It's you... Not Me

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Those of you who know us (meaning Steffi and I), know how much our dogs are a part of our lives. No, we're not the crazy type of people who treat our dogs like people, but because we have no children and lead very busy lives, our dogs are our companions. I grew up never having a dog in the house because of my mom's allergies. When Steffi and I moved to the States back in '99, I got it in my head that I needed a dog. I was starting my career and figured that between convincing my favorite girl to come with me back to the homeland and settling down to some extent, a dog was a good next move. I have no idea what convinced me that a Rottweiler made sense, though. To this day, I only remember that I liked my brother's rotties (actually, they were his wife's, but same difference) - but I still don't understand what made me want a dog that carries such a stigma so badly. Steffi helped do research on finding some people with rotties for sale. We happened across this farm in Ohio about half an hour south of Hillsdale. I remember going down their after work and it being an absolutely beautiful drive. I also remember just going to “look.” I had talked with my roommate, Josh, and let him know that I/we were thinking of getting a dog and making sure it would be okay with him.
We pulled up in the driveway of nice two-story farmhouse with a few outbuildings (I vaguely remember one old typical midwestern red barn off to the right). I wasn't sure where to park. The driveway went from the left around the back side of the house and trailed off somewhere I couldn't see. We didn't see anyone or anything outside, so I parked, got out of the car and got Steph to come with. We walked up to the white farmhouse - there was a slanted concrete patio in front of the door that went into what looked like a screened in three season room. I knocked on the door and waited. Then out of the left corner of my eye, I noticed a rather large dog come around the back corner of the house. He looked like a miniature black horse. I'll never forget that moment. I knew right away that whatever offspring of this animal were going to be awesome. Of course, my memory is a bit exaggerated, but I remember Lucy's father being a bit bigger than my brother's rotties, in height, but being a whole lot bigger in weight. He looked like he weighed 150 lbs. (I found out later that it was closer to 130 lbs - still a nice sized dog.) He just looked at us, didn't move and didn't bark. I turned to Steph and said, “...well, I'm waiting, how about you?” (laugh) His ears were tilted forward as he looked at us, but he just stared. A few seconds later, a medium height, brown-haired skinny guy came around the corner and whistled. The dog immediately relaxed and he introduced himself. To this day, I neither remember the name of the couple who bred Lucy's parents, nor do I remember her parent's names, but I remember tons of little details about the farmette. The breeders were in it for the fun of it. That is, they didn't breed the rotties as a job and therefore weren't a puppy mill. They had two beautiful rotties and felt they would give others great offspring. They were right.
I remember watching their son (I think he was around four years old) walk around and play with the male. I was amazed at how laid back the male was. He was interested in what we were doing, but simply watched everything. There was no sense of aggression - the first and foremost thing I was worried about with a Rottweiler - he just wanted to know what was going on. They brought Lucy out of her pen with the mother (who was still protective of the pups at that point) and she walked around in front of us like every other puppy does - cute and innocent.
Needless to say, we were taken and Lucy was ours. It's funny how it came about, because the name Lucy has been a point of humor since we had her, but it was my roommate that helped us name her. We were trying different female names that would work, but none were satisfactory. He turned to me and said, “how about Lucinda or Lucy?” It was perfect. Lucy the rottweiler. We didn't want an in-your-face name because of her already being a rottie, so it was perfect. Over the next few weeks and months, she got numerous nicknames, but the one that stuck was Poopie - Poopie Lucy. Don't ask. It was completely appropriate and stuck. So, she had three names: the poopie dog, Poopie Lucy and simply Lucy.
