When it’s time

It's always so difficult to know when it's "that time."

I suppose we should be relieved for them. I mean, after all, if only humans could choose to "cross over" so easily or had help to do so.

It was one month ago today that this end-of-life journey started with Big Brown - B.B. - and it has been, to use a cliche, a roller coaster. She has fought so hard, my small but mighty Big Brown, and all of the animals here have rallied around her.

A 4-week-old Big Brown, May 2008

Big Brown the day I purchased her at 10 months old

Big Brown as a silly yearling in 2009

I remember my third Midnight Run. It was my best finish in that race, and we had a flawless 75 or so miles completed when B.B. mistakenly turned "gee" (right) onto a snowmobile trail instead of the race trail. When I turned the team around, B.B. and her long-time rival, Cinder, who was a good 8-10 pounds heavier, found an irresistible moment to call showdown. As I pulled B.B. in lead around, she came face-to-face with this arch rival, and ... let's just say it took me a minute to tear those bitches apart! Hell hath no fury...

That Midnight Run...

Arch rival, Cinder

After tending to a laceration on her right front leg and a nasty cut across the bridge of her nose, B.B. wasn't having any of this “stopping” business. Before I could completely clean the blood off her nose, she pounded her harness, the rest of the team screaming to go. She came roaring up the shoreline of Lake Superior, bloodied but no worse for wear, fighting all the way.

Toward the finish of our best Midnight Run. To the right is Lake Superior as we roll into downtown Marquette, Michigan

As far as the classic things that make sled dogs sled dogs - good feet, voracious appetite - well, B.B. has never cared much for all that. Horrible eater. I swear she'd hardly eat the entire race weekend no matter what race it was. By Sunday, I’d become as neurotic as a first time mom, asking the vet teams to check her for dehydration. She was always fine, and I imagined her rolling her eyes at me like a defiant teenager. Whatever, mom.

Stopping to rest as a yearling with her sister, Ruffian

You couldn't bootie this dog either! Hardest damned dog to get boots on! My friends Kathleen and Mike came over from Minnesota to handle for me that year, and it took all three of us to get boots on B.B.'s small feet at the checkpoint!

Nope. B.B. did things her way, always, but when it came to her job in harness or with children at an event or presentation, she did it exceptionally well.

And when all of the other sled dogs in the team rode in the dog trailer, B.B. always rode in the passenger's seat of my car. With me. Because she was special. She was my bomb-proof lead dog and my best friend.

Such beautiful, almond-shaped eyes

Curled up after a 40 mile run inside my cabin in the Upper Peninsula, January, 2013

Illustrating proper "line out" technique from our training grounds in the Upper Peninsula, October 2012

At camp in the U.P., October 2012

Stretched out on my bed

She has continued with that fighting, true-to-herself spirit through these, her last days. Giving her 1 1/2 tablets of Keppra 3 times a day has been tricky. I've mastered the art of setting alarms on my phone for medication reminders, and Elise has also mastered the complicated art of getting a pill down a doggie throat. B.B. is still finicky, although she has enjoyed the grilled chicken breast strips and hamburger quite a lot!

But tonight, she couldn't keep her dinner down. Drooling, panting wildly and whining, she paced the floors, finally expelling the contents of her stomach. I gave her a small dose of Phenergan. Slowly, she fell into the steady, easy breathing of sleep, finally relaxed.

People seem to think because I have a couple dozen dogs that somehow this loss gets easier, that numbers somehow mean I love each of them a little less. As I sit here tonight, typing through tears, I can say this. is. not. true.

Bracing myself for this loss has shaken me. But, like birth, death is a process.

Surprisingly, this journey with B.B. has reminded me of my father's final few hours of life. As we all gathered 'round my parents’ big bed, watching the rise and fall of my dad’s chest, we moved from the frenzied imminence of expectation to a quiet peaceful acceptance. His final hours held a sort of private sacredness like the quiet and immensely personal intimacy of the first few hours of life. As hard as it was to watch my dad die, I was so deeply honored to share in that intensely personal, private moment with him.

It’s a perfect circle. A closing. In between the place of life and death, right before the light is extinguished in the soul, there is a sort of silence like I’ve never known ... except in one place: winter.
I don’t know how to let her go.
But in that quiet place tonight, I told B.B. it was okay to go.

Rest In Peace, little B.B.

5/4/2008 - 6/15/2018

We had a damned good run, girl. 

"...and miles to go before I sleep." - Robert Frost

She walks gingerly through the grass, picking her feet up high in a sort of prance, as if the grass contains some substance she detests. She lifts her long slender legs, exposing the shaved ring around her left forearm which betrays her gallant attempt to pretend all is well. That ring tells a story; it hasn't been too long since that horrible night of relentless seizures I thought would kill her. The discharge papers from the hospital said status epilepticus.

That night, as I carried her convulsing body into the hospital, a tech ran toward me.

"Permission to cath?" the tech yelled to me over the chaos. She wanted permission to place an IV line.

