consuelo: november 9, 2000 - march 12, 2015

my child died yesterday.  other people have children and grandchildren who survive them.  i have survived all of my children.  when people say they can't imagine how this must feel, i tell them that it feels like my child died.  never having had any human children of my own, it is literally true. 

as i had mentioned in the previous blog, consuelo was not doing well.  we first noticed her slowing down last summer when tom finally retired and we started full-time cruising.  more and more she spent her time in the salon rather than with me at my desk at the pilothouse.  i figured that she just wasn't up to the jump anymore - it is quite high - and well, i have said this many times - consuelo was very independent.  she did NOT like to be helped.  it was undignified.  i just figured it was old age but then i noticed that she was losing weight even though she was eating the same amount of food and getting less exercise.  and then we had the incident in miami where she had managed to hurt her neck/back while we were at the boat show.   she was never the same after that and just seemed so frail and brittle.  in miami, tom and i had already had the discussion about letting her go if it came down to having to make that choice.  when she started up with the breathing difficulty symptoms in cocoa, after the initial vet visit, we had the discussion again and i simply said that if she wasn't dramatically better by the end of the month when we were to leave for parts north, she wasn't coming with us.  i was glad that tom agreed with me.  last saturday, we were prepared to let her go but dr. klein wanted to try the antibiotics first after looking at the test results and she did get dramatically better for a day or two and then the symptoms started up again and she was hardly eating anything.  in any case, after tom and i had had that discussion, we knew it was just a matter of time.  everyone says it's about the quality of life, keeping them comfortable and free of pain, etc. etc.  not everyone lives on a boat where the ground isn't always steady and level, and it can be a production getting on and off at the docks. 

on wednesday night, consuelo had a really bad night with the breathing issues again and it was really disheartening.   we hardly slept that night - she kept getting up and drinking and then lying down again, trying to find a good position.  the next morning, thursday, before dawn, i got up to let her out, put her on the finger pier and then ran back in to grab the leash.  i know i should have had that leash on her before i even got her off the boat but it was still dark and i guess i was discombobulated from lack of sleep.  she started to wander off towards the main dock and i went after her to snap the leash on but she was walking the edge and then just slipped in with a big splash!  i woke tom up while grabbing the boat hook and after numerous failed attempts to hook her harness, tom just went into the water to get her.  she just swam around and around.  her hearing was pretty much shot so there was no point in calling her.  it was still dark and she couldn't see very well to begin with especially with the resolving hypopion in her right eye. i was down one of the dock ladders with my boat hook now trying to herd her towards our swim platform where tom was waiting until he just finally decided to get in the water after donning a life jacket and swimming towards her.  he managed to get her up on a neighbor boat's swim platform and another neighbor who had heard the splash came out and helped carry her up to the dock and gave her to me.  the docks at cocoa village marina are pretty high so it was a long fall.  she must have been in the water for 5 minutes at the very least but consuelo swims like a lab - it's just that she couldn't see, couldn't hear, and didn't know which direction to go.  bless tom's heart for getting into that filthy water to find her and swimming around blind in the dark without his glasses on and with only my very bad directions to go by.   all i know is that i had visions of tinkerbelle's lifeless body sinking into the water back at regatta point.  i must have been hysterical at the time, telling tom "it ends here!"  it had been a very, very bad week of ups and downs, thinking that she was to be put down only to bring her frail little body home yet again just to watch it deteriorate.  yes, i was angry, and i was torn. 

consuelo has always been this solid little thing - all muscle.  when she jumped up on your lap, you felt all 30 pounds of her distributed in those four paws digging into your thighs.  she was a ballerina, too - low to the ground and very stable and well balanced.  she always walked the edges which made me nuts although i learned to live with it since she never fell.  after 14 and a half years, she must have fallen into the water about five or six times, most of those times not her fault.  you get the picture - she was NOT clumsy.  and now....

i got her hosed down and dried off and she wanted to walk over to the grass to do her business.  she seemed full of energy - it might have been the "invigorating swim," i don't know.  but when we got back to the boat, she only just picked at her food and then lay down.  tom had called dr. klein to let him know what had happened.  we also noticed a fluid collection in her left "good" eye and it was impairing her vision - she was, for all practical purposes, blind.  dr. klein was in surgery when tom called so he just left a message.  consuelo went to sleep for hours and her breathing, surprisingly, was not bad.  i watched her sleep and thought - this is when she should go, while she is still feeling "okay," while she can still walk, while she is still the consuelo that we know and love.  i didn't want the failure of her body to overshadow the sparkle that made her unique.  the truth is, i wasn't even sure she recognized us anymore.  she flinched every time she sensed someone was near.  she was bumping into walls and staggering around on unsteady legs. 

dr. klein called tom back and i could hear them talking and when i heard tom say, "we're not ready," i interrupted and said, yes we are.  to give tom credit, although he has been a huge part of consuelo's life, he acknowledges that she is my dog and defers all decisions to me.  i, in turn, did not want to leave him out of it completely, and we had already talked about this - we knew that it would happen sometime before the end of march which is when we plan to leave cocoa.  he looked surprised but said into the phone, oh, i'm sorry, yes we are.  and i just sighed.  there....   and i didn't really hear the rest of the conversation except for the appointment time. 

you see, this is the way it is - we can do this for our animals, and we do it because we love them and because they love us and trust us.  mikey said he wanted to be with us for it so mommy, daddy and uncle mikey were with consuelo when she peacefully went to sleep for the last time.  she was this sweet little angel just sleeping there. 



there was a rocket launch that night from the cape - it was spectacular! as i watched it rise up, i thought of it as a celebration of consuelo's life. it was up there a long time, too, just like the length of time that she was with us, getting smaller and smaller until it faded away into the clouds. the light winked back on a couple of times, just like she did, and then it was gone.

we will bring her ashes back to the chesapeake which is where she grew up and learned to love the water.