I have so many stories about her - most of them ridiculous. I always thought it would be funny for Steph and I to sit down and write down some of the Adventures of Poopie Lucy. So much of our relationship has revolved around her and her being around. Maybe instead of writing about politics and computers, I'll fill these pages with other nonsense that'll make people smile.
Before Christmas last year (2005), she was playing with our other dog, Pete, and suddenly started limping. I didn't really think anything of it, other than, “oh no, here we go again... pulled muscle and another $200 out the door to have her see Dr. S. Oh well, she's the poopie dog...” When Dr. S helped, but the limping hadn't gone away when we returned from Germany before New Years, I agreed with Steph and took her into see Dr. K, our favorite vet - and I mean favorite - this guy is great with animals, has a solid head on his shoulders when it comes to the care of animals and generally makes me feel comfortable (unlike talking with most vets who make me feel like I'm in the presence of a used care salesman). He took a short look at her and said that he wanted to take x-rays. He then said something I wasn't expecting: “...because often in a dog this age, something like this might be due to cancer...” What? Up until this point, I honestly thought the whole thing was innocuous. Poopie was our indestructible dog. No - she had pulled a muscle or maybe torn a tendon. Not cancer. He said that it would take about an hour and I could wait or I could come back. It was late in the afternoon and I had a number of errands to run, so I went on my merry way. When I got back a bit over an hour later, I started to have this sinking feeling: what if it was cancer? Dammit. I'm not puting this dog through all kinds of crap only to make her more miserable than she already might be.
I went back into the room where Dr. K had seen Lucy and waited him to come in. He entered in his normal manner and put the x-ray up on the light box and started to say, “...I think this is what I was afraid of... see this dark area of bone. On a normal x-ray, this shows up bright white. Here you can see it is grey and in some places almost black. Steve, I'm sorry, but Lucy has cancer.”
sonofabitch...
The real bitch of it is that there isn't much you can do with bone cancer in a dog. Yes, yes... I know, you can amputate, put a dog through chemo or radiation, but survival is counted in months and the scale of misery that much higher. Remember, this is an animal. The fact was, regardless, cancer had already spread into the chest and there was nothing we could do but try to help her remain somewhat comfortable.
dammit... all those nights where I was kept awake and got pissed off at her because she was constantly up and down... she was sick. dammit dammit dammit
Yesterday, after days of her condition getting worse, Steph and I agreed - all without talking directly about it. We just knew. Lucy was getting worse and she was starting to get mad at the world around her. This was not Poopie... This was a being in severe pain.
“Dr. K - I need to make arrangements to bring Lucy in... I don't want anyone there... How do we do this?”
I thought that the weeks of mental preparation would make me the stoic that I was hoping to be. I failed miserably. I held back the tears all the way until Dr. K checked for her heartbeat. My heart was racing.
don't cry, don't cry...
At least with my aunt, I didn't have to watch her die.
dammit... i can't do anything to hold back the tears. what'll they think of me? a grown man crying over a dog?
Well, too f'ing bad for my ego. Lucy was a significant part of our lives. Dog or no dog, this sucks and nothing stops the constant reminders of her not being here.
sonofabitch... Poopie's Gone.

