411 - Traveling Home With Jenny

Traveling Home With Jenny
By Diane M. Komp

"Long before the hospice movement came to America, I helped parents support their terminally ill children to die at home. The week the veterinarian told me that Jenny was dying, I received a special gift from Jane Woodson, whose son Greg died at home from leukemia the year that Jenny was born. Jane put her personal experience and advice for other parents into the form of a booklet. This beautiful work of love has been published by the American Cancer Society under the title, 7 Want to Go Home-Fulfilling My Child's Wish to Die at Home."'

SEVENTEEN years ago, a pile of puppies huddled together for warmth in a Virginia animal shelter; their mother had been abandoned, cold and pregnant, on the shelter doorstep. My secretary, Alice, dragged me to the shelter, convinced that a puppy was needed to replace a loss in my life. I was unenthusiastic but agreed to go.

The puppy pile shuffled and a tiny fur-ball surfaced to the top. "That one!" exclaimed Alice, but I was unimpressed. The shelter director, savvy in orphan placement tricks, was quick on the pickup. "Let me give her a shampoo and fluff her up so you can see what she really looks like." Her ancestry was listed as old English sheepdog and poodle and beagle. As the tiny raccoon emerged from the drying towel, Alice was trying out names. The wily den mother handed the cub to me as she played her next card: "Since you're a pediatrician, you could give her the booster immunizations yourself and save the cost of our fees. I'll show you how."

Alice was there when I gave Jenny her first booster shot. Piece of cake, I thought. It was technically flawless but Jenny bolted out of my arms and cried plaintively from a safe position under the television set. "The next time, you let a real doctor do it!" roared Alice.

Diane M. Komp, M.D., is Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale University School of Medicine and attending physician at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. Many will recall her moving article on terminally ill children, "Hearts Untroubled," in THEOLOGY TODAY, Oct. 1988. Martin E. Marty mentioned this article in a recent Context newsletter, and we have had numerous requests for this issue. The simple but moving story of the life and death of "Jenny" is a poignant and heart-warming variation on the earlier article. Dr. Komp is a deacon at the First Congregational Church, Guilford, Conn., where she sings in the choir with Paul and Gladys Minear who must be known to many of our readers. Poor Jenny? No, with so much affection and devotion on both sides, Jenny's traveling days may be over, but the love-story lingers on.

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I

As a baby, Jenny never showed separation anxiety, but she always took note of where I was. If I left a room while she was sleeping, she did not panic. When she woke and found me gone, she nonchalantly set off in search of me and then casually parked herself with me once again in view. Within a week of our mutual adoption, Jenny went exploring on her own and tumbled down a flight of stairs. I raced after her and found the same step with loose carpet that caused her to lose her footing. I didn't have her instinct to relax, roll, and cry about it later and landed right foot first at the side of the wailing puppy. While she clung to her new Mom unhurt, I contemplated what to do about the bimalleolar, dislocated ankle fracture I sustained in the fall.

A friend who is an orthopedic nurse smuggled Jenny into my hospital room while I was recovering from the required surgery. As soon as I was at home for a month's further convalescence, Nurse Jenny was on the job. Dozens of visitors came to my house to show the puppy a good time, but she preferred to keep me under her watchful scrutiny. I concluded that it was the sheepdog in her when I later saw her behavior with neighbor children. When real sheep are not available, there are plenty of the human variety in need of a good shepherdess. Over the years, she always sensed when I was sad or in pain and came to comfort me. The world needs more comforters like Nurse Jenny.

I bought the puppy a basket and an alarm clock, the latter purported to sound like a mother dog's beating heart. Both were rejected, and the negotiated sleeping place was under my bed. She would have preferred for it to be in or on my bed but I was trying to establish all furniture as off limits. Jenny fulfilled the letter if not the spirit of the law. There were times that I felt the need for a constitutional lawyer. As I fell asleep, she was under the bed. When I woke up, she was under the bed. If I stirred in the middle of the night and rolled over, however, there was a puppy curled into the small of my back. The single exception to the bed rule were thunderstorms, when the frightened puppy asked to sleep in my arms. The dog bed was donated to her Spaniel cousins, Bonnie and Clyde.

