Introduction

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to skip this week’s blog or not simply out of bereavement, but the more I sat with the idea, the more I felt it was important to use this as an outlet & to show the world just how amazing a dog it just lost. I know for those of you who knew Harvey, even in the limited capacity, you understand. He was something truly & deeply special that extends well beyond being ‘just a dog.’ I know this blog will be hard to write, I’ve faced that & accepted it. I know for some of you it may also be hard to read as the hearts broken by this loss are not simply my own. I don’t, as of writing this introductory paragraph, know exactly what shape this blog will take but I know at the very least it will include a bit of an obituary, probably a reflection from yours truly, & maybe something else. I guess time will tell. If I seem to lose the plot or narrative from time to time, I apologize, as previously stated this blog is going to hard for me to write, I am sure I will break down a few times, as I already have just from writing of him briefly in the middle of this section.

History

Harvey was born on January 21st, 2011 at a puppy mill somewhere in Missouri. He was the last of his liter & at a certain point was either sold or given away to a dog seller in Bolivar. I found Harvey in mid-May of 2011 in an ad for the Kansas City Star after finishing my freshmen semester at Belmont University. I’d just moved off campus & was in desperate search for a dog as I missed having one around. We’d always had dogs growing up & I’d always wanted a golden retriever & Harvey seemed to be the purebred golden that nobody wanted as he had sat in a concrete kennel for the first four months of his life. Harvey & I first met on May 20th of 2011. I loved him instantly. My sister drove me to go get him where I payed $250 dollars cash for him & fell in love instantly. He was dirty, in desperate need of a bath & a name change. At the time he was going by “Rusty” which is ironically what my father was called as a child. After throwing up in my sister’s car & pooping in my parents carpeted bathroom, he was given a thorough bath & driven back to Nashville with me.

Harvey & I hit it off instantly, we were basically inseparable. Most anywhere I went, he joined. We slept in the same bed, ate at the same time, ran together, swam together, spent evenings on the couch together & were truly the closest & fastest of friends. Harvey was goofy, he had an infectious smile & energy & often got the zoomies, especially when take outside & let off the leash in the vacant field behind my apartment. He was impossible to potty train, as prior to our meeting he’d never been on grass & my first apartment was concrete slab flooring, but I did my best to have patience with him.

Harvey saw me through breakups, spiraling depression, days where I couldn’t get out of bed but knew I had to for his sake. He was always there to rest his head on my legs & look up at me with the kindest eyes & the warmest kisses, especially on the days I needed them the most.

He & I moved out of the city to the suburbs in December of 2012 where he now had a yard to play in & a river to swim in which he quickly adapted to & became obsessed with on our afternoon runs. And there we lived, all this time, seeing changes in seasons, roommates, relationships, & life.

Around 2019-2020 Harvey’s health started to decline. At the age of nine he really started not doing well; his joints were diminishing, he was having liver issues, he was barely eating & didn’t want to do majority of the activities he loved. The average lifespan of a golden retriever is around 10 years so I began to think maybe it was just approaching his time. Either way I switched up his diet & began to walk him a little more. The real turning point came in June of 2020 when Evan & I adopted Peter. Pete was meant to be a bit of a ‘bridging dog,’ planning for the inevitable & making the transition hypothetically easier. Pete gave Harvey new life & on he went kicking for another three years or so.

At a certain point we had to stop our hikes, our trips to the river, & way before any of those, our runs. His old body just couldn’t take it anymore but he never lost his heart, his smile, or the love that beamed from him at all times. He just slowed down.

In November of last year Harvey fell while on a walk. He was walking, faltered a little, & then fell over. From there he almost completely diminished. He wouldn’t eat or walk. He had no interest in treats of anything. So we took him to my family’s for Thanksgiving so that they could say their 'goodbyes’ to him fully anticipating that he wouldn’t make it through the following week. I wrote a blog around that time call “The Part Of Pet Ownership That No One Takes To Heart” you can read it by clicking the title if you’d like. Eventually though, Harvey bounced back. Apparently large retrieving dogs are prone to strokes in their old age, which they can heal from & get over.