* Originally written on Cogito Ergo Sum and the whole reason I started this new site. I wanted an outlet for stories, not posts. Cogito Ergo Sum was supposed to be my philosophical site to turn stevenfettig.com into my technology related site. I like divisions. It is likely that both Cogito Ergo Sum and It's you... not Me will see more posts than my namesake. This is mainly because it takes me quite a while to write some of my tech related articles and therefore, I avoid posting for long periods of time because of the lack of time to do so.

Whew... Being sick is something I don't think any of us enjoy. (Perhaps we get some simple pleasure from the fact that we can't go to work, but that is quickly overcome by whatever pain we are experiencing.) I just went through what felt like an eternal bender.

Last fall, J & J and Steffi and I took a trip to Chicago for some shopping and fun. J & I ended up going out that night to the Signature Lounge (at the Signature Room at the 95th) to enjoy a few cocktails and the night storm that came in (I wish I had a real camera to take pictures of some of the show that the sky gave us). What started as a few cocktails turned into a few too many. Most of my drinking days have been had in towns where cocktails are ridiculously watered down, so I had no idea what was coming at me when I ordered my favorite: double gin tonic (I think it was Tanqueray No. 10 that evening). Well, after too many drinks and far too many laughs, J and I closed the lounge and finally headed back towards the hotel. J's natural instinct when he's been drinking too much is to order fast food at some typical we're-open-24-hrs-a-day-to-stuff-your-arteries restaurant. McDonalds it was. After giggling uncontrollably while the server looked at us like we had just walked in off the moon (we were obviously country folk in a big city, at a food joint normally reserved for street walkers of a different kind), I finally composed myself and ordered a large chocolate shake and a double cheeseburger. Just what the doctor ordered - milk and grease to go with that gin. mmmmmmm.... yum. After drinking 1/50th of the 2 gallon shake and eating part of the cheeseburger, we were on our way. I tried to give a homeless guy a few bucks and ended up almost handing him $50. He gave me a hug for the fiver I gave him anyway. I shoulda' given him $50. It's amazing how bad I feel about that to this day. I don't care what he would have done with it. J and I had just blown close to $150 on drinks and I was going to worry about what a guy from the streets of Chicago was going to do with $50? There was a 50/50 chance that he would have done something good with it - and that is better than what I can say of what we did with triple that.
Anyway, I think it was the cheeseburger that put me over the edge. The next day, I felt like someone had poured acid into my stomach and was waiting for it to dissolve through my abdomen and flow down the front of me. I don't get headaches from hangovers, per se. When I get sick it has to do with this eerie feeling that the world is sliding away from under me. My sense of smell is heightened to extremes where the faintest odor of perfume or air fresheners drives me nuts and makes me want to vomit. And yes, there is the slimy, slippery feeling of nausea. I suddenly get the urge to eat things I know are going to make me sicker, yet any time I try to eat something good for me (like crackers), I get sick.
Well, the last five days have been exactly like that, except I had nothing to drink to induce it. On top of the normal sense of nausea, I had a splitting headache that made me want to hide in a corner and disappear. The weirdest part of having been sick this time around, though, was the cravings that I got. Somewhere along the line - when I wasn't even able to keep down crackers and water - I got a craving for chicken fried rice. What the hell is that? My mind thought that the same body that was rejecting water wouldn't mind a dose of msg, bad chicken and oily, fried rice. I've got a great mind-body meld working here.
Now that I'm slowly coming out o the sickness funk, I'm finding that my old friend, dizziness, is returning for a spin. I've written before how I suffer from these ridiculous bouts of vertigo for weeks or months at a time, and this isn't one of those times where I'd like to talk about it. I'd like to ignore it, but it's hard with the world swimming about me. I was hoping that the flu would knock the dizziness right out of my head and for a while, I thought it did. I was wrong, it was just the needling headache gnawing at my brain.
Oh well, swimming is better than sleeping.

Me and my ugly shoes* (Adidias a3 Gigaride) went for a stroll today... 1.15 mi. in 10 min. I feel like a sack. When I finished off last season after running the first triathlon I had ever done, I felt great. I was getting to the point where four miles wasn't a big deal (four miles outdoors, not on a treadmill - big difference). The last running session I remember was late November in the rain. It was awesome. I got in the groove listening to some Paul van Dyk (I think somewhere on the album Global, but I'm not sure) and made it up a hill on Old 89 that is a complete enemy of mine (it starts well enough, but suddenly becomes a 35% incline for about 100 meters) and didn't even have to stop. Usually I would stop Today, the same song came on and I sped up... only to slow down shortly thereafter. I hope running is like riding a bike. If I have to work as hard as I did to get to the point I left off, I'm going to be really mad at myself. A lot has happened in the past few months that has soaked the motivation out of me. Most importantly, I miss swimming. I thought that problem would be abated, but I just found out from J that the high school pool (which we thought we would be able to use twice a week) is now under renovation work and won't be open well after the point where we really need to start swimming again.

Even though I doubt anyone out there cares, I'm going to try keeping track of progress here. This season, J and I expect to try doing the Olympic triathlon - a step above the sprint. My goal is to do an Ironman before I'm 38 (within 10 years). Right now, I'm not enthused by the thought, but its a goal that I think is realistic.
Here's to tomorrow...

*I have three different pairs of training and competition shoes right now. The Adidas above are by far the ugliest, but as my weight continues to hover at the 195 lbs. mark, they are great at that weight. My all time favorite shoes, however, are a pair of Nike Air Pegasus. I can't believe I found them in the right size (I have hated Nike for years because of how narrow they run). Once I did, I fell in love. If one were to ask why I run in the Adidas shoes, my answer would be is structure and difference. I like having two different types of shoes to vary running style. I like to tinker with my pace and an easy way to do so is with two different style shoes.

You know you're tired and/or craving coffee when Late on a time card you are auditing looks like Latte.