For every law I stated, Jenny posed a corollary. I maintained that she must not wake me in the morning from my well-deserved sleep. In return, Jenny required that I not feign sleeping. The puppy and the baby robins would rouse as dawn broke, and she would pounce on my bed for the nose-to-eyelash test. A bona fide sleeper blinks intermittently and irregularly in sleep. A faker blinks not at all or with a patently unnatural rhythm. If I failed the test, she secured my face between her two front paws so that I could not turn away from the Mad Kisser.

It must have been a rude shock for her when I hobbled back to work on crutches, and Jenny realized that she had a working mother. It was even ruder when the cast came off and I resumed my professional travel schedule, lecturing around the country on childhood cancer. The first

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business trip coincided with Jenny's trip to the vet for the hysterectomy mandated on the adoption papers. When I came back the following week to pick her up, she was helping the vet run his office. She hated to say goodbye to him. This world is full of sheep to care for when Mom-sheep is off the range.

Over the years of our lives together, there were many trips, It is fair to say that although Jenny made the best of the situation, she did not approve of my travel. Her eyes were fully shielded by her sheepdog fringe, but there was no question of the woeful countenance beneath. Jenny taught me how to pack efficiently. If I took out a suitcase well in advance of a trip, the unseen but all-seeing eyes would fix mine with a most pathetic, "Why, Mom?" Thanks to Jenny, I can completely pack for a three-week/three-continent trip half an hour before leaving for the airport. Anything but face that look. I've never been able to understand George Eliot's remark, "Animals are such agreeable friends-they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms." Animals are only dumb when we are deaf. George must never have owned a dog. He who has an ear to hear, let her hear.

II

My first home with Jenny was a town house, spacious in rooms but short on land. She was unimpressed with the small patio and all the indoor opportunities for exploration. Jenny kept watch on the front door, waiting for an opportunity to bolt to freedom. We signed up for the first obedience course available. She was valedictorian of the Novice Class, and the instructor used Jenny to demonstrate the "right" way. I had my suspicions about the motives for this diplay of obedience, especially when Miss Independence responded to body commands before you even had the chance to give the verbal command. Was it possible that she read the body command first so that it appeared to be her own idea and not a response to a command? This hypothesis was tested in the Advanced Class. The instructor went cold turkey to off-the-leash, and Jenny took off over the hill.

Not only were there many trips, there were several moves together. All Jenny required of a new house was that it be furnished with our old furniture, When we crossed the threshold, the hidden eyes lit up at the sight of familiar furniture and she immediately accepted her new digs. New friends were easy to make.

Our next home had a fenced-in yard with a stream. To me it seemed like paradise for a puppy, and it certainly was more acceptable to Jenny. Its limitations as her ideal home became obvious when we vacationed at my sister's farm in upstate New York. Jenny slept on the front seat of the car for the eight-hour drive until I pulled onto the road to the farm. The last few yards were driven with an excited puppy half in my lap and half on the steering wheel. After hastily greeting my sister and nephews, Jenny would take off with her country cousins to check out the cows and crops. Cousin Booper had his tail zapped many times by the electrified

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cattle fence, but Jenny could run at full speed and still lower her long tail in adequate time to clear the wire. The bovine ladies acknowledged the canine presence with a mildly bored, "Moo," but they never worried about the safety of their babies in the presence of these silly interlopers. After dinner, you could see only her joyous tail as she raced methodically up one row of corn and down the next. Before heading back to city life, I let her have one more corn run, and the contented puppy sighed as she sank into the car seat next to me. My brother-in-law, Pete, always packed a generous sack of sweet corn to send along with us. I wondered what vacation memories were evoked for Jenny when she sat in my lap back home, eagerly chewing and sucking on an ear of buttered corn.

We moved north when Jenny was six years old. Our new house was secluded in a highly wooded area off a secondary road so Jenny was allowed to explore on her own. Within three days of the shepherdess's arrival, I was greeted by every child on the street: "Hello, Jenny's Mommy!" The adults were no less aware of her arrival. An immigrant from North Carolina was delighted to meet a dog who understood Southern.