Harvey continued chugging along until a few weeks ago when he started to become very picky about food. It wasn’t necessarily that he wasn’t eating, is was that he would take a whole day to finish a bowl he usually polished off in one setting. We chocked it up to the kibble hurting his gums & switched him entirely to wet food & rice, which he ate most of upon being served.

What Happened

Earlier this week he stopped taking much interest in the wet food. He would eat a bite or two, but would let it sit & would nibble throughout the day. He would still always finish the bowl until a few days ago when he cut his food intake down from two bowls a day to barely making it through one. I had the intent of taking him to the vet on Friday if nothing changed but he beat us to it.

Thursday Evan & I fed the dogs, Harvey ate a bit but not much, but he was still his normal energy level & self so we left to run a few errands, see a movie, & have dinner with a friend. We arrived home later in our evening to find our kitchen covered in blood. The blood ended up being Peter’s & was coming from the tip of his tail which we originally wrote off as “Happy Tail Syndrome” where a dog smacks its tail on a wall or something sharp & bleeds. After we got him mended, we turned back to the both of them to instigate a walk.

We’d noticed that Harvey seemed aloof when we got in the door, he didn’t greet us there like he typically does & was laying against the window with his tail tucked & his head hung. We checked him initially to see if he had any bites from Pete as they’ve been known to fight from time to time, but he was unscathed. We tried to get him up to go outside before his walk but he had to be helped, not uncommon. He went to get a drink & immediately fell back over. Evan managed to get him outside where he said he kind of just wobbled around & didn’t do anything before coming inside & laying down. I tried to rouse him for the walk of which he showed no interest & when I got him back up he simply sauntered into the laundry room & slumped against the wall. It was then that I noticed his breathing was heavy, he was having contractions of his lower abdomen, & he was salivating a ton, in addition to being hyper lethargic. We loaded him & Peter up in the car & took him off to the emergency vet.

When we got to the emergency vet I had to carry him in. With the weight he’d lost over the last couple of weeks & age he was fairly light, relatively speaking. The doctors put him on a gurney & rushed him to the back. We sat for about an hour with no word. Eventually the doctor came in & explained to us that they’d done an x-ray & it showed a mass effect where his liver & spleen sat. He gave us two options. We could either put him down or have him stabilized until the morning at which point they would do an ultrasound & a series of tests to determine the cause. We asked for a quote for the latter, just to make sure there was nothing that could be done to heal him. They came back a while later with a quote of around $3K just for the hospitalization & the tests. At this point it was round 3 AM & we asked if he was stable enough to take home so that we could take him to our normal vet at 7:30 when they opened to see their thoughts & recommendations. We didn’t get him back & out of the hospital til around 3:45 at which point we got help from the techs loading him into the car on a towel.

I carried Harvey into the house & laid him on the bathroom floor, his favorite sleeping spot, especially when he was hot. He was running a mild fever so it seemed fitting. I got out my sleeping bag & bed mat & set up a temporary arrangement by his side to spend the next couple of hours in case he needed anything. I laid there stroking his fur as he breathed heavily until he fell asleep & I did the same.

Around 6 AM Harvey attempted to get up, he didn’t make it very far off his side & proceeded to defecate on the floor of the bathroom. I only share this detail because it’s important for the coloration. Typically when dealing with liver diseases or cancer you see a build up of yellow bile in the system, this was entirely that. I hoisted him into the bath tub, got him all cleaned up, & prepared to depart for the vets office.

At this point I had no misconceptions. I knew I was about to lose him but I wanted a professional to tell me there was little to nothing that could be done. I told Evan that he needed to prepare for that, that I was 95% sure we would be returning home later in the morning without him. He agreed on the feeling.

We arrived at Belmont Animal Hospital right before they opened. I followed a receptionist in & explained what had happened & that even though I knew I didn’t have an appointment I was hoping they’d still be able to help. She got the nurses to gurney Harvey in where they initially took in the back to get a doctor’s opinion before bringing the three of us into an exam room. The doctor met us there where she instructed us that she thought there was likely nothing they could do. They were willing to run the tests if we wanted them & needed that closure, but she said that even if they had answers the likelihood of them being able to do anything to fix it at his age was slim to none. We agreed that it was time & began the process of saying goodbye.

