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Nikki's Story
Nikki and I found each other in November 1992. My good friend, Bonnie, and her husband were taking their young boys to pick out puppies from a friend of theirs who's dog had a litter. I had been wanting to get a dog, so I asked if they minded if I tag along. So, after work, I rushed home and went to the small local variety store to grab whatever puppy things they carried. It was a very limited selection, but I got a collar (which turned out to be way too big for a 6 week old puppy!) and leash, a food/water bowl and a couple of doggy squeak toys. Then, I headed over to Bonnie's house to go see the puppies. When we got there, the Momma dog was a beautiful German Shepard chained to her house in the yard at the edge of their driveway. We went in the house, and the woman brought in the cutest 4 little puppies I'd ever seen. We were told that the daddy was a neighbor's yellow lab. There were 2 boys and 2 girls. One of the girl puppies had one brown eye and one blue eye. I was actually leaning toward taking that puppy home with me. In the meantime, the smaller girl puppy had crawled into my lap and was making herself quite at home there. One of the boys, TJ (who, by the way, just turned 21!!!), wanted to hold her, so I set her in his lap. Well, she was having none of that! She fought her way out of his arms and right back into my lap. Needless to say, this was the puppy I brought home. I have always felt that her picking me, was what made our relationship so special.
Well, we came home without a name, so for the first 3 days, I was just calling her Buckwheat while I contemplated some names. By the time I'd settled on the name Nikki, the nickname "Buckwheat" had stuck. The Bertha part of the name came about a year or so later. I was watching the movie "Sister Act" starring Whoopi Goldberg with my brother, Jason. There's a scene in the movie where Whoopi is telling the other nuns about a hooker she once knew named Buckwheat Bertha. Well, Jason picked up on that, and hence "Buckwheat Bertha" was born.
Nikki, being part Labrador Retriever, loved to play fetch, whether it be with sticks, balls or frisbees. Her favorite game was frisbee. But, you'd better have 2 or it was a very 1-sided game of catch! I'd have to have a frisbee waiting to throw when she got back, or she'd hang onto the one in her mouth and run off with it. She was really good at running down those frisbees and sitting underneath them waiting to catch them.
When Nikki was about 7-8 months old, I was working long hours, so I decided that she needed a playmate. So, we adopted Boomer from Stray Haven, the local animal shelter. She and Boomer were best of buds and they were inseparable. However, Boomer suffered serious separation anxiety, so we couldn't bring him to Tampa with us when we moved in 1998. So, we had to place Boomer with a new home. He went on to live at a farm with lots of land where he could roam free and his new master used to take him to work with him (he was a milk truck driver).
In 1998, we moved to Tampa, FL. We lived there for 21 months. During our time in Florida, Nikki had a difficult time adjusting to the climate - she still put on her thick NY winter coat during the fall, winter and spring months - and it was very hot for her (and me!). It was during our time in Tampa that I became an avid Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan, hence the modification to Nikki's nickname of "Buc"wheat Bertha. I got my first computer, too, while living in Tampa, so when I was trying to think of a screenname, I went with bucwheatbertha, which is my screenname for everything these days. While living in Tampa, this is when Nikki picked up her 2nd favorite game of chasing the birdies and kitties. Our friend Marge had 2 cats who terrorized Nikki everytime we came over to visit. Plus, there were neighborhood cats that would get into fights outside our apartment, so just the sound of a hissing cat would set her off. The bird chasing was a fun game. Our apartment had a fenced in back yard and I'd leave the back door open on cooler days, so that she could have free reign of her yard. Well, the layout of our apartment was open from the living room through the kitchen and straight out the backdoor. She would lay in wait in the living room and wait until there were at least a couple dozen birds in the yard, then run barking through the kitchen and out the door scattering the birds. Then, she'd come back in and lay in her spot waiting for them to venture back down out of the tree and into the yard. I could sit and watch her play like that for hours. She entertained herself and me with that game! LOL
Well, in the summer of 2000, we came to Nashville to visit Jason. During our visit, I picked up a Tennessean and saw 8 different travel agent jobs in the paper. So, when I got back home to Tampa, I sent my resume to all 8 of them. I got 6 call backs and interviews, so came back to Nashville for the next couple of weeks to interview. I got an offer and we moved to Nashville on August 15, 2000. For the first 8 months, we lived in an apartment in South Nashville off Nolensville & Edmondson Pike. But, Nikki had never been without a yard and I knew that it wasn't fair to keep her confined in an apartment. So, we found a house to rent in the country on Eaton's Creek Rd (West Nashville/Joelton area). We lived there for 4 1/2 years before buying the house where we currently live in Joelton. The house on Eaton's Creek Road was by far Nikki's favorite home since leaving NY.