The absence of a fence had a paradoxical effect on the freedom-seeking Jenny. Her favorite spot was on our front lawn under a tree where she could survey her own queendom and keep her paw on the pulse of the neighborhood. Jenny calculated the dinner schedule of every family on the street and was a regular at barbecues. Occasionally, they would invite me, too. After all, they said, thanks to me, they didn't have to buy a dog of their own. Anyone on the street had access to the Mooch Pooch for the small price of a steak or two or three.

On my first business trip away from Connecticut, I used a kennel and created a neighborhood crisis. Nobody missed me much, but they did miss Jenny. This dilemma was resolved by accepting at-home dog care from neighbors. Within a year of moving to Connecticut, Jenny herself was gainfully employed. All she had to do was be herself as part of "Ava Maria Orphanoudakis's Zoomobile." She and her colleagues, Slinky the Ferret, Noah the Boa, Pretzel the Python, Touche the Tortoise, and Wally the Wallaby accompanied Ava to programs for children. The raccoon baby had grown into a perfectly beautiful, miniature sheepdog with hair so silky that babies loved to run their faces through it. It was imperative that the star be on call and not in some kennel.

When Ava filmed a series for television entitled "Meet the Animals," Jenny starred. The poodle gene-contribution allowed the sheepdog to stand on her hind feet and turn pirouettes. This could be reliably elicited on camera on command because that dog would have sold her soul for cheese. I found instant fame and new respect with my little patients when they learned that I was the mother of Jenny, the Dancing Dog. It was her own idea to walk on her hind feet, and it started when I advised her that she was not allowed to put her paws on the dining room table. Once again, she fulfilled the letter of the law and backed away, but remained standing at the table, poised and hopeful. This became a

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valuable resource to her when visiting homes with babies in highchairs. On her hind feet, she was vis-´ -vis an entire subset of the human race that could be trained to place finger food in her ever-grateful mouth.

Although Jenny's job was non-salaried, she was well compensated for her services. Her palate was continuously titillated by the unending selection of Greek delicacies prepared in the Orphanoudakis kitchen. The queen of all gustatory celebrations was Greek Easter when an entire lamb was roasted slowly over a wood fire. As piquant drippings danced into the fire from the rotating feast, unseen eyes widened and a pink tongue flickered in moist anticipation. Jenny whirled to the music of the bouzoukis, inching closer and closer to the object of her affection. I never waited up for her on Greek Easter. After the other guests retired, she gave her undivided attention to the decimation of the remaining lamb carcass. She boldly defended her portion and refused to share the smallest morsel with dogs many times her size. The next morning, she came home for breakfast with a greasy grin on her face.

On a return business trip to Charlottesville, I met a dog in the airport that must have been one of Jenny's brothers. He was large and shaggy and looked quite ridiculous as he strutted into the waiting area as if he owned the airport. There was something very familiar in his swagger, and I asked his owner about him. They adopted him in the same month of 1972 from the same animal shelter and believed his ancestry to be sheepdog-poodle-beagle. As Jenny strutted off one evening in Connecticut on her appointed rounds, I heard a visiting child ask a child-inresidence, "Does that dog run this street?" I wish Jenny had been with me that day in Charlottesville to meet her brother, Winston, and compare notes with him.

Even without a suitcase visible, Jenny knew in advance when I was going to travel. I never determined how, but Ava was sure it was ESP. Jenny not only knew when I was going, she knew when I was coming back. She turned down invitations on the day of my return home and took up vigil on our front porch. One trip, Jenny took to the porch a few days too early and Ava tried the entire day to invite her home. "You silly puppy. Mommy's not coming home today. It will be two days before she's home." But I had grown weary and bailed out of the conference after my lecture, two days early. I forgot to call Ava to inform her of the change in my plans. Jenny was waiting on my correct arrival day.

III

I was scheduled for a sabbatical year in 1985 and originally considered working in England. What helped me choose Germany and learn German were the rabies laws of the British Isles that require a dog to be quarantined for a year before entry. So Jenny and I learned German together, and we both became fluent. She seemed to understand German better than English. There's something oh-so effective about NEIN that "no" can never hope to communicate.

