A Tribute to Cleo, and her Battle with the Two-edged Sword

So, what happened.

Cleo, elegant at 11

I received an email from a dear friend 3 days ago that deserves a detailed followup. Writing, texting, I can handle. Talking about the emotional flux that Victoria, my anchor, and I have experienced this past week or two is another matter.

Checking in…

Hi Gene,

Well, 5 days into the new year ... what's in store for the rest of 2025?!

My reply, just before heading out to the Boundary Bay Veterinary Specialty Hospital:

Vic and I have been sidetracked with family issues. And then, about three weeks ago Cleo became sick.

It's always devastating when that happens to one of your "kids" and the investment in time, expenses and emotional ups and downs is mind-blowing. It should be coming to an end this week. Poor kid...she's at a specialty hospital in Surrey and we'll be heading back up there today to stay for either the sad, always inevitable conclusion, or the specialists figuring out what's going on. They're all over Cleo like a cheap suit.

I'm not optimistic, but I'm also a realist. Vic and I are going to have to make a call today or tomorrow after a discussion with an internist in the morning. We just have to leave her with some well-deserved dignity.

It's not our first rodeo, but Cleo is the sweetest "dog" we've ever parented. George Carlin was so right when he said dogs and cats are "little tragedies waiting to happen." But they're so worth the eventual heartbreak.

Anyway, thanks for checking in on me.

Like most of us, I had no idea what to expect in 2025. Then Cleo got sick and died Sunday, and now I couldn’t care less. After all, things have been going so well - LA ablaze, nuclear brinksmanship on multiple fronts, hate and discontent at home.

I thought I had everything figured out, until the two-edged sword struck again just after Christmas.

But let me start at the beginning.

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In 2017, our Bordador Cleo bounded into our lives shortly after I saw her face on Rescued Hearts Northwest. As so often happens, she had worn out her welcome by growing up with her now teenage owner. Worse yet, we soon found out Cleo was afflicted with congenital polyarthritis, a deal breaker for adoption prospects, but she was irresistible and we were chumps.

Soon, a new 18-year-old mother and her boyfriend brought Cleo by our house. Along with a bag of Purina One, a stuffed elephant, a well-worn dog bed, and a prescription of Prednisone, she advised “If she has one of her episodes, just give her one of these…Oh, you didn’t know she was arthritic?”

Then they were gone, without a look back.

Cleo, Niko, a napping primadonna, and a smile

Fast forward three years. After hundreds of miles of trail hikes and neighborhood walks, trips to Mud Bay (immersed in attention from the staff), and riding shotgun with me on drives everywhere else, another “episode” insidiously emerged with a vengeance. Before we had a clue, masticatory muscle myositis (MMM) hit her in full force. Cleo’s jaws were frozen shut, no eating or chewing and excruciating pain.

The only treatment, an immune-suppressive dose of steroids - usually Prednisone - for weeks her only option. Her already compromised liver from her puppy years took another hit, but it worked. The tradeoff was a lifetime of elevated liver enzymes and a likely, though gradual loss of liver function - the Two-edged Sword. With every visit to her veterinarian, we dreaded the results of Cleo’s blood panels.

Interurban trail hiker

Despite this ominous, uncertain undercurrent, Cleo thrived and stole the heart of anyone who saw her infectious smile, and all she expected in return were her ears rubbed, the ears that woke us up with a Labrador wake-up wag each morning. Like most pup parents, we refused to believe her idyllic daily routines would end, but they did last week.

Two days after Christmas I noticed that Cleo could not open her mouth. Her jaws were immovable, almost completely shut, with an opening of less than an inch. Within an hour she was in Animal Emergency Care for pain relief and treatment, which we knew would include 8 CCs of Prednisolone twice a day for a month. After four days of stressful gagging, Cleo started shutting down. Constant vomiting of meals and stumbling in the backyard resulted in a referral to Boundary Bay Veterinary Specialty Hospital in Surrey, BC and a headlong, rainy drive north, and a fading hope the cure would not finish off our girl’s liver.

After Cleo’s admittance and an overnight start to what would need to be an absolutely heroic effort, we visited our fragile, heavily tubed and sedated girl. A flicker of hope glistened in her eyes when we entered the treatment room. Then she laid down to sleep for the last time. After gentle ear rubs and kisses we made the dreaded call, for her sake.

Finally, even after new positive tests that evening for hepatitis, kidney distress and pneumonia, not one veterinarian, at home or in BC, risked expressing an honest opinion of Cleo’s chances of survival. It was a call we would have to live with, but her look of relief when we entered the room sustained us. Thankfully the intern that administered the end-of-life IV bundle whispered to me while wiping a tear, “What you’re doing for Cleo is so kind.”

So, after a seven-year battle with the adverse effects of a common steroid, a medication effective for most pups, except that is for our immunocompromised Cleo, she still succeeded in going out on her own terms, with her parents kissing her goodbye and her dignity intact.

She was sound asleep before the Pentobarbital hit a vein, already dreaming of nice things and her next tomorrow.