Raising Charlie is on Amazon.com!

There is no actual book yet that you could hold in your hands, but Raising Charlie is now available for purchase at Amazon.com. A representative from the publisher called me this morning to confirm a few details and within an hour, the book was available online.

The thrill of seeing the book in an Amazon.com listing will not match the thrill of seeing the actual book, but after more than a year of work, it feels like a pretty big deal. I have already sold a few advance copies through my RaisingCharlie.com website, so the first books I receive will go to fill those orders.

Now it's time to undertake some creative marketing to get the word out and get the sales rolling. Away we go!

Raising Charlie: The Lessons of a Perfect Dog

Last week, I finished writing a memoir about Charlie, my golden retriever who died of cancer last year. It was emotionally difficult to write about his life, especially the last three months, after he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, but it was also therapeutic. It helped me get over my grief, and it made me appreciate what a perfect dog he was.

I hope Charlie's story is one that dog lovers and others who have experienced the loss of a beloved pet will take to heart. He taught me many valuable lessons during his life, and I owe it to him to share them as a tribute to his memory. I know I am a better person for having had him in my life.

If you are interested in reading Raising Charlie: The Lessons of a Perfect Dog, please click Charlie's image near the top of this page to go to the RaisingCharlie.com website. The book will be published later this year, but you can reserve an inscribed copy now. Thank you.

The Abyss

It has been a week now since Charlie died and I am more depressed than I have been since adolescence. At moments I feel like I am teetering on the edge of the abyss, that if I'm not careful, I will give myself over entirely to despair.

I have experienced the grief of losing people close to me before, but losing a pet who was such a close friend and companion for so many years has exposed me to grief of a new magnitude. It is grief mixed with guilt and helplessness. People who are dying slowly from disease or at the end of a long life can communicate with words what they are going through. Dogs can't. They trust us to read their moods and expressions. There were times when I was sure Charlie was pleading with me, "Why aren't you helping me? Why aren't you making me better?" I could only look into his eyes with sorrow, feeling the guilt that I was somehow responsible for his cancer and the helplessness of knowing that it didn't matter what we did, his cancer was going to kill him. I'm sure he was thinking, "You fixed my knee when I injured it. Why can't you fix this?" He might as well have been praying to an indifferent God for all it would matter.

People who saw Charlie and me together would sometimes ask what I did to end up with such a good dog. I would tell them that we had formed a strong positive bond when he was just nine weeks old. It was based on praising the good behavior rather than punishing the bad. After a while, Charlie lived for that praise. He aimed to please. If I reprimanded him, he was devastated, sometimes sulking for hours under the furniture until he worked up the nerve to approach me and lick my hand in penance. The reassuring pat on the head would set his world back to rights every time.

The cancer violated our trust. Charlie received three months of continuous punishment without having done anything to deserve it. How could he be expected to understand? How could I expect him to forgive me?

Charlie

Charlie passed away on Sunday evening.

He and I were walking our regular late afternoon loop out to the playground near our house, and on the way back he started bleeding from the mouth and getting frantic from the pain. Nan and I rushed him to the emergency pet clinic and they were able to stop the bleeding, but we agreed that it was time to end his suffering. We sat on the floor with him as they gave him an injection that put him to sleep and stopped his heart.

Reflecting on the day, it was as if Charlie sensed his time was coming to an end. He did everything he always did, from licking my elbow to wake me up in the morning to napping at my feet while I watched the afternoon Avalanche hockey game, but there was a noticeable distance to him. You can see it in the photo, which Nan took as we were working in the yard earlier in the day. He's not looking at Nan, he's looking somewhere else. You can also see how dramatically the tumor inside his mouth is swelling the left side of his face.

Even though he was mine, Charlie was still the best dog I have ever known. We formed a bond of love and friendship when he was just a few weeks old that lasted all of his ten years. I know it allowed him to be the smart, affectionate and well-behaved dog he became, and I know it made me a better person.

To honor Charlie's memory, I am writing a book about everything we did right with his upbringing so that others might experience the same rewarding dog and owner relationship. It will be titled Raising Charlie: The Lessons of a Perfect Dog.

Good night, sweet prince.

Charlie's birthday

Charlie turned ten years old today. Three months ago, when he was first diagnosed with cancer, we weren't sure if he would still be alive for his birthday, but his condition has stabilized somewhat in the past few weeks and it now seems that he will surpass our most optimistic expectations. We certainly hope so, because in exactly three weeks, we leave for our Odyssey sailing trip and we'll be gone for three full weeks. If he's not doing well before we go, we're afraid he might die before we return.

Everyone we know is aware of Charlie's condition, so our regular network of dog sitters has not been forthcoming and we can't blame them. Nobody would want to have a friend's dog die while they were looking after him. Family is sometimes more sympathetic. My sister Jane has volunteered to take care of him while we're away. The only problem is that she lives in Seattle, more than a thousand miles away. Charlie has never flown and we're afraid it would be overly stressful on him, so I'm going to drive him up there and then fly back to start the trip, then fly to Seattle when we get back and drive him home. The things we do for our pets!

