Our Dog Ruby Passed Away.

She was a Huge Part of our Family's Endless IBD Journey

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024.

As the year flips from December to January, we use it to reset our lifestyle, build new habits, or renew goals. I usually start with a fresh list of New Year’s resolutions, though a good friend recently suggested I call them New Year’s intentions instead, and this resonated with me. Set an intention and consider the steps you need to take to make them happen. Intentions feel more nuanced and leave room for adjustments and pivots if needed. A resolution sounds more finite, with no gray areas, implying failure if you don’t achieve what you set out to do.

Mine included some usual things like getting healthier by doing this or that better (drinking more water, doing more resistance training), working on stress reduction and better sleep (turning off my computer at 5, limiting screen time in general, deepening meditation practice), etc. There were a few more, and I made them achievable and specific, promising to give myself grace if I faltered. Progress!

In all the difficulties I’ve been through, the one thing I always hold onto is hope. Although often elusive, hope differs from always thinking positively, practicing gratitude, or manifesting what you want. There is some research and powerful stories from people who have found these tools helpful, and that’s cool. And yes, I practice these things at times, but mostly, I am grateful that hope has always gotten me through hard times. I won’t let it go. It has been tested, but I am hanging on to it for dear life.

Ruby was our dog. We got her in September 2012 after a few years of the kids wanting a dog. After one semi-traumatic dog experience a few years earlier, I finally felt I could take on the responsibility. Although a dog would be all of ours, I knew I would be the one to make it happen and be her caretaker. I found a woman who finds homes for dogs that she rescues from kill shelters. One day, she brought Ruby (whom she had been calling Pippa) to our house when no one was home so I could meet her. Ruby was anxious and reserved, but I liked her right away. A few days later, the woman brought her back, and I told the kids we would be fostering her for a week. What I was really doing was making sure that she worked for our family and that no one was allergic to her. Even though she was supposedly hypoallergenic, any dog can cause allergies, and there is no shortage of those in our family. Things went well. After about five days, I let it be known that we were not fostering the dog but that we had the opportunity to keep Pippa/Ruby.

Sam expressed not wanting a dog. Lowell wanted a dog but suggested looking into other dogs. Jonah emphatically declared, “I want this dog.” Again, Sam said he didn’t want to get a dog. Again, Lowell suggested trying to find other dogs to see what the options were. Again, Jonah said, “I want this dog.” Sam and I looked at each other and knew she was ours.

She wasn’t a Pippa. Jonah named her Ruby after the NBA basketball player from Spain, Ricky Rubio, who had recently been drafted to the Minnesota Timberwolves, Jonah’s favorite team. When we were in Minnesota during the holidays the year before, we saw the first game Rubio played with the team. The name Ruby suited her.

We didn’t know much about her time before meeting, just that she had been in a shelter after being found in the San Fernando Valley. She had a lot of anxiety. She didn’t like to be alone in any room, and she barked at people who came to our house, yet she still wanted their attention, cautiously seeing if they were trustworthy enough to pet her.

We pretended to be the kind of people who would train a dog. You know, to not bark at people when they came to the door, to not beg for food, and even, at one point, I was training her not to jump on our bed. We had a dog trainer come over. It didn’t seem easy, and it seemed we were not up to her recommended routines and training regimen.

The trainer said to use a crate, so we got one and set it up in Jonah‘s room. I think that lasted a couple of weeks — she never took to it. We couldn’t tolerate her crying for more than a few minutes (let’s face it, I never sleep-trained my babies in this way for the same reason). Why would we want to listen to such a sweet little pup with an early traumatic puppyhood cry?

Sure, we would have liked her not to bark at new people when they came to the house and not beg for food, but we learned to accept and love her flaws. We did manage to train her not to pee and poop in the house. For the most part. I’m not going to lie, she did still sometimes pee and poop in the house. Mostly, this happened when it was raining, or her stomach hurt, or if she was mad at us about something. I would discipline her when she did this, but everyone else would say, “Poor Ruby, she must not be feeling well, or of course, she doesn’t want to get wet, or she’s sad that we are going on a trip.” Whatever it was, they reasoned away this bad behavior.

The first Sunday after she joined our family, we went out for four or five hours, leaving Ruby outside in the backyard. Upon opening the front door when we returned, Ruby had somehow made it back inside the house. Hmm. How did she get there? We looked around the house and found that the screen was ripped open in our bedroom, which had a window looking into the backyard. We had left the window open, and she had scratched through the screen, making a big enough hole to slip inside.