Harvey was so tired at the end. He could barely keep his eyes open, he had no interest in the bit of bacon that the brought him, & you could just tell that he was ready to go. I know selfishly we all want our dogs to live forever. We all want them to recover indefinitely & be with us til we go, but that’s not the deal, & it hurts like hell to have to make that decision but I don’t regret it one bit. It was his time & anything past that would’ve just extended his suffering for my own selfish reasons.

The doctor gave us time to say our goodbyes, the doctor he’d had since he was a puppy came in to sit with him for a while, then we Evan & I sat on the floor with him as they administered the euthanasia.

I’m pretty sure Harvey was gone after the second dose of anesthetic they gave him. He let out one last big deep breath even before the euthanasia had been administered. Harvey passed away peacefully & surrounded by people that loved him to the ends of the earth around 8:30 AM on Friday May 24th, 2024 at the ripe age of 13 years & 4 months & 3 days. We sat with him for probably another thirty minutes to an hour before we left him in the car of the staff.

The Aftermath

I’m going to be real with you all. I miss my dog. I miss him so horribly that I can hardly stand it. It is grief like that which I have never known. Harvey was my best friend. He was one of my favorite things about my life. I would have done anything for that dog. He had this ability to bring out the best of us & his sweetness & kind heart knew no bounds right up until the very end. He was a better companion than I ever could have dreamed to asked for & is honestly one of the main reasons that I still make footprints on this planet. Our house feels like a vacant shell without him, like all that is good has been sapped from us & our hearts & we are left to deal with nothing but pain & emptiness. Harvey was by far the best of us. He inspired so many into not only adopting Goldens but adopting dogs in general in the sheer hope that they too would get to experience the level of love Harvey poured into all of us nonstop. He is irreplaceable & the greatest dog I think I will ever have the privilege of knowing, all biases aside.

There are things that no one tells you about losing your dog. They never tell you how you’ll relive lost echos in each room you pass through, that you’ll walk in the door still expecting to be greeted but that infectious, loving smile, & it’s just gone. They never warn you how empty your house feels. How you’ll cautiously turn every cornered, widening your birth because you expect to see them still lying there on the floor. They don’t warn you about the vacancy'; not just the physical but also the massive, bottomless hole that it leaves in your heart. The feeling that a piece of you is gone that you will never be able to retrieve or mend, but will instead just eventually get used to. They don’t warn you that your other dog will whine in their sleep, that he’ll search endlessly in the usual places around the yard & in the house for them. That they’ll begin each day by looking for their leash then laying to watch & see if they return through the front door. They never warn you that’ll you’ll make too much dinner. That you’ll repeat the practice that you’ve carried on for years not realizing you’ve made too much because there’s a bowl that will forever remain empty now. They never warn you about the favorite toys, the leashes, the bowls, the special treats that are scattered around the home waiting to flood you with grief. They never warn you about the smells that you’ll catch on an old blanket or hoodie that immediately take you back to them. They never warn you about that first walk without them, about how much ever single step hurts when they’re gone. They never warn you about the signatures they leave behind; the hair, the smudged on the window where they used to sit & wait for your return, the scratches on the floor where they used to roll & scratch after they finished their supper. They never warn you of how the pain sneaks up on you, of how something will pop up out of the blue & remind you of them & in an instant you’re back on the floor whispering your goodbyes to them. They never warn you about how hard it is to carry on after a great dog goes& they never warn you how much it rips you to shreds to not be able to call their name & watch their ears perk up.

Harvey, I will miss you forever. I am so grateful for all that you were not just to me, but to so many & the outpour of love in your name speaks volumes to just how amazingly bright a star you were. I love you to the deepest extent of my soul & your passing has demolished me. I will spend the rest of my days searching endlessly for a better dog than you, though I know that is a fruitless & hopeless endeavor. Rest easy Rooster, I will spend my lifetime counting down the days til I am reunited with the dog who was nothing short of an angel.

I miss my dog y’all, more than anything, I miss him so damn bad.

Please hug your pets for me tonight. They are more precious than you can possibly imagine.

With love always,

-C