A Tribute to the Greatest Dog in the World, Indy
Two nights after Christmas, on December 27, I sat in the emergency room at Veterinary Emergency Group in San Ramon, Calif., a veterinary hospital a mile down the road from my home. My beloved half English Bulldog, half Boxer Indiana, or Indy for short, had been suffering with labored breathing issues. He passed away right in front of me that night, an hour or so after I had brought him in.
For the previous two months, I noticed Indy started drinking more water than usual. There were no other particular symptoms of concern save for typical wear and tear signs of old age. Indy would’ve turned 13 on January 25, and was suffering from reduced sight, hearing, smell, and arthritic hips. But he was still seeing and hearing OK, and while he wasn’t interested in taking many walks anymore, he had a nice backyard to play in, and a family full of other animals and children that kept him active.
The increase in drinking water was casual, not sudden. My internet sleuthing led me to wonder if he was maybe suffering from Cushing’s disease, and he was due for a checkup anyways but given his appetite was fine and his stools solid, there wasn’t much concerning me.
That was until December 22, when I noticed two sudden symptoms: labored breathing, and fluid buildup in his stomach. At nights he was suddenly wheezing and laboring while breathing for brief periods of time, and the morning following me first noticing the breathing issues, my fiancée Erin and I both noticed he developed a pot belly.
This prompted a full investigation into the best veterinarian in the area. My two favorite veterinarian clinics for Indy, Companion Pet Care in Encinitas, Calif., and Laguna Veterinary Care at in San Luis Obispo, Calif., were much too far away to visit.
I’ve always struggled finding a trustworthy and caring veterinarian in the East Bay but I settled on Dr. Georgi Dimov of Redwood Animal Hospital. His reviews were solid, and it was close to home thus a short car ride for Indy.
We went in the afternoon of December 23, and soon after Dr. Dimov took Indy to a back room for over three hours to conduct a urology exam, x-rays, radiology exams, blood tests and more. Dr. Dimov told me that night, nearly four hours after I first brought Indy in, that he wouldn’t know the results of the radiology exams until the next day.
Dr. Dimov called me at 12:15 p.m. the following day. I missed the call. When I heard his voicemail a little after 1 p.m., it said that the results showed Indy likely had a large cancerous mass in his heart, and that he would need an echocardiogram to confirm his findings and a procedure to drain the internal fluid that caused the pot belly. The fluid was putting pressure against Indy’s heart and other organs.
I called back, but the office had closed early because of the holidays. It was Christmas Eve. Dr. Dimov said in his voicemail that there were two medications he recommended for Indy; one being to regulate his heart beat, and the other a diarrhetic to intestinally remove some of the fluid.
However, because he didn’t specify the name of the medicine nor the dosage, no one I called would prescribe the medicine to me. Indy was shit out of luck until the following Monday, Dec. 27, when Redwood Animal Hospital would reopen.
Dr. Dimov did prescribe some pain pills for Indy, and these kept Indy afloat during the Christmas weekend. I’d administer a pain pill every eight hours or so, and it would calm his breathing and make him lay down peacefully instead of the heavy breathing and restlessness he would exhibit when the pain pills would wear off. He wasn’t that active, but he was showing signs of happiness and was occasionally eating.
That Monday morning, I called Redwood Animal Hospital hoping they could prescribe me the medicine Indy needed and to refer me to a specialist for his necessary cardiogram and fluid drainal procedure. Dr. Dimov was away for the week on vacation and the hospital wouldn’t prescribe the pills to me without another full visit, which would only wear on Indy more and cost me another $1,000.
Worst, everywhere save for UC Davis didn’t have cardiologists available for the necessary heart exam. Following hours of frustrating phone calls to numerous Bay Area veterinarian hospitals, including VCA Bay Area Veterinary Emergency Hospital in San Leandro and SAGE Veterinary Center in Concord (who continually rejected Indy because they were “booked up” despite Indy’s deteriorating condition), Erin and I made the decision to take Indy to UC Davis the following morning for his fluid drainal procedure and echocardiogram for his heart to confirm it was indeed a cancerous mass and not another issue.