Another time during the first few weeks that we had her, after the screen-breaking incident, we again left her in the backyard. We had closed the window, feeling confident she would not break through the glass. This time, she figured out that the gate to our backyard had a latch that would come unhooked and open if she kept banging on it, allowing her to escape the backyard. We had just left our house to attend a Bar Mitzvah. My friend who lived close to us happened to drive by our house and called to say that our dog was in front of our house barking. Hmm. We turned around and drove home, and sure enough, Ruby was on the grass in front of our house. She could’ve run away, but she didn’t. That was it. We had to leave her inside when we were out, and we fixed the back gate so she couldn’t do that again.

We learned that she wasn’t the kind of dog that would ever run away from us. You could open the house door, and she’d stay close to us. We used to care for a friend’s dog before we got Ruby, and we had to be very careful because that dog tried to escape the minute we opened the door. One time, this dog ran out, and Sam chased her for a few blocks until she finally tired out. But Ruby wasn’t like that.

We got a doggie door installed in the den leading to the backyard so she could go out when she needed to relieve herself. I remember teaching her how to go out and come back in. She seemed scared of the doggie door; she didn’t understand it. It took a few training days, but she finally mastered it.

Jonah had a friend in the neighborhood who had also gotten a dog around the same time we did. The dogs were very different. Their dog was quiet, slower, and much calmer. Ruby would try to get him to play with her, run around and chase her, etc., but he wouldn’t have it. Yet the boys walked the dogs together frequently. Once, they walked the dogs at night and went to the circle park in our old neighborhood. They discovered that you’re not allowed to be in the Circle Park after dark when the community patrol came by and kicked them out.

It didn’t take long for us to realize the joy and unconditional love that these little fluffy creatures bring to families.

In February 2013, when Lowell was 12 (diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at age 2), a major traumatic medical event occurred, resulting in emergency surgery and then another surgery days later because the first surgery did not go as planned. After a two-week hospital day, we returned home. Ruby immediately became his service dog. I had been training her not to jump on our bed but to sleep in her little bed in our room. Well, that went out the window because Lowell spent several weeks of recovery lying in our bed, and we could not keep Ruby away from him. We watched Jimmy Fallon and the Surfs Up movie repeatedly, and Ruby was always with us.

At night, she mostly slept in Jonah‘s room. By then, we had given up on the crate, and she slept in his bed with him. Ruby didn’t like sleeping at the foot of the bed or even in the middle of the bed on top of the covers but preferred to be squished up to you as close as possible under the covers. I don’t think any of us thought that dogs demanded to go under the covers, but that was her sleeping position of choice.

She was very energetic and liked to go on walks. On Saturday mornings, Sam got into a routine of taking her on a long trek from our neighborhood to Cheviot Hills Park. Our boys played every sport you could play at the park except for maybe archery during their childhood years. On Saturdays, people would bring their dogs to the park and let them run off-leash in the large, grassy open space. I brought her to actual dog parks a few times, but she never liked them. She didn’t seem to know what to do. She felt safer and would run free when there was a large, open grass field.

She didn’t like the car and never learned to like the car. It made her nauseous and anxious. In time, she stopped being as nauseous, but she never stopped being anxious on car rides. Were we going to the Vet, to visit someone, or just for a walk on the beach? She didn’t know, and maybe she didn’t like this not knowing.

She also didn’t like it if we were all in the car and one of us then exited the car. If I took her with me when I dropped the kids off at school in the morning. she would cry, standing up on her little legs and watching them sadly as I drove away. She also never stopped doing this. She just liked us to all be together. She liked the pack.

Back to January 3. Ruby had skipped dinner the night before. She seemed a little off, but she tended to have tummy issues every few months, so I did not think much of it at first. In the middle of the night before, she seemed out of sorts and kept getting up to go outside. That morning when I woke up, I realized that she had not quite made it outside, I suppose, because there was pee, poop, and vomit in the house. I cleaned it up. I watched her. She lay on the Big Joe with her heating pad. I went to my office in the back of our house and brought her with me to lay on her bed with a heating pad. Our house has multiple heating pads, mostly for Ruby.

She was not eating. She was not drinking. There were a few more accidents in the house; I will spare the details of this part of the day. I tried to get her to drink. I sat with her on my bed. She got up to jump off the bed, practically falling, and could hardly get herself up. That had never happened. I immediately picked her up, put her in the car, and took her to the new urgent care animal hospital near our house.