When Charlie was still a puppy, Jane gave us a paw print kit as a Christmas present. We set it aside for several years and then misplaced it during our move from Aspen to Grand Junction. Nan spent some time rummaging through the garage last week and finally found it. If we were ever going to take Charlie's paw prints, what better time could there be than his birthday? He was fairly cooperative and, as you can see, it turned out just fine for a project that involved working with wet cement. Note the missing nail on the left paw. He lost it tripping on a sidewalk while chasing a tennis ball last fall and it never grew back.

I'm sure this plaque will become for us what a child's plaster hand print is for mom and dad, something we'll cherish forever.

Boat Quest, Part 9

The last weekend in November, I was searching for Valiant 40 sailboats online and looking beyond the OffshoreYachts.com and YachtWorld. com listings I routinely checked, when there she was: Sea Hawk! The very same boat I had motored past in Fort Lauderdale with John Kretschmer in January of 2007 (see Boat Quest, Part 7). The listing was brief, just a single photo (the one above), a list of features and a price of $49,000, but it included the phone number I had miscopied ten months before.

I vacillated a few days and then called the number. No answer. I left a message saying I knew the boat and I knew John Kretschmer and I was interested in finding out more. I waited a few days but never got a call back. I called again and got in touch with Harvey, the owner. He apologized for not calling back; he had just returned from the Bahamas. We talked for twenty minutes about how we each knew John, and about Sea Hawk and what was going on with her. Harvey listed off the included sail inventory and custom equipment, and said he was in the process of replacing the existing Westerbeke diesel engine with a rebuilt one. It sounded like a big project. I asked why the price was so low. He said that Sea Hawk was one of the Valiant 40 "blister boats" but that unlike most of the others with the blistered fiberglass on their hulls and topsides, hers had never been repaired. I knew the problem was purely cosmetic so I wasn't put off by it. The idea of buying a Valiant 40 for only $49,000 was too exciting.

Harvey asked when I could fly down to take a look. I hadn't thought that far ahead yet and said so. He suggested I contact John and have him take a look on my behalf. I said I would and asked if there were any other photos I could look at in the meantime. He said he would email me some. We agreed to stay in touch and ended the call.

I emailed John to tell him I had found Sea Hawk online and ask if he would be willing to drop by to take a look at her. He replied that he would. John is the author of Used Boat Notebook: From the pages of Sailing Magazine, reviews of 40 used boats plus a detailed look at 10 great used boats to sail around the world, so if there was anybody whose opinion I could trust, it was his. He called me after he had had a chance to talk with Harvey and look at Sea Hawk in person. He said that Harvey was still in the process of replacing the engine but that even with the mess involved in that project, she still looked "really rough." This surprised me. I said that I had closely studied the 49 photos Harvey had emailed me and that she didn't look too bad, maybe just the victim of deferred maintenance that could be rectified with solvent, varnish and plenty of elbow grease. He said if I was really interested I should fly down and take a look myself.

So I emailed Harvey and asked when he would be available during the upcoming weeks, by this time late January to early February. He didn't respond. I figured he was in the Bahamas again. About this time, in mid-January, we made the trip to the Animal Cancer Center in Fort Collins to get the diagnosis on our dog Charlie's cancer. When we found out how serious it was, Nan and I agreed to postpone any trips to Florida for now. The boat could wait. It was more important to be home taking care of Charlie.

Harvey finally emailed me back a couple of weeks ago. He had spent all of February in the Bahamas, but he was back and available if I wanted to fly down and see the boat. This time it was me who didn't respond. I just checked the listing site, SailboatTraderOnline.com, and Sea Hawk is still available for sale.

On second thought...

We were in Moab, Utah over the weekend so Nan could run in the Canyonlands Half Marathon, like she does every year. While she was racing on Saturday morning, Charlie and I hiked the Hidden Valley trail just south of town. We like it because it's dog friendly, unlike the nearby Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, and it's usually not too crowded because it starts with a grueling rocky climb. The photo shows Charlie at our turnaround spot, a wall of ancient petroglyphs about two miles from the start. Click the photo for a larger version that shows the petroglyphs better.

As we were walking, I paid careful attention to Charlie for signs of his mouth bleeding or his endurance flagging, and I stopped frequently to squirt water from my CamelBak for him to drink. With his cancer, I wanted to make sure he didn't overexert himself. Fortunately, it was a cool and overcast morning, so the usual desert heat was not a factor. We have done this hike in the past when it was so hot that Charlie would stop and rest in every patch of shade.

Naturally, as I followed him up the trail, I was thinking about Charlie and his cancer, and something occurred to me. Charlie is one of those golden retrievers who spends about half of his waking life with a tennis ball in his mouth, or at least he did until we took them away to avoid aggravating the tumor in his mouth. I wondered if maybe the tennis balls had something to do with his cancer. Is there some chemical in them that is carcinogenic? A freshly opened can of tennis balls certainly smells toxic, but are the contents actually harmful? I searched on Google for "carcinogenic tennis balls" but not surprisingly, there were no good matches.

