My Fur-Baby

I got Clark's Miss Kaycee DJ (DJ for short, named after Derek Jeter) in August 1999 when I was 23. She was 9 weeks old, and weighed about 2 pounds. Saw her at Land of Paws in Prairie Village, KS, and just couldn't leave the store without her - so I charged her on my MasterCard and home we went. She spent the next two weeks at my sister's house before Rachel could fly her down to Texas, where I was living at the time. I drove up from San Antonio to DFW and met Rachel at her gate (the days before 9/11 and increased airport security). In just those two weeks DJ had grown so much!

We lived in San Antonio for another month before I took a job in Fort Worth. We had some good times in FtW, including a tornado that ripped through downtown and missed my apartment complex by maybe 500 feet. I'll never forget DJ tearing around my apartment like a crazy dog right after the tornado went through. She KNEW something bad was up. We learned DJ had food allergies; thought she'd gotten into some fire ants until the vet and I realized she was really allergic to her treats.

In May 2001, DJ and I moved back to Kansas City, and back in with my parents. They loved having me home, and loved her by extension. I saved up some money and finally moved out (albeit into my sister's empty house in PV) in September of 2002. DJ loved having the whole house to herself, but I think she missed the carpet at my parents' house. It's really hard to get a good running start down the hallway to play fetch when you're doing it on hardwoods. We spent 5 great years in the house in PV. Sometime around late 2004, early 2005 DJ got into some chocolate at my parents' house, and we had a scary night at the emergency vet. But she pulled through great. That was, up til then, the sickest I had ever seen her.

In the fall of 2005, I met a very nice guy through work. He asked me out via text message, because I didn't answer my phone. I distinctly remember him asking, jokingly, if DJ would let me out to go to dinner with him. Silly boy, of course she would.

That very nice guy was Matthew Boeckman, who would become my husband. Matthew loved DJ like his own, even though through the years I'd allowed her to foster some pretty bad habits (sleeping in my bed, jumping on people, getting on the furniture, NOT HEELING). In February 2007, it became clear Matthew and I would be moving 1) in together and 2) out to Colorado so I could go to graduate school at Boulder. We began the slow process of introducing DJ the terrier to Alice & Betty, Matthew's guinea pigs (yes, animals she's bred to hunt and KILL. This should go well). DJ responded every time by protest pooping in the middle of Matthew's living room floor. What an inauspicious start.

But the move out to Wheat Ridge, CO, went great, and eventually DJ learned to ignore the guinea pigs. Our new house didn't have a window she could look out of during the day, so those first few months I'd come home from school to find her sitting on the dining room table, staring out the window there. Never could figure out her method to jump into the chair and then onto the table. She eventually came to detest the mailman - she'd attack the mailbox slot in our dining room and savage the mail every day it came. In August of 2008 Matthew and I got married, and we changed DJ's name from DJ Cannon to DJ Boeckman.

Denver is where we introduced DJ to dog parks. She loves to run run run run run, and sniff lots of other dogs butts. One time a male dog named Brando followed DJ around the whole time we were there and tried to hump her repeatedly. Don't think DJ was much of a fan, and neither were we. Stay off our little lady!

In May 2009 we moved to our new house in Golden. Once again DJ handled the move like a champ. We have a huge back yard for her to run and play in, and a carpeted basement so she can finally get the traction she needs to play a proper game of fetch.

In April of this year, Ian Matthew Boeckman joined our lives. DJ was wary of him at first. Who was this small human that cried, ate all the time, pooped and took attention away from her? She was pretty mopey for a while, but soon came to act protective of him. She's always sitting at my feet when I'm feeding him in his nursery.

This year for Thanksgiving, we opted to have DJ stay at her doggy daycare rather than join us in Great Bend. With a new baby, and Matthew's parents have a new puppy, we thought that would be too much. We dropped her off on Wednesday for five days of doggy daycare fun.

But it didn't turn out to be that fun. When she came home it was clear she wasn't feeling well. By Monday she had started throwing up. She threw up all night Monday into Tuesday morning. 8 or 9 times that we could find. I took her to the vet. She was severely dehydrated, and possibly suffering from pancreatitis. They admitted her to the "hospital" and started her on IV fluids. Blood tests revealed she did have pancreatitis, so they ordered an ultrasound. Thursday came and the ultrasound showed my worst fear - a suspicious thickening of her stomach, liver and lymph nodes that, according to the ultrasonographer, is likely gastric neoplasia. Stomach cancer.

I'm utterly devastated. Feel like I've been gut punched. Heartsick. I'm just not ready to say goodbye to my fur-baby. I cry just thinking about it. I'm crying right now. There's a 5% chance that she's just having a horrific inflammatory response and it's NOT cancer. I'm clinging to that 5% chance like a lifeboat, but also trying to prepare myself for the worst. I just simply cannot imagine saying goodbye to her. This is the hard, agonizing part about having pets. They bring SO MUCH joy into our lives, but eventually we have to let them go. And I'm not there yet.

For now DJ is much improved, home from the hospital and no longer vomiting. She's perked up quite a bit today, and we can tell is very hungry (we have to give her small meals). She's licking Ian's high chair tray, trying to get into the trash, scrounging for any stray bits of kibble or cheerios on the floor. That's our dog!! Resourceful!

So it's time to get off the Internet - I need to go love on my fur-baby. Who's gone to sleep in our bed. Old habits die hard I guess.