A Heavy Heart--Hoping for a Rainbow Bridge

By Linda Grupp Boutin

It is with the heaviest of hearts that I must share with you the loss of our dancing basenji boy, Kindu. Despite all our efforts, attempts at homemade meals and pancreatic enzymes, vitamins and digestive medicines, he lost his battle with digestive disease on September 17th. We found so many foods he just loved, for a week or two, but, in the end, despite eating, his scarred intestines could no longer absorb the nutrients required to sustain him. It turned into a long, hard grind for him to simply eat or drink. 

About a week before he crossed over the rainbow bridge, a new friend, Bridget, stopped by our house. He greeted her entrance with an enthusiastic baroo and spent most of the evening trying to steal her chair which she graciously gave him. He attended our meeting quietly waiting for it to end. This was one unique dog among dogdom. Leash snapped in place, we walked her to her car with  Star and returned home after the dogs finished their business.

Comfy for the night, he stretched his long, skinny frame beside me and I ran my fingers over his prominent rib cage recalling the many conversations over the last month between Gary and me that, "Our boy is failing." I would introduce a new food, make a fresh run to Petco for another different canned food, cook up a round of chicken thighs and baked potatoes...an endless array of trying to tempt our boy to eat something, anything...



During the final month we tried all we could do to restore his strength and spirit. Trips to the dog park brought happiness, but he no longer ran and played, choosing instead to stay beside us. As always his favorite place was stretched alongside one of us in the recliner or better yet for a nap in the big bed. We settled into a daily routine including cooking, feeding him, cajoling him to eat, walking him and picking up after him. Once the food reached his tummy, we hoped for the best but too often watched him endure pain from the feeding.

I weighed him frequently watching his weight fluctuate between 20-22 pounds. No matter what I tried I could not help him regain to his thin 24 pounds or robust 27. Eventually he would no longer eat twice a day anymore, but only would eat after the heat of the day late in the evening. He no longer wanted a morning drink of water and drank less and less every day. He turned up his nose one evening to all food except a hand-fed chicken thigh sitting on the floor beside him. We knew we had reached his limit and decided that the next morning to give him his release.

His final trip in the car provided him the delight of sticking his nose out the window and letting the wind brush back his ever-alert ears. I drove and Gary held his pal and little buddy on his lap, holding onto the spirit of joy and mischief that filled our home to overflowing for just 7 short years. A normal lifespan for basenjis is 12-14 years. But we knew our boy had some special challenges with his digestion along with eye issues from too much inbreeding. We always will cherish these final 9 months when Kindu worked so hard to eat and drink to please us.

It is my dearest hope that somehow God has provided a special place across a rainbow bridge for my fur babies. I am so grateful that He placed these examples of unconditional love in my life for me to emulate. I envision all the dogs of my life running through a green meadow chasing one another in circles and shaking their heads about the silly pair of humans they have shared in their pack over all these many years.

Kindu the summer before his illness took over

From my friend Linda Conger