She totally owned her yard, doing "perimeter checks" throughout the day from her first morning potty break to her last one before bed and several times throughout the day. She really enjoyed playing frisbee and chasing birds in her new BIG, flat yard! There was even trails in the woods behind our house where our landlord used to let us go hiking. We took advantage of that quite often until we experienced a scary incident that kept me from ever venturing into those woods again. Normally, when we'd go hiking in the woods, Nikki would be off leash and she'd be sniffing the weeds all along the trail. I'd get a ways ahead of her on the trail, then she'd come running up behind me and past me to her next patch of weeds to sniff. It was a back and forth like that for the whole hike. On this one particular day, things seemed eerily quiet with no birds chirping or squirrels scurrying about. We were on our way back out of the woods and Nikki was doing her usual sniffing and running ahead of me, but all of a sudden, she turned back and came to me like she was trying to get me to follow her. She just ran straight out of the woods without stopping to sniff anything and she'd keep turning around and coming back to me. I had the eerie feeling of being followed and with her odd behavior, it was all I could do to not start running myself, for fear that whatever was stalking us would take chase. It seemed like the longest fast walk out of those woods I'd ever experienced. Once we got out of the woods, Nikki took off on a dead run back to the house and was waiting for me in our yard. I honestly feel that she saved our lives that day. I don't know what predatory animal was stalking us, but we never went hiking up in there again, that's for sure!!!
It is in the early summer of 2005, at the age of 12 that she was chasing a bird across the yard, when she came up yelping and limped back to the house. I got her in the car and took her down to the vet's office and this is when we first met Dr. Givan, who turned out to be a Godsend to us. She diagnosed her with a torn ACL. Due to her age, she wanted to try to avoid surgery, so the recommended course of treatment was to keep her off her leg as much as possible and try to let it heal on its own. Well, my psycho-baby, got away from me outside one day and went chasing after the neighbors cat and hurt the leg even more by then tearing her MCL. So, now I really had to be careful and keep her off that leg. Well, Mother Nature stepped in and gave us another scare turned blessing in disguise, when she came down with 'old dog vestibular syndrome' which is essentially the same as virtigo in people. As I previously stated, Dr Givan was a Godsend. Many vets misdiagnose the disease as a stroke and euthanize them. Luckily, Dr Givan was on duty that day and she recognized it right away. And, the blessing in disguise? She was bedridden for several weeks, which kept her off her leg and allowed it to heal without surgery.
That Fall of 2005, we moved to our current house out here in Joelton. After a couple of years of careful consideration and debate, I decided to try to find another dog to bring into the house who wouldn't be too energetic for
my old lady, but would also maybe give her a bit of an energy boost. When I saw Rachel's picture as the "Adoptable Pet of the Week" on a local website in early April 2008, I was drawn to her eyes. I clicked on the link and saw that she was with a rescue group in East Tennessee. I dismissed the thought at first due to how far away she was. But, something kept drawing me back to that website until I finally picked up the phone and called about her. I talked to her Foster Mom, Terri, and she described Rachel's personality and energy level as being very similar to Nikki's. It worked out that I was going to be in Gatlinburg visiting a client in 2 weeks, so I made arrangements to get pre-approved as an adopter, and scheduled a time to stop and see her on our way home from Gatlinburg. Well, on April 20, 2008, Rachel Ray (aka Ray-Ray) came home with us. She and Nikki pretty much came to a mutual agreement to leave each other alone and stay out of each other's space. They co-existed quite nicely. And, as I'd hoped, Rachel's presence did in fact, make her more energetic and playful...mostly out of jealousy, but I wasn't questioning it.