Life for Big Brown - B.B. - would change irrevocably that night.

"Yes! Of course!" I yelled back.

We returned home with Keppra, an anti-epileptic medication B.B. would take for the rest of her life, and questions, mainly, why? Why would a 10-year-old dog suddenly have violent grand mal seizures? My suspicions were that things were not good.

Since that night we've returned for more tests and x-rays in a more controlled, less acute and chaotic climate, and my suspicions were confirmed. I've put off writing this post because somehow I thought if I didn't write it, it wouldn't be reality. But it is reality.

B.B. has always been thin, and for a sled dog, a finicky eater. But her weight has held consistent her whole life at 38 pounds. This day, the scales revealed she'd lost five pounds in just 13 days.

Dr. Kaegi met me in the dark x-ray room. 

"Can you see anything?" I asked. 

"Yes," she said as she flipped the lights off "and unfortunately, just as we suspected, it's not good." 

On the screen were two films, one clearly showing B.B.'s ribcage, heart, and trachea illuminated from behind, and the other of her gut. She's had relentless diarrhea since this whole thing started despite my best efforts to alleviate it with over-the-counter remedies, so we elected to take x-rays of her gut to get a clear picture of what's going on inside. 

On the film on the right, in front of the iridescence of florescent light, beside the darkish mass of B.B.'s heart was another, darker mass. This dark mass, a dull cloud in an otherwise normal film, was home to rampant and unchecked cell division. Cells gone to the dark side and run amok. I pictured them as wild, unkempt, unruly children laughing manically. It was undeniable and evident even to an untrained eye.

Cancer.

The film showed three small metastases or "mets" within B.B.'s lungs. About 20 months ago, I discovered a small, quarter-sized lump on her chest. I promptly had it removed within a week of discovery, with clean margins that I'd hoped meant cancer would be gone forever. Breast cancer metastasizes to two places, primarily: the lungs and the brain. 

In the nine days since learning this news, my focus has been on comfort care. We left that office visit with more drugs and probiotics, and I've kept beef, chicken and rice stocked in the kitchen to whet B.B.'s palate. She has good days and not so good days. On good days, she prances in the grass in what's become her trademark high-stepping stride. She eats heartily and goes for car rides. On not-so-good days, she quivers on the sofa, seemingly cold, but simultaneously panting and drooling. On good days, the light is in her eyes and she smiles. On not-so-good days, she seems disoriented, confused, and sleeps a lot.

This last winter, I took B.B. and four other dogs one what would be her last sled run. Of course, I didn't know it at the time. I wonder now if those mutant cells were working to proliferate even then.

As she pranced through the grass today, it struck me that these are the final days of her life. But then I remember what an extraordinary life she's led.

B.B. has become my main education dog, doing presentations and dog sled demos all over Ohio and into Michigan. In March, B.B. attended her biggest school presentation in Logan, Ohio, meeting and greeting about 500 elementary school students as we presented about dog sledding.

B.B. at a library presentation in 2014

With about 500 students of Green Elementary School in Logan, Ohio

My daughter, Sophie, came over from Ohio University to help with the presentation at Green Elementary

I think of all the dogs I've lost over the years for a variety of reasons: Kahlua, Gracie, Foxie, Gwennie, Thelonious, Mojo, Punk, Feist... and all the dogs I've known, trained and worked with - literally hundreds - over the years, and I don't know if I've spent as many solid hours adventuring and working as I have with Big Brown.

She has been with me on almost every single race I've done in my mushing career from triumphs

 and through adversity.

Over the last 10 years, we have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in the deep recesses of forests in the midwest hiking, camping, running, and racing. She has helped train young leaders...

And shouldered dogs twice her size into turns.

We have grown together, from our humble beginnings...

Punderson Sled Dog Classic. Photo by Nicolas Skidmore

Taquamenon Sled Dog Race. Photo by Sigurd Utych

to larger races...

Midnight Run. Photo by Aladino Mandoli

Tahquamenon Sled Dog Race. Photo by Aladino Mandoli

Midnight Run. Photo by Nace Hagemann

We've run along the shores of Lake Superior...

in fierce blizzards and storms...

And magical places that look like something out of Narnia.

We've run at night...

Copper Dog. Photo by Brockit

We've run alone in the silence only winter can bring.

We've camped out...

And stayed in...

B.B. has met many people, from tiny ones...

To grown ups ...

To people who cared for her...

With one of our favorite members of the Copper Dog veterinary team

We've loved...

And in the end, that's all that matters, right?

Thinking about losing B.B. is so painful I haven't wanted to write about it. I intermittently become emotional at the strangest times. I think of all the adventures I still wanted with her. I owe my entire racing career to this dog... and she is so much more than "just a dog." Mushers spend more one-on-one hours with their dogs than anyone I know. The bond that develops is so, so deep from those hours spent in the woods.

For now, B.B. sleeps contentedly on the sofa as I type. And we wait, cherishing every moment.