I think this was a kind of wishful thinking, a need to know the answer to the question of why this has happened. The veterinarians say there is no answer, but there's still a nagging feeling of guilt and regret: if only we had done something differently in Charlie's life, none of this would have ever happened. That's the problem with "why" questions. Even if we knew the answers, they wouldn't change what has already happened. All we can do is cope with the present situation as best we can.

Canary in a coal mine?

Since our dog Charlie was diagnosed with cancer two months ago, we have spoken with many pet owners who have had similar experiences. Their dog or cat was doing just fine and then one day there was a lump, or bleeding from the mouth. Within a few days, weeks or months, their beloved pet was dead, often before reaching ten years of age. It seems that pets who live long healthy lives and then die of old age are the exception these days, but I can't remember this always being true.

All these tragic early deaths make me wonder what the cause might be. Have we poisoned our environment so terribly that it is killing our pets? I know that Charlie will eat anything that seems remotely edible, including grass, sticks and garbage, so is it possible that his eating habits have resulted in the osteosarcoma growing in his upper jaw? The half-dozen veterinarians we have consulted don't know why he has it, and they're frankly surprised to see a cancer that normally attacks appendages take hold where it has. He has been through two chemotherapy treatments now, but they don't seem to be helping. The tumor in his mouth cavity has been removed twice, but it keeps regrowing and is now the biggest it has been, about the size of my thumb.

Charlie had a clear chest x-ray yesterday, indicating that the cancer has not yet spread to his lungs. He is scheduled to have the tumor "debulked" again tomorrow, and he is scheduled for a third chemotherapy treatment next Thursday. We're hoping the treatments will prevent, or at least slow, the growth of the tumor and the spread of the cancer, but based on what we have seen so far, that doesn't seem likely.

If our pets, who live protected, supervised lives, are being poisoned by the environment, what does that say for wildlife? What chance does it have fending for itself? No wonder we're losing species to extinction at a record rate. What about humans? Will the diseases resulting from our poisonous environment eventually outpace developments in medical technology and reverse gains in life expectancy? If the early deaths of our pets are any indication, we would know that we are already in deep trouble. The canary is already dead.

Charlie's chemotherapy

Yesterday morning Charlie started the chemotherapy protocol recommended by Dr. Dernell at the CSU Animal Cancer Center. I dropped him off at the local Tiara Rado Animal Hospital, where they took a chest x-ray and an echocardiograph to check for metastasis in his thorax and provide a baseline for his treatment. He was clear but there were two heart abnormalities: an 18% thinning of the left ventricular wall and a bunching of that ventricle's papillary muscles that almost looked like a tumor on the echocardiograph. Dr. Marquis is not sure if these conditions are related to Charlie's cancer but he was concerned because the Adriamycin that is a component of the protocol is known to cause ventricular thinning as a side effect of treatment. Dr. Marquis recommended that when Charlie returns in three weeks for the second treatment, with the Carboplatin component of the protocol, we should repeat the echocardiograph to check his heart. If there is additional thinning, we may need to look at alternatives or possibly abandon the chemotherapy.

We weren't sure what to expect after the first treatment, but when I picked Charlie up in the afternoon, he was his usual self, so happy to see me that he leaned into my legs and moaned. We went for a walk when we got home, and his endurance was the same. His appetite was good as well, so he doesn't appear to be showing any adverse side effects. If his heart holds up, the chemotherapy may work well to keep him comfortable and prolong his life. I'll keep you posted.

Charlie's diagnosis

Our worst fears were realized on Thursday evening when we received a call from Dr. Dernell. The results of Charlie's biopsy came back positive for osteosarcoma. Nan and I both took the news badly. It meant that there was no cure; the disease was going to kill him, probably within a matter of months. The traumatic surgery we had hoped would remove all traces of the tumor now seemed cruel if it was only going to gain him a few months, so we have opted not to put him through it. Instead we are going to begin a cycle of chemotherapy as soon as possible and hope for the best. If it slows the growth of the tumor and its metastasis, Charlie could survive as long as eight months.

We met with Dr. Dernell and Erin yesterday at the Animal Cancer Center in Fort Collins to discuss Charlie's future before driving home. They cautioned us that while he may be his normal self right now except for the tumor and the bad breath, he would soon start to experience persistent pain and associated changes in behavior. We agreed to enlist whatever palliative measures we could to keep him comfortable. They said we would see a gradual change in his attitude about life, that his focus would shift from the joys of eating, sleeping, chasing tennis balls and going for walks to a fixation on his condition and a loss of interest in everything else. At that point, he would begin the process of dying and we would need to consider ending his suffering instead of prolonging his life.

I can't even write these sentences without crying. I can't believe that just a month ago Charlie's life seemed to stretch out into the foreseeable future and now it will be over in less than a year. The best we can do is make the most of our remaining time together, giving him as much love and attention as possible, which is how we should all live our lives with each other no matter how much time we have.