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By 1984, it was apparent that the twelve-year old eyes were clouded by cataracts. The effect on her vision was not at all apparent at home or in our neighborhood where she continued to rove confidently. But away from home, she panicked. Before I had a chance to worry about Jenny's sabbatical plans, my next-door neighbors volunteered to take her for the year. She would stay in a familiar house and continue to run her street.

We all worried whether she would survive the year. After my departure, she seemed very disoriented and disappeared several times for days on end. Her privileges were curbed until she settled in and, after a few months, it was business as usual. Lots of little sheep to take care of; only the Mom-sheep was missing. When Mom-sheep finally did come home, Jenny did not immediately move back. She came to visit every evening for the first two weeks when I came home from work, but she abandoned me at bedtime to go home to Leonardo and Anita to sleep. The punishment fit the crime.

Jenny continued to be happy and fully functional for an additional year. Mental confusion was the first symptom that led to the diagnosis of liver disease and within another year, advanced cirrhosis was apparent. Simultaneously, arthritis and atrophy of her hind limb muscles were progressing. She lost her solo cruising privileges and was restricted to walking on a leash or sitting out on a run-line. I bought her a large, luxurious basket as a bed and lined it with her favorite pillows, but she snubbed it in favor of an old, low couch in the loft off my bed room.

One day, we came home from a visit to her vet, and she fell out of the car, staggering down the driveway in the wrong direction. Three little neighbors were standing there watching. I was concerned that the children would lose interest in her now that she didn't have as much to offer them. Michael went after her and seven-year old Brian said sagely, "Jenny is an old dude." Michael returned her to my arms, and all three cowboys stroked the old, familiar head.

Gradually, her other faculties diminished. The first clue to her bearing problem came when a thunderstorm passed without her asking to join me in bed. She could not hear the storm. The low-frequency hearing loss gradually extended to her entire range of hearing and Jenny was deaf, blind, and lame. The only 99.9% reliable senses were taste, smell, and touch. She gradually accepted the basket as her bed. Although she couldn't hear me come in the house, she would mold into my arms when I petted her, and she could still rouse out of deep sleep at the smell of Braunschweiger liverwurst. Through this all, she was still the same cheerful puppy. She did not seem handicapped at all, or complain, or seem sad. I often say that Jenny was given to me as a model for graceful aging.

In the summer of 1988, Jenny developed a mysterious hemolytic anemia and dropped her red blood cell count to one-third of normal. I had the same type of session with her wonderful vet, Gary Winters, that I. on occasion, must have with the parents of children who are not going to survive. I smiled softly while he repeated a similar brand of wisdom

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about quality versus quantity of life. This time, I was the mother, not the doctor. The whole painful time was tolerable because of this welltrained, compassionate man. I told Gary that in the same set of circumstances, I told parents to watch the kid rather than the lab values and the days will seem brighter. He said that sounded like good advice, and I took Jenny home.

IV

In November, I had to go to Italy. At the same scientific meeting where I was speaking, I heard a presentation about a rare form of liver cirrhosis in infants. These infants lived in rural areas of Germany with prominent granite formation. The water used to dilute their formula was naturally acidic well-water. None of the older children or adults in these households were affected, nor were infants who were breast fed. Only small family members dependent on tap water for all their fluid intake were affected. The babies not only had liver disease, but they also developed a hemolytic anemia. The liver disease and anemia were caused by copper that was leeched from the pipes by the acid water. I listened, stunned, because our home in Connecticut is on granite. All of Jenny's drinking water had been from our naturally acidic well water.

I asked the physician who reported these cases if he had ever heard of this in dogs. In addition to three infants, one family lost a dog from liver disease. I installed a system to filter the water specifically for copper, and within six weeks Jenny's hemoglobin rose from 4.9 to 9.2gm%, and her energy level paralleled the improvement in hemoglobin. A friend of mine visited from Germany for the Christmas holidays. Jenny made welcome guest appearances at parties and enjoyed many escorted walks, introducing Karl-Heinz to all her many canine acquaintances. It was a wonderful Christmas.

