for reasons of comfort and familiarity with the home seemed fitting and almost obligatory for a pet that had been such a fine companion for many years.
After my hospice care ended, it was a relief on many levels. Partly it was less work, partly I had a clear conscience on how I had cared for my first pet, partly it was the fact that the hospice care had frankly been a grind.
I put a few links for anyone dealing with these issues in my earlier entry, Dealing with Beau's end of life, posted a week after his death.
Beau had such a wide range of friends. Jill trimmed a bit of his striking mahogany sable coat to take to her hairdresser for color matching, because it was an intriguing purple-black in some lighting conditions. Marci loved his "little mouse eyes," and he did have small intense eyes of darkest anthracite.
After all he meant to so many people, his passing had to be an honor to his life.
I had read John Updike poem Another Dog's Death, about bringing a vet to the home to put an aging pet to sleep, and thought that was the only way to put your pet to sleep. "In a wheelbarrow up to the hole, her warm fur shone," Updike wrote, and it reminds me of how hot Beau felt after he was euthanized.
Favorite memories
Beau was a moocher who hung around the kitchen in hopes of caging a morsel from us or our housemates. "No Beau," would say our mid-1990s housemate, Barbara Kersteins, before she in a moment of weakness would slip him some cheese.
Some of my favorite memories of Beau are his greeting me when I returned from Hawaii, and him grabbing the end of my scarf and pogoing backwards for block upon block as we went to Patterson Park. He was also adept at attacking my shoelaces based on unknown stimuli, possibly related to my attempts to cross busy lights, such as the one in front of Harborplace.
My best memory of Beau is standing with Lamont at the stretch of Ocean City near the Fenwick Inn, high up in the 130s. He ran like streaming silk, his legs a blur, his bushy tail fluidly caught in his backdraft, undulating gently, Pierre barking behind, much bigger but barely able to keep up with Beau, who was lightning in a bottle. Beau had to keep all those seagulls off the beach, and would obsessively track them and race parallel to the waves to make sure they didn't land on the sand.
This activity went off-limits for him when he was 10 and began to cough a lot, and we found out he had an enlarged heart and was headed (very gradually, since it took seven years) toward congestive heart failure.
I received 80 or so condolence e-mails upon his death last November and was quite grateful for everyone's support. Beau became part of my life toward the end of my longest stint at the Baltimore Sun and many folks from that era of my life were contacted and reconnected to. In fact, I had lunch with old friend Peter Meredith and essentially got a job by contacting Clay Perry, whose wife works at The George Washington University.
My favorite e-mail again came from my friend Ed:
Maybe I am misanthropic; I cannot conceive pain sharper than losing one's most trusted companion. There is life with and life after, no shades of gray. As some other author wrote, and I adapt -- Let God get his own Beau; Beau is mine (or I was Beau's). I am sorry, very sorry about Beau.
Possibly useful links
Last hours of living describes two ways of dying for advanced kidney patients (human). My fear that Beau would possibly suffer the less frequent modality of terminal delirium (vs. the more common outcome of great sleepiness and death) led me to decide to euthanize him, and well as the distinct odor of ammonia in his exhalations. It seemed to me if his blood were so full of impurities from his failing kidneys, he must be in a fair bit of discomfort.
Goodbye, friend by Gary Kowalski (book link to Amazon.com)This author describes how some pets seem to welcome their euthanasia:
One veterinarian I know with a small animal practice in New York says she firmly believes that most creatures know when their time is up. They are ready for their departure. That opinion is shared by Connie Howard, who directs our local humane society. She told me how in the middle of a sub-zero Vermont winter her cat had unaccountably gone into hiding under a porch -- not a location the animal would ordinarily choose for a midday siesta. Connie had not even realized her pet was sick. But the cat, which had end-stage renal disease, seemed to know exactly what was happening. It was doing its best to die.Too often, though, people are not ready to take the step that is needed to assist their pets over the threshold. Some want their animals to die "naturally," not realizing that a "natural" death can be quite painful and prolonged. Then when nature proves too ruthless to be borne they call people like Connie or my veterinary friend for a dose of mercy in the middle of the night.
The book includes a postscript on ceremonies to honor the loss of a pet, which is what I hope to do in writing down Beau's story.
Chesapeake Pet Crematory
8717 Green Pastures Dr.
Towson, MD
(410) 321-1005.
If your pet should die naturally and you want to have it cremated, you can bring to this funeral home for humans that also helps pet owners. The cost is $100. You must call ahead and the body must be bought in a closed container. Hours are Monday to Saturday, 9 to 5. The ashes are returned to you in a white acrylic container.
- posted by jbelliveau at 3:00 PM in The Neighborhood
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