That Monday night, December 27, at approximately 11 p.m., Indy drank water and suddenly started breathing very heavily. They were short, intense breaths, and I knew something was very wrong.
A visit to the E.R. could no longer wait. I dressed myself, put on Indy’s collar and leash, kissed Erin goodbye and left the house with a sneaking and very depressing intuition that this would be Indy’s final departure from his home.
I was optimistic for the vast majority of that evening. I’m haunted by the fact that I continually told Indy he would come home that night.
I was intent on Indy’s final moments being at home surrounded by his momma, his favorite boy Connor, and his best friend Whisky (who’s a cat). I was going to sleep with him each night and spend every waking moment of his snuggled warmly in my arms. I wasn’t going to let my baby leave this world feeling alone.
And that’s what haunts me, and is going to haunt me for the rest of my days. Indy never came home that night. He never even left the hospital.
The doctor treating Indy resembled a kid more than an adult, and his words were straight and stabbed me like a jagged knife.
“I’ve seen a million of this cases, and they’re always the same,” the doctor said. “It’s cancer. That’s where the fluid is coming from.”
I asked for advice, and he didn’t have much. He seemed defeated.
He gave me some time to think about it. I decided that I wanted Indy to come home, and to have the fluid drainal procedure, along with pain meds, to end his journey at home peacefully with his family.
Indy didn’t survive the local anesthetic. I saw him go out and stepped away for a moment to update Erin on Indy’s condition. When I looked back, Indy was surround by a large number of nurses along with his kid doctor, and I went over the surgical table to see what was going on.
“We have an issue,” the kid doctor said. “Indy didn’t respond to the anesthetic.”
I looked over, and Indy was awake. He was trying to stand and was looking around. I told him I was there and he was going to be OK.
Indy slowly slumped to the table on his belly. His life went out of him, and he died.
I told the doctor hysterically that I think he just died. They looked him over and confirmed my worst fear. Indy was dead. They asked for my permission to euthanize him to formally end his life, and I agreed.
I was crying hysterically while holding Indy’s face and kissing him. I knew I had just lost my baby, and emotionally was a saddened, defeated, depressed wreck.
This fur baby who I’d spent nearly every waking moment of the previous 12 years worrying for, and taking care of, and loving with all my heart, had left this world.
They moved Indy’s body into what they called a Comfort Room, where I held Indy’s soft, precious face and cried hysterically while kissing him frantically. I knew this was my final moment with my baby, and it was the hardest moment of my life. I loved this animal like he was my own.
He was my puppy. My prince. My son.
And now, if there is a heaven (I sit here ironically praying for its existence), I can only hope that my Indy is there, happy and hopefully waiting for me to join him.
It’s a difficult thing, losing a pet that feels more like a child. At 43 years of age, and given my life circumstances, it’s highly unlikely I’m ever going to have biological children of my own.
I love my stepson tremendously, but while his biological father is mostly absent, he still does exist, and my stepson calls him, “dad.”
In all likelihood, I’m never going to be called that. So for those of us who face a potentially childless life, our fur babies carry a special meaning. Erin commented in Indy’s final weeks that I had a paternal instinct with him, since he’d often wake in the middle of the night needing to be let outside to go bathroom, and I’d awake the moment Indy’s urges needed addressing.
I felt an incredible kinship with this canine. I called him the greatest dog in the world, and I truly do believe that. Similar to humans, there’s no such thing as a perfect dog, but Indy was as close as they come.
Indy’s one flaw was his bulldog pride. I could never take him to dog parks because of his Type A personality. It was a small price to pay for what otherwise was pure perfection.
Indy was gentle. He was sweet. He was the most amazing snuggler.
Indy had proper manners. If you fed him food with your hands, he’d take it from you in the most gentle way possible. He rarely barked except when it was needed.
And Indy had the most adorable barks. He was a bigger dog, and had to build himself up before bellowing out his deep, masculine barks. People from far away could hear it, and I’m sure it gave any potential burglars out there a second thought when considering what homes to pillage.
And his singing — his singing! If a fire truck drove by, Indy would let out this beautiful, harmonious howl in tune with the fire engine’s sirens. It was poetry without words.