Shortly after the new year, the 16-year 8-month old body started to go into what was to be its final decline. Jenny had no desire to leave the Puppy Penthouse, and she couldn't use the stairs without assistance. By the middle of January, she was unable to climb into her basket. She tried and tried, and when she realized that she couldn't stand on her own strength, cried softly. Each night, I picked her up and let her sleep in my arms as she used to do during thunderstorms. Each time I took her into my arms, she stopped crying, sighed deeply, and fell promptly asleep. I lay awake listening to her soft, secure snore.

Eventually, she stopped urinating altogether, and I took her to Gary to hear his verdict. I had to prop her up on her legs to even demonstrate the staggering gait. When he had seen enough, she sank into my arms with her head on my breast. Gary's conclusions were not very encouraging. "If I put her in the hospital on intravenous fluids, she'll give up and die. She thrives on you. You know I am an optimist by nature, and Jenny has always surprised us, but this time...." On the way home in the car, Jenny lay on the back seat crying softly. All I had to do was reach my hand back to touch her and she stopped crying.

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V

We have an option for our animal friends that we do not have for ourselves. Many times in that final year, I considered what the bottom line would be that might make me choose to have Jenny put to sleep. Long before the hospice movement came to America, I helped parents support their terminally ill children to die at home. The week the veterinarian told me that Jenny was dying, I received a special gift from Jane Woodson, whose son Greg died at home from leukemia the year that Jenny was born. Jane put her personal experience and advice for other parents into the form of a booklet. This beautiful work of love has been published by the American Cancer Society under the title, "I Want to go Home-fulfilling my child's wish to die at home." Was natural death at home an option for my Jenny?

During the final week, I wrestled with what was best for Jenny. My friends said, "You know what is best for her. You're her mother." But it was time for me to call a metaphor a metaphor. I was not, in fact, Jenny's mother. Her biological mother died by euthanasia shortly after Jenny was weaned, because careless members of my species did not count the full cost of dog ownership. When Jenny mistook me or the children for sheep and applied herself to our protection, the worst we could suffer was inconvenience. We would laugh and try to explain to her the subtle differences between humans, dogs, and sheep. If I assumed that Jenny's concepts of pain and death were the same as a human child's and in my assumption erred, she had no way to correct me and could suffer far more than inconvenience. Gary's most carefully worded advice to me was, "If one of you must suffer, it had better not be Jenny." Many years ago, I wrote these words of Dostoevsky on the back of Jenny's picture in my wallet: "Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don't trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent." What was God's intent for Jenny?

I kept Jenny at home and did everything to make sure she was physically and emotionally comfortable. I am convinced that I helped her by using my special medical knowledge and by loving her as only a mother could. My Jenny never suffered and slipped gradually into a peaceful sleep, nestled in her basket. The last night of her life, I also slept peacefully. I woke suddenly on January 24 at 5:30 a.m., but I'm sure she hadn't made a sound. I knew for a certainty that Jenny had, in that very moment, travelled on alone to her final home.

VI

On Ash Wednesday, we scattered the old dude's ashes under the queendom tree and on her favorite trails around the neighborhood. One boy brought his new puppy to pay her respects. We named all the dogs and kitties on our street who would get an extra hug that night in memory of their sister Jenny. It's been years since grass grew on the direct routes from our house to the beloved neighbors, so her favorite

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spots were easy to locate. We ended at the Orphanoudakis house by the wood fire pit, leaving a generous sprinkling of her ashes there and looking forward to Easter and the next lamb roast.

The children asked me when I'll get another puppy, and I said that I'm sure there will be another dog some day soon. My parents were the wisest of all my friends: "You know, Di, there will never be another dog just like Jenny." To me, Jenny was the perfect dog. I don't expect another dog to be just like Jenny, and I want her to maintain her special place in my heart. Her portrait, one corner draped with her collar, hangs prominently above the fireplace as I write. I am at peace with her memory and in the knowledge that somewhere, out there, is another cunning orphan-peddler, waiting to demonstrate the latest furry model of "perfect."