Saying Goodbye to a Chihuahua, on a Tuesday

On a Tuesday in late February, in a small house in Eugene, Oregon, a fifteen-year-old chihuahua named Penny lay on a folded blanket in the spot of afternoon sun she had been tracking through the dining room for most of her life. Her owner, a high school English teacher named Wendy, sat on the floor next to her with a cup of tea. The veterinarian, a Dr. James Choi who runs an in-home end-of-life practice in the southern Willamette Valley, was due at 2:15 p.m. He arrived, on schedule, at 2:13.

I am writing about this with Wendy's permission, partly because she asked me to, and partly because the house-call practice and the planning that goes into it are part of the rescue beat I cover, even though Penny was not, in any technical sense, a rescue. She was a household dog who had been with Wendy for fifteen years. The story is not about adoption. It is about what good end-of-life care for a small senior dog actually looks like.

The decision, made several weeks earlier

Penny had been on a slow decline for about six months. Mitral valve disease, well-managed with medication for the previous three years, had begun to outpace the medication. Her appetite had gradually narrowed to a small list of foods. Her sleep had become fragmented. By early February, Wendy and Dr. Choi had agreed that the goal was no longer to extend Penny's life but to make her remaining weeks comfortable and to choose, when the time came, a moment that was kind rather than reactive.

This is the framing the veterinary palliative-care community uses; it is not, in my reading, about giving up. It is about deciding, in advance, that the dog will not be the one bearing the weight of the decision when the moment arrives.

The last week, in concrete terms

Wendy kept a small notebook for the last week, similar to Mary's notebook in the Lincoln story I wrote earlier this year. The entries are short and unsentimental. Monday: ate two tablespoons of plain chicken at noon, slept four hours in the sun spot. Tuesday: did not finish breakfast, slept on Wendy's lap for ninety minutes. Wednesday: rallied for a short walk to the front porch, ten yards, then carried back. Thursday: refused all food except small pieces of cheese. Friday: ate cheese and drank water. Saturday: slept most of the day; brief alert moment when Wendy came home from the grocery store.

Sunday morning, Wendy called Dr. Choi. They scheduled the appointment for Tuesday at 2:15 p.m. The choice of Tuesday was deliberate; Wendy wanted Monday at home with Penny without the appointment hanging over the day.

The appointment

Dr. Choi arrived with a small bag, a folded towel, and a calm professional manner that, Wendy said later, felt more like a visit than a procedure. He sat on the floor with Penny for several minutes before beginning. He gave Wendy a written sheet outlining what would happen, in plain language, and answered three questions Wendy had not been able to ask out loud over the phone.

The procedure itself, by veterinary standard, has two stages. The first is a sedative injection that produces deep sleep within ten minutes; the dog does not feel the second injection. The second is an intravenous medication that stops the heart, painlessly, within seconds. Dr. Choi explained both stages before he started and again before each step. Penny was on the folded blanket in the sun spot for both. Wendy held her.

The whole appointment took about forty minutes. Penny was gone by 2:51 p.m.

After, the small things

Dr. Choi handled the after-care logistics calmly. He had brought a small basket lined with a soft towel. He gave Wendy a few minutes alone in the room. He took Penny to a regional aquamation service that the practice partners with; Wendy received a small ceramic urn ten days later, with a paw print and a date. The cost of the in-home visit, the procedure, and the aftercare totaled approximately $650; this is in line with regional pricing for in-home end-of-life veterinary care.

The International Association for Animal Hospice and Palliative Care maintains a directory of practitioners; Dr. Choi found Wendy through it. Most metropolitan areas in the United States now have at least one in-home end-of-life veterinary practice, and the model is, by every measure I have heard from owners, less stressful than a clinic visit on the day.

What the household carries forward

I sat with Wendy on the porch a week after the appointment. She had washed the small fleece bed that lived in the dining-room sun spot and had folded it on the back of the couch. She had not, she said, decided whether to keep it or give it to a rescue.

The small artifacts of a fifteen-year-old chihuahua's life, by my count, included: the green spiral notebook, the small ceramic urn, a soft red collar that hung on a hook by the back door, a worn fleece bed, four or five photographs at various heights around the house, and the specific spot on the dining-room floor where the 2:30 p.m. sun had landed across the years. Wendy had moved the dining table six inches in 2019 to widen the spot. She has not moved it back.

A separate piece on the honoring of a chihuahua who has died covers the broader question of what households do with these artifacts. Wendy, when I asked, said she was leaving the collar on the hook for now. She would, she said, decide later.

The quiet paragraph, planted on cue

I will plant a sincere paragraph here, because Penny earned it and because the column does not work without it. The thing about saying goodbye to a chihuahua you have lived with for fifteen years is that the goodbye is not, mostly, the appointment. The goodbye is the slow, deliberate practice of paying attention to a small attentive animal across years, and the appointment is the short ending of a long noticing. Wendy did the practice. The appointment, on a Tuesday in February at 2:15 p.m., was the small final entry in a notebook that had been running since 2011.

If you are reading this with a senior chihuahua near the end of her life, the practical work is small. Talk to your veterinarian about palliative care before you need it. Find an in-home end-of-life practice in your region and save the number in your phone. Keep the notebook. The notebook is, in the end, the practice. The appointment, when it comes, will be calmer than you fear, and the dog will be, on a folded blanket in the sun spot, where she would have wanted to be.