Requiem for Riley
The best of all possible puppies teaches a lesson one family won’t forget
By Jack Gordon
Photo by Martha Rich (Illustration)
(page 2 of 2)
MAYBE YOU FEEL that your plate of anxieties is already overloaded, what with terrorism, global warming, secondhand smoke and all. But in case you are in the market for one more thing to fear, here is what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website has to say about a certain family of innocuous-looking mushrooms that evidently can appear not only in dark, mossy forests but right in your front yard:
“Several mushroom species, including the Death Cap or Destroying Angel (Amanita phalloides, A. virosa)…produce a family of cyclic octapeptides called amanitins…. Symptoms appear at the end of [a 6- to 48-hour] latent period in the form of sudden, severe seizures of abdominal pain, persistent vomiting, and watery diarrhea, extreme thirst, and lack of urine production. If this early phase is survived…followed by a rapid and severe loss of strength, prostration, and pain-caused restlessness. Death in 50 to 90 percent of the cases from progressive and irreversible liver, kidney, cardiac, and skeletal muscle damage may follow within 48 hours (large dose)….”
That is to say, a “large dose” of Death Cap mushroom will kill up to 90 percent of the humans who mess with it, if admitted 60 or more hours after ingesting it. Riley was a 10-pound puppy. She developed seizures, went blind, and seemed to be hallucinating. The vets induced a semi-coma and hooked her up with a catheter and an intravenous line, warning Megan and Joel that treatment would be expensive and the outcome dubious. She might not last 24 hours. Even if she lived she likely would suffer permanent liver damage. Maybe brain damage, too.
This was the best of all possible puppies, however, and by Wednesday afternoon, with the vet bill standing at $2,500, Megan and Joel agreed to a last-ditch attempt at CPR that pushed the cost above $3,000. They bought themselves a few more hours of agony before Riley died.
That, as they say, is life. We are all here conditionally, dogs and people alike. Grief, pain, and death can befall us in preposterous ways, as if dropping from a clear sky. We accept defeat and cut our losses or we fight, and when we fight we sometimes lose. A lawn mushroom? A goddamned lawn mushroom? “She’s just a baby,” Megan cried, stunned by the viciousness of it.
Well, after all, it was just a dog, yes? As for the daughter, if she’s old enough to live on her own, she’s old enough to know that God doesn’t spare the innocent. But the thing is, she had seen that principle demonstrated before, as had we all. The knowledge doesn’t help much. It is one thing to understand that life can be capricious and cruel. It is another to watch your dog die in agony for the crime of being too unsophisticated to stick to eating grass.
The best thing to do under the circumstances, of course, was the one that sounded most callous when we all urged it upon Megan and Joel: get another puppy, and the sooner the better. A puggle named Madden now lives in Chicago with very attentive parents.
I don’t ignore lawn mushrooms anymore. The list of threats lying in wait for dogs and daughters is far too long for me to imagine I can really protect either from coming to grief. We are all here only until some unexpected thing happens. But there is comfort in refusing to let the same damn thing get you twice.
Jack Gordon, a frequent contributor to Minnesota Monthly, most recently wrote about jury duty and lives in Eden Prairie.
