I was SO excited for my fall trip to DC. It's become one of my favorite parts of the spring and fall each year and I so look forward to catching up with my clients and seeing girlfriends as well as the sights! I arrived Friday morning, got to see the monuments with my DC bestie before brunch with her and then heading over to another girlfriends. I sat on her patio for an hour chatting away and then head to my sessions. I photographed my 3 families and head back to my girlfriends to settle in.
And that's where the chaos for the next 7 days began.
Derek called that evening to say Drew wasn't feeling well and he took him for a COVID test. About 30 minutes later I logged on to see the word positive. Cue panic on Derek's part with me out of town and 2 other kids to keep away from Drew, one of which has severe environmental allergy induced asthma. In short, he flipped out. I felt terrible that I was now exposed and had been near my friend and her family (I had just done their pictures that evening) so I booked a hotel room, said my goodbye's from a distance headed on over. Derek quarantined Drew to his room and we decided I would stay and continue working considering Drew is 10 and can handle life on his own in that room. He also wasn't feeling too bad, just had a fever for 2 days and then had a lingering cough with some nasal congestion. He had the ipad, switch, legos, books and tons of other things to keep him company and Derek could still leave the house because he has a watch that he can call us on. I would be home on Monday morning and all would be ok.
But then Saturday mid morning Derek called and was FaceTiming Bailey with what we both thought was a stroke. She couldn't stand, her head was completely drooping to one side and her eyes were going crazy. She's 14 and really hasn't shown many signs of anything other than the normal getting old dog stuff. We were both terrified so Derek loaded up the little kids and rushed her to the animal hospital that I was on the phone with prepping. Cue lots of tears and stress on both of our parts. To keep the story kind of short, they stabilized her and that evening told Derek the diagnosis of vestibular disease and kidney failure. The kidney part we understood because she had been chugging water, even out of toilets for a few weeks prior to that. I went on to photograph 5 more families wearing a mask due to my exposure to Drew before I left town and staying back from them. They all were understanding. By Saturday evening I could tell Derek was stressing out big time and together we made the decision that I would come home in the morning on Sunday instead of Monday and give up my last 3 families. It wasn't worth it to stay knowing Bailey was in a hospital and not doing well at all on top of Drew being sick. I found a backup photographer who would take them on and we switched my flights.
I could not sleep at ALL that night and at 3:30 happened to check my phone to see my flight was cancelled. Derek was also up in Texas as Will had thrown up from coughing so we were able to connect. Come to find out 1100 of Southwest Airlines flights were cancelled and we panicked. Everything out of DC for the day was gone so we made the smart and quick decision to grab the last seat on a flight out of Baltimore to which we actually think was the last seat left the entire day. I packed up quickly, took my rental car at 4:30am back to DCA airport and then Derek had an uber waiting for me to drive me up to Baltimore. I walked into the airport and there was 200+ people in the Southwest line trying to resolve their cancelled flights and I felt SUPER lucky that Derek and I acted so quickly. I checked my bag and was on the way home.
Derek picked me up from the airport with the littles and we immediately went to Cook to have them tested for COVID both of which, thankfully, were negative. Derek also tested negative. I showed zero symptoms so never tested but am pretty sure I was negative too. After that we went straight to the animal hospital. It was hard and we chatted with them for a while but decided to bring Bailey home for the evening to make some decisions. The hard part was the dogs CAN recover from this vestibular thing. It's just that she had the double whammy of old age AND kidney failure on top of it. At this point she wasn't able to stand, wouldn't drink or eat anything (I had to straw feed her water to wet her mouth) and was moaning and groaning.
Hazel laid by her side the entire time and was very sweet with Bailey. Animal instinct is a real thing and she definitely knew Bailey was very sick.
My parents came over to see her while she was outside in the grass just in case we had to make some tough decisions. They were staying away from us due to the COVID so it worked out well that we had Bailey out back for a while.
This is how we carried her out to the grass which was her favorite place.
We slept on any decisions and by the next morning knew it was time to say goodbye. Instead of just moaning and groaning in annoyance she was whimpering the saddest cry. We don't know if it was sadness that she couldn't get up to go outside to the bathroom or pain or just telling us that it was ok to let her go but we knew that we couldn't keep her in this state and needed to let her go with dignity.
This is the last picture we ever took of her.
And this is the sweet little area where we were with her when she crossed the rainbow bridge. It was the most beautiful day and she was on her favorite bed with her pink bandana that she wore most of her life. I said a prayer over her and were both in her face telling her how amazing of a dog she was before she left us.
It had been 6ish years or so since we let Lacy go and I had forgotten about the pain after. It physically hurt. Like really bad. For days. It was day 5 that I was able to not cry. To others it might sound dramatic but to us she was our 'heart dog'. They say that your heart dog is the one dog you'll be most connected to in your life. Bailey was that for us. With not a single mean bone in her body she was our companion, running buddy, child lover and best friend for 14 years. It's quiet in the house without her nails clinking and I miss her so much. We love you Bailey and hope you are chasing all of the balls and getting all of the snuggles in heaven.
Here's a little walk down memory lane in no particular order...
I'm SOOOOO thankful we had her as part of our family pictures in September 2020.