In Mid-March 2009, Nikki had bloody diarrhea and I took her back down to see Dr. Givan. She sent us home with medicines to try to treat the bleeding. The bloody stool cleared up after a week, so we thought she was getting better, but she never regained her appetite. So, within 2 weeks after the visit to Dr Givan, it was visibly apparent that she'd lost a considerable amount of weight, so I took her back down to the vet's office. This time, she drew blood and took her off all her other meds and put her on Cerenia and Pepcid to help calm her indigestion and try to get her appetite back. The next day, Dr Givan called to report that
the bloodwork showed elevated creatin and BUN levels (kidneys), so I brought her back in for subQ fluids. At that time, they took a urine sample for urinalysis which showed a urinary tract infection. So, we went back down for an ultrasound of her kidneys and liver to ensure that there was no cancer. I was relieved to find out that there was no sign of cancer, however, the news wasn't great. Dr Givan said that she was back in kidney failure and that the treatment would be the same as last year - fluids and special diet. We had 3 straight days of subQs and then checked her levels again. They were greatly improved, coming down from 3.4 to 2.6. Still high (normal for her age was 2.0-2.2), but definitely going in the right direction.
So, we came home that night with a new plan of attack and she had a great appetite that evening. But, as BAD luck would have it, we had an accident that evening involving peroxide that got into her eyes. The stress of it was a setback over the weekend and when we went back in on Monday for a check on her kidneys again, her levels had gone back up to 3.2. Dr. Givan showed me how to give her the subQ injections at home, since she needed to have them again for another 3 days straight and it would be in Nikki's best interest to avoid the stress of coming into the vet office for them. So, we came home and I gave her the subQ's for the next couple of days and it was working! On Wednesday, she ate 3 good meals, so I started giving her her pain meds again.
Well, the BLB bug bit us yet again that evening! My neighbors' kid's girlfriend hit Nikki with her car while she was turning around in my driveway. Since I didn't see the incident myself - I only heard her yelp - I didn't see where she got hit or how hard. She'd walked away and wouldn't let me touch her to look her over. The girl claimed to have not seen her, so she couldn't tell me where Nikki'd been hit either. Later, when things calmed down a bit, I was able to look and feel Nikki over and everything seemed okay. But, from that point on, what progress we'd made was lost and she went downhill in a hurry. By Saturday, when it was time for her next subQ injection, she cried throughout the process, which just broke my heart. These normally made her feel better and I couldn't stand that it made her hurt. She didn't perk up and get her appetite back afterward like she normally did. Sunday she didn't even come out of the bedroom until 3:00 in the afternoon and I could tell that she was in pain. She was making a grunting sound with her breathing and by the evening, she had a dry cough followed by a gurgling sound. I prayed all day and all night and I asked her what should I do. By the end of the evening, I knew what I must do for her. I called Dr Givan first thing that Monday morning and explained what Nikki was going through and she assured me that we had done everything possible to do for her and that since she'd continued to decline, then the best thing we could do for her is to be merciful and not put her through the long, slow painful death of starvation and kidney failure. As painful as this decision was for me, I just could not prolong Nikki's suffering to delay my own. So, we made an appointment for me to bring her in at the end of the day. I had that entire day to say my good-byes. My good friend Mandy offered to go with me, which I am forever grateful to her for the support.
Nikki did experience enjoyment that day. She thoroughly enjoyed the car ride and while it breaks my heart to envision her happy face in the back seat, I take comfort in knowing that she finally had an enjoyable moment despite the pain she was in. Her passing was very peaceful and I held her right til the end. Dr Givan and the staff at Animal Health Center of Franklin were absolutely wonderful! They gave me plenty of time to say good bye. The hardest thing was walking out of that room. But, we did, and I'm so glad that Mandy was there to drive me, because I was certainly in no condition to be behind the wheel of a car. We went to dinner and back to her place where we sat on the porch listening to music and drinking some beers. It was very reminiscent of our old times and it was very comforting to experience those feelings from a time when Nikki was still completely healthy, pre-leg injury and vestibular syndrome.
While Nikki never quite seemed to be as comfortable here as she'd been at our old house on Eaton's Creek Rd, this was her final home. She permeates this house in every single nook and cranny. No matter where I look, there is a memory of her. But, there isn't a single nook or cranny of my heart that she didn't own, so it shouldn't be any other way. I am very grateful to have Rachel here with me during this very difficult time. She's been a great comfort and I hope that I'm fortunate enough to have as great a relationship with her as I had with Nikki. There will never be another Nikki, but I am so thankful for the 16 1/2 wonderful years that I had with her and will cherish and honor her memory always. That is the purpose of this website, so I thank you for reading Nikki's story and sharing your own personal memories of my "Little Bucwheat" in her guestbook. | |||||||||
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