9/18/25

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Well, this is hard. Last week, I posted that I was giving myself the week off because my week was filled with my dog Ursula going suddenly blind. She seemed to be doing better, it looked like there was a decent chance her vision would be restored, but I was simply exhausted.

I didn’t know then that four days later, Ursula would go into severe seizures, four within 45 minutes, and I would have to help her out of this world and into the next.

This means that since Michael’s accident 18 months ago, I’ve had to help our two cats the same way (Edgar Allen Paw was fourteen and had been dealing with having his back legs collapse suddenly. Then they collapsed and didn’t come back. Muse had a stroke on the day after her 20^th birthday.), then, as power of attorney for Michael, I made the impossible decision to withdraw support and move him to hospice (he died five days later), and now my dog.

I am so immersed in grief, I feel like it’s in every breath I take. Ursula was beside me through all the difficult days and difficult decisions.

Ursula came to us as a rescue in 2018. She was approximately 3 years old. She arrived in a truck from a humane society in Alabama, who brought up six dogs from their shelter to one here. All that was known about her was that she’d clearly been used for breeding – she was a pitbull. In the shelter, surrounded by barking dogs, she seemed calm. But once she came home, it became clear she was afraid of everything.

The television. The beep of the microwave. The icemaker in the fridge. Sirens going by. Flags flapping in the wind. Grass. Grass!

In all the time we had her, we could never take Ursula for a walk. She would bellycrawl, like a soldier. She would sometimes head out to do her business in the grassy strip between our parking lot and Walgreens, but typically, she simply stepped out of my garage door and did everything next to my car. One loud sound would send her running back inside.

As time went by and she adjusted to some things (the tv, the microwave, the fridge, sirens, flags, but never ever to grass), she became the most loving dog ever.

The night of Michael’s accident, I brought home from the hospital all of his clothes that had been sliced off by the paramedics. I held out what was left of his shirt to Ursula, and until he came home 9 weeks later, she slept with his shirt. She also glued herself to my side. If I was downstairs, so was she. When I was at my desk, she was under it, so I bought her a bed that fit there, and she used it every day. Wherever I moved in the condo, she was there. At night, she slept in her loveseat near the foot of my bed, but I often woke to find her sleeping beside my bed, within arm’s reach. Night times were, and still are, my hardest times.

When Michael came home for a month before he returned to the hospital and then hospice, she divided her time. At night, she was with me, but when I went downstairs in the morning, she would go into Olivia’s room, where Michael slept, since the stairs were too much of a challenge. She stayed with him until he got up, then she followed him as he used his walker to move to the living room, and she stayed on the couch beside his reclining seat in the loveseat. She followed him everywhere. She made sure he was safe.

He called her Nursula.

When Michael died, I brought home the pillow I’d had made from Ursula’s photograph. She slept with it from then on.

Ursy wasn’t an official emotional support animal, but she was, in all ways, to me. As I was hers, helping her through her scary times.

She just had her annual physical in August. She was tip-top. And then, two Fridays ago, she suddenly began walking into walls and doors. She had trouble with the stairs and getting around the condo. It was, I said, like she suddenly couldn’t see. I took her in to the emergency vet, who thought she had SARDS (Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration Syndrome), which can cause dogs to go blind in a matter of hours. That night, I asked Michael, if he could hear me, wherever he is, if he’s anywhere, if he could do something. This was Ursula. She couldn’t go blind. I needed her too much.

The next day, I brought her back to the vet to see a doggie ophthalmologist. He said it wasn’t SARDS, that her left eye could still see some, though her right eye was blind right now. He thought it might be an infection, and so she was given an IV of a steroid, and sent home with Prednisone and two antibiotics. She had an appointment to see a neurologist, as there was a chance it wasn’t an infection at all, but something in her brain.

From Tuesday to early Sunday morning, things seemed hopeful. Ursula was making her way easily through the house, and up and down the stairs. Her tail was wagging. Every now and then, she banged the right side of her head on something, but she quickly learned to be aware of that, and moved her head away quickly with barely a thump. I was amazed, and so, so relieved.

But then at 3:00 Sunday morning, she began making odd noises. I looked over to her loveseat, and saw that it was swaying. When I got to her, she was in full seizure, her feet running, and her face was crammed deep into a corner of the loveseat, blocking her breathing. I released her head, held her as she fell onto the floor. She settled down some, enough to stand up and return to the loveseat, and then seizure two started. I yelled for Olivia, who thankfully was staying overnight, so she could stand by and support Ursula as I got dressed and called my son Andy. There was no way I could carry a 50-pound dog down two flights of stairs by myself.

In the car on the way to the emergency vet, she had her third seizure. And at the vet, she had her fourth.

It was clear this was not an infection. So I made the decision. Both Olivia and I held her as she crossed over.

I’ve been struck hard with how similar Ursula’s death is to Michael’s. With both, I sincerely thought they were getting better. They were going to be fine. In both cases, after I said this belief out loud, to them, they were soon gone.

There is no moment of happiness here. I am struggling. Everything that has happened seems very wrong and very unfair. But to take my dog, who was always, always by my side, just seems…there is no word.

I just want my dog back.

Ursula was named Ursula after Ursula Le Guin, a phenomenally strong woman writer. I named Ursy, feeling that she had to be a strong woman to get through what she’d already gone through in life when we adopted her. If there is a moment of happiness here, it’s that she came out of a horrible situation into a life where she was truly loved, truly respected, truly a family member. And there is a moment of happiness in that she was here with me during the worst times of my life, and she helped me through.

She had to be a strong woman, a strong dog. And I have to be a strong woman too. I’ve been assured by many that this is who I am – and I am working hard to live up to it.

That will have to do. That will have to be enough.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.