I’d traveled to two countries and 32 states with Indy. Me personally, I’ve visited 34 states total, visiting Hawaii and New York before rescuing Indy from the San Francisco SPCA in August 2010. I was a volunteer at the neighboring San Francisco Animal Care & Control, and would often visit the SPCA just to see something different since their policy included not allowing pit bulls.
Around this time, with the Great Recession in full gear and homes being abandoned left and right, so to were animals being left behind when their owners would foreclose on a home. This resulted in a surge of rather exotic breeds coming in to the animal shelters.
And that’s how I found Indy (or maybe Indy found me). He was a little over a year old and was sharing a cage with a much smaller dog, although Indy himself was only 45 pounds at this point and would grow to 80 soon after I rescued him.
The moment I saw him, I knew I had found my dog.
I took Indy for a brief walk, and told the front desk that I was to rescue him. They’d named him “Judd,” a name I had no interest in keeping, and they only told me that he was found on the streets of Tracy, malnourished with dog bites on him and suffering from various health conditions, including mange.
They neutered him, recovered his health, and put Indy up for adoption. He had surprisingly been there for nearly two weeks before I noticed him, and I adopted Indy that day. Every instinct in my body, every fiber of my bones, told me this dog belonged to me.
I was opening up a new surf shop during this same time period, and Indy became the shop dog for San Francisco Surf Company. The surf shop was in the Marina District of San Francisco, and I lived in nearby Russian Hill, so Indy and I would walk to and from the shop most days.
The surf shop closed two years later because of high overhead costs and diminished retail margins. I sold the lease on the location, collected what little money I kept from selling the remaining merchandise and the location itself, packed all my belongings, and moved 500 miles south to Encinitas, California, where my short term plan was to be a surf bum while enjoying the warm waters and perfect waves of San Diego County.
This was the beginning of my transition from being a full time media professional to an academic. Two years after my move to Encinitas, I started graduate school and teaching at San Diego State University, and I became a professor.
I still dabbled in the media game, focusing primarily on travel journalism. I was inspired from the works of Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo style of journalism, coupled with Jack Kerouac’s stream of consciousness travel writing (including his epic novel “On the Road”) and was strongly interested in travel journalism.
I wrote a series of short stories whose titles almost always started with, “A Surfer and his Dog…” for various publications. The stories focused on travel adventures Indy and I would embark on.
With Indy no longer at my side, it’s time to finish a book project I started eight years ago, when Indy and I went on our first cross country road trip.
In a short while, possibly as soon as this summer, I’m going to finish my book. It’s titled, “A Surfer and his Dog.” It’s a memoir written in novella style with Indy, and my time spent with him, the inspiration.
I rescued Dr. Henry Walton Indiana Jones, Jr. (Indy for short), but he really rescued me. There were moments in my life where I found no purpose to continue on, no reason to stay in this realm of existence, and Indy reminded me that I needed to take care of him. Because he truly was the greatest dog in the world, and he deserved it.
I’m going to miss Indy tremendously. I’ve been mourning his loss for a while and I don’t see the pain going away anytime soon. He was the sweetest, most precious, most innocent animal I’ve ever known. I’m going to miss my baby.
Here are some of my published travel stories I’ve written over the years that featured Indy, and a tribute video I made that served as a distraction while I mourned the loss of my baby. The video serves as a sort of biography for Indy and the many adventures we went on together.
Goodbye Indy. I love you.
Published Travel Stories Featuring Indy
A Surfer and His Dog Explore Arkansas (HuffPost)
Road trip: A surfer and his dog in Baja California, Part 1 (Men’s Journal)
Road trip: A surfer and his dog explore Baja California, Part 2 (Men’s Journal)
The Transplant Chronicles Part III (Mapquest Travel)
A Surfer and His Dog Explore Northern California (HuffPost)
The Transplant Chronicles Part II (HuffPost)
The Transplant Chronicles Part I (HuffPost)
Lost Coast to The Bay (Dogwild & Board: Stories, Interviews and Musings from a Surf Journalist)
