[airplane]

Bijou passed away on Saturday. He was euthanized at the vet clinic because his quality of life just was not up to par anymore. I often referred to Bijou as being 18, but he was actually just a couple months away from his 18th birthday. Just to tell his story a bit, as I mentioned in some other threads, Bijou has been dealing with dementia. Bijou was first diagnosed with dementia during the beginning of fall of last year I believe, and it was absolutely heartbreaking to see him struggle with that. With everything that I’ve since learned about dementia in dogs, I believe he had first started showing mild symptoms of dementia previous to the fall. He had become withdrawn and also had started to sleep far more than usual during the day. I attributed this to him just getting old, but once he had started the pacing, barking, up all night and sleep all day, etc. that’s when I got him checked out and he got the diagnosis.

With dementia in dogs, it will progress and often does quite quickly. In just a number of months to a year it often becomes noticeably worse. I had Bijou on anipryl medication and I must say that it truly did help him. He improved greatly and it definitely helped his quality of life and I was thinking hey this ain’t too bad he’s acting like his old self. I was really hoping that his dementia wouldn’t progress and that it would just keep at bay. Then all of a sudden a few weeks ago he declined rapidly. Basically all of the symptoms he showed before went from being muted to being quite extreme. And there was also some new behaviours that fall under the category of dementia, and it was severe enough that there really wasn’t any doubts about him having quality of life. The list of his symptoms were basically everything you could read about dementia in dogs.

So I actually spoke to a couple different vets about it and was maybe thinking I could increase the dosage of medication or do something like that to help him, but apparently he was already at the max dosage and it was not to be increased. There really wasn’t anything to do that could help him. As I listened to the vets talk about the brain and dementia it was just like I felt numb. When his decline happened, I first noticed he was struggling to find his water bowl and that the circling behaviour was increasing but not greatly just a bit I guess. In addition he went from drinking tons of water to only drinking a little bit, even if I was continually helping him find his water bowl. Just a couple odd things like that were starting to happen. Then Bijou was staying with my mom for a week while I was out of town (I would’ve taken him with me but he doesn’t like travelling in his old age) and she was telling me how bad he was in terms of his dementia behaviours (circling, staring at walls, barking, etc. etc.), and I was thinking maybe it was just because of the change of environment and I should’ve told her to stay at my house with him. But I was certain once I got back he’ll be in his usual environment and he’ll do better, but that didn’t happen. I was quite shocked at how bad his symptoms had gotten in just a short period of time and being home with me didn’t seem to help at all. So the very difficult decision to euthanize Bijou was made. Not difficult to make because it was obvious that his quality of life wasn’t there and he was struggling greatly with confusion and scared and anxiety and really quite horrible symptoms of dementia that were hard to see him display. So when I say difficult decision, I just mean difficult to actually go through with it. I had thought that maybe the stress of changing environments sped up his decline, but then again I did notice some increase in his symptom severity shortly before I left so maybe he was already going down that path. I don’t know though. But maybe he was at a point of susceptibility to a speed up of decline. It’s hard to say. But it was shocking how quickly he declined considering that his symptoms, although still there, seemed to be fairly muted since he got on the anipryl drug.

I was 14 years old when Bijou entered my life. My mom was a single parent who was going to University and I believe she also had a part time job at the same time, and she didn’t want me to be home alone all the time, so she got Bijou for me. And he’s been with me ever since. The only time we were separated for any great length of time was when I went to University. I had to travel south to find a degree granting university because the one here doesn’t, and I just simply couldn’t afford a place that allows pets. But during that time every phone call and email I shared with my mom was just about asking how Bijou was doing and to send me pictures. He’s been such a huge part of my life. But I knew this day was coming. A number of years ago he really started to slow down and his old age became apparent. And I remember when I started an Instagram page for my dogs I didn’t include Bijou’s name on it because I knew he was so old and that he wasn’t going to be here for many more years. But even knowing that he was a senior and wasn’t going to live for many more years doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. These past few days have been horrible. I have thousands of pictures of him on my phone, and hundreds more on my computer that were back when people didn’t have cameras on their phone. And just all the memories I have of him. We’ve flown on airplanes together, and moved to different cities together, and had birthday parties for him, all the tricks I taught him, and our favorite trails for our walks, and just so many other memories and things that we’ve done together. That’s probably the hardest thing to deal with, just thinking about the memories.

I don’t have any regrets though about euthanizing Bijou. It was clearly time because he was not happy and was clearly struggling with a lot of anxiety related to his symptoms. His symptoms had just become too severe. Dementia is a very horrible thing. I did everything I could to accommodate him. When he would start barking, I would bring cheese to him. Smelly aged cheese he really liked. And that would temporarily stop him from barking and he would be focused on the cheese for a bit. Or when he was doing the circling I would simply hold him. But I had to be standing. If I held him when sitting down, he would want to go and do circling. It was like he couldn’t control it and had a huge desire to do tons of circling basically until his legs collapsed. I would block off the chairs in the house cause he would always go to them and get stuck. And just other things like that I could do to help him. I work from home so I could and did do everything possible to help him. But even doing that and always being at home with him, it was obvious that this was not a good life for him and that the quality of life just was not there anymore. It was so hard to see him staring at walls, and struggling with extreme circling, and shaking, and the confusion, and the barking at least to me communicated a lot of stress and that he was scared. Just the pitch of it and the way it sounded. And all the other symptoms too were difficult to see him struggle with. I never knew that dogs could get dementia. I just didn’t consider it and it didn’t click in my mind until his vet diagnosed him. And if Bijou hadn’t shown anxiety related to his symptoms or if he didn’t seem bothered by it, then I could’ve and would’ve just simply accommodated him and helped him live with it as comfortably as possible. But that was not to be. I believe he was quite bothered by his symptoms and the constant confusion and everything about the dementia. For awhile I considered being selfish and telling myself that he’s ok and he can live like this and it’s no big deal. But I was just fantasizing because I will always do what’s best for my dogs. I had multiple consultations with different vets to get an unbiased opinion about quality of life and in my heart I had already known that he was past that point and it was best for him to be euthanized. And in a way that made it a bit easier. I take comfort in knowing that it was what was best for him.

Bijou was family. And more like family than some family is. It’s been really hard to lose him. I’m thankful that there was medication that did help him for a number of months, and I just wish that it worked for longer and that he didn’t decline and I could’ve had more time with him. It’s tough thinking about how at least physically he was very healthy. His vet figured his heart would keep him going for probably a few more years. Prior to his dementia, he’s never had any health issues or needed to be on medication or anything like that. All he had was a heart murmur that wasn’t a concern and he’s had that his whole life. His blood work was always perfect and I was very lucky that there’s never been any physical issues with Bijou. Throughout the years his vet has always commented about how he has such good genes because he was so healthy. I’m just completely heartbroken and I’ll miss him forever. It’s a cruel part of life that our pets don’t live as long as we do.