I’ve been blessed, and have had a series of really good dogs. Marcie has been one of the two best. Her full name is:
Bettner’s Byte O Magic AX OAJ AXP AJP
For dog people and especially agility people it means a lot. And I know it was really important to the breeder to have the Bettner’s name and to have a magical name. We’re weird aobut dog names.
When I first started running Marcie, I never imagined getting a title I had recently quit K-9 police training, couldn’t run a full novice course, but needed to do something with her. I’d gone to some kind of weekly dog training for the majority of my adult married life, and couldn’t imagine not.
Our first run was awful. They hadn’t set the jump heights right, and we didn’t do well at all, but I kept trying, and i got hooked. Right now, I can’t imagine not having a night where I train dogs in agility. In fact, for the last year and a half, I’ve spent 3 hours every Monday night training dogs in agility and it felt weird to only train two.
Marcie put up with me with untrained gastric reflux which caused asthma attacks. She put up with be becoming diabetic, and all through it, her love of agility class kept me physically active. Even when I injured my knee, it was because of her, I kept going.
I’m going to miss Marcie, and I’m going to miss her a lot.
She was an odd dog in many ways. She didn’t have a lot to say, but when she did, she made sure she was heard. She didn’t like being caged, and frequently got out, especially at agility trials. She was perfectly content at home to be in her dog room and dog run, and the work people always said she never came out.
She did escape a few times. Usually accidently. Once as a puppy she was exploring our huge backyard at our old house, and ended up going over our fence — it was only 4 foot, and covered with brush. I think she was shocked, but did find someone fairly quickly who was smart enough to bring her home.
Very shortly after we got here, she was chasing a critter, ended up going through the fence, and again found someone to bring her home. We live across the street from a huge park, and when people in the park called her, instead of coming, she went to our door and knocked on it. I didn’t hear her, so they came and rang the door for her.
She got really mad when we got our Uverse service and went through the gate after the tech accidently didn’t latch it. She again found someone to help her, but instead of ending up at home, she ended up at the animal shelter. When I picked her up, that was one of the few times she made noise, literally talking. I was a weird thing.
For the last few weeks, someone, probalby Marcie, had been throwing up all over the house. Not full meals, just little spots with some stomach contents. I should have been alarmed, and I should have tracked it down, but I don’t think it would have changed the outcome.
Two of my agility friends were here Friday night, and they didn’t realize she was sick and at that point I didn’t either. She ate dinner fine that night, and then also ate breakfast Saturday. I ran medical errands on Saturday and shortly after I got home, she threw up very loudly, very wet.
Marcie was throwing up constantly, begged to be outside and I let her go. She would lie in the grass and then frequently get up and vomit.
I knew something was horribly wrong when she got up on Sunday, wouldn’t eat, drank and then immediately threw up. I decided to rush her to the vet. The next alarming sign was picking her up. She weighed less than my 13" beagle Maggie. Marcie was a very large, 15" beagle, and she was close to 15" as you could be and not go over. She was a very large girl, and usually weighed just under 25 pounds. The first thing the vet tech did was to weigh her. 18 pounds. That was frightening. In fact, in March she weighed 23 pounds.
Let’s suppose you are a healthy human weighing 115 pounds. That means in that in a 24 hour period, you went lost 25 pounds and weight 90 pounds when you went to the doctor. And that you threw it all up.
She was also in a lot of pain. They had given her hydromorphine yesterday morning.
I went to see her yestereday afternoon, and she whined and wanted in my lap. This is NOT a lap dog. I know she was asking to go, but I wasn’t ready yet. When I called and found out she wouldn’t go outside, I knew it was time. It was very hard, and in many ways I wish I could have been with her, but I needed to take care of Maggie and Macy.
She was a very special girl. I’m not sure I would have made it through the last few years without her.