She was not well. The blood test revealed multiple abnormalities. They said she had to stay over and that she needed an ultrasound that would happen the next day. I couldn’t believe it. Leave my dog here? I stayed for a while as they got her ready to give her fluids and some meds, and sadly walked out.

I didn’t sleep well. I called early the next morning, and they said she was not that much better and that I had to transfer her to the specialty animal hospital. I think I knew in my gut that something was very wrong, even the night before. I carried her out to my car and drove her there. That was the last time she would be in my car.

At the specialty hospital, the kind team of doctors did everything to figure out what was wrong, and I could not say no to anything they suggested might help. It went on like this that whole Thursday. Again, I left that night, and I didn’t sleep well. The doctor called me some very early in the morning. They wanted to give her another medication, yes, I said as I sat alone in the dark kitchen, freezing, crying, staring at Ruby’s food bowl that she would never eat out of again.

I got ready and returned to the hospital that Friday morning, waiting for the doctor to give me a report. It was clear she wasn’t going to get better. She kindly explained everything to me so I could understand while I quietly sobbed. I called Sam; he was going to meet me at the hospital. I called Jonah and Lowell. Jonah lives in Memphis and had been sick with a cold but was better that day. I said that he should come home. The only flight from Memphis would get him to LAX at 9:30 PM.

We told the doctor we wanted to wait for him to get there. She said Ruby could pass at any time, but she would do her best and keep her comfortable. We didn’t want her to suffer more, but Jonah needed to be with us.

That day is a blur. Sam and I mostly stayed at the animal hospital all day, leaving to sit in our car, walk to the Starbucks, or sit in the waiting room, staring at nothing, doing nothing. Lowell came and went a few times that day. We would go back and visit Ruby. She was not herself. We talked to her, telling her she was the best girlie ever, comforted her and cried as we all sat on the floor outside her little cage bed, where she was hooked up to multiple IVs. Our hearts broke. The doctor and other staff who attended to her were gentle with her and us.

Jonah’s flight arrived a little early, and he Ubered. While he was on his way, I realized that although we had dealt with this for three days, he would be walking into a very difficult situation. I met him outside and hugged him, but I could not figure out what to say. There were no words and no way to prepare for the next step, which was for all of us to spend time with her before we put her down.

The doctors and team at the hospital had already told me that we would have time alone in a room with her for however long we needed and then to let them know when we were ready. She told us what they do to put her down and discussed the options we had after it was done. We were so unprepared and so confounded by the quickness of her decline, to the point where we kept asking why? What could have happened?

I had spoken to our regular veterinarian a few times as well. He was kind and told me all the people in the office loved Ruby and sent their best to us. No one had an answer. Cancer? But that was not obvious on the tests, but that did not rule it out. A toxin? A slowly declining Liver that had not presented that dramatically until now? It was driving us crazy to the point where we considered doing a necropsy. Ultimately, we chose not to because it didn’t matter; we had done everything possible.

When we visited Ruby those few days, she could barely move or walk. When Jonah arrived, they brought our sweet girlie into the room on a blanket and placed her on the floor. She heard Jonah’s voice, detected his smell, and got up and inched in any way she could towards him. It was almost miraculous. They lay there for a long time, all of us crying, telling her we loved her and that she was the best dog ever. We talked about some of her most memorable shenanigans. She calmed down and let us love her for the last time. It was time to let her go. And we did, all together in the room, ending her suffering from the last few days, leaving an emptiness in all of us.

Everything is a reminder of Ruby. I still get teary walking into the house and not having her excitedly greet me like I had been gone for days. Coming to bed at night, I still hear her little paws clicking on the floor like she used to do, following Sam into our room every night to bed. The heating pad on the Big Joe in the den where she would bark when she needed it turned on, is still there.

I know it will get easier. I know we did all we could. I know all dogs die. I know everyone has a unique relationship with their dog. This is our story. It is entwined with Lowell’s IBD and how our family coped.

Interestingly enough, on that Thursday, January 4, 2024, the day I knew for sure she would not make it, Ricky Rubio, Ruby’s namesake, tweeted that his NBA career had come to an end. Jonah said this was the reason why It was also Ruby’s time to move on. The world works in mysterious ways; think what you will.

As we navigate this grief, country songs about the bond between humans and dogs are a comforting soundtrack to our shared journey. The loss of Ruby is intertwined with Lowell’s complicated life with IBD. We hold onto the memories of Ruby’s quirks and the warmth she brought to each of us in the ways we needed her.

Ruby’s legacy transcends that of a pet; she’s an integral part of our story. Our girlie had a profound impact on our family. We miss her so.

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