The Morrisons: Carly's Story

It was a hot and rainy morning on Sunday, September 14th, 2003, when the phrase "I pick that one!" went down in history.

After moving to Texas in June, buying a house, settling into our jobs, it was time to expand our family. We both wanted a dog, but size was the only thing in debate. Scott wanted a small dachshund, I aimed for a Great Pyrenees, hoping to end up with a Lab in the end. We applied to a dachshund rescue group in Dallas, eagerly awaiting a response. Nothing. So, we applied to DFWLRR, and got a call back that evening. Boy, were we stoked! We went through the rest of the adoption process-- passed our home study, got approved to adopt and meet dogs that matched our criteria-- young, yellow females.

We drove up to Denton to meet a sweet dog named Hailey, but she was not very energetic nor interested in us. So we drove down to Dallas to meet another dog named Carly. After talking with her foster, Mary Anne, we met the complete opposite of Hailey-- Carly was excited, energetic and very interested in us. Scott was head over heels in love! We decided to adopt Carly. She was indeed a pretty little who came from the Irving animal shelter that previous Friday night. (Unfortunately, her previous life was unknown, but we guessed she was too much for someone to handle.)

We brought Carly home to our house in Richardson, and she was so happy to run and play! She was a constant ball of energy and excitement. With both of us working, we crated her during the day time, exercised and played with her from the time we got home till the time we went to bed. Some of her favorite toys were stuffed animals, which we ended up buying at garage sales for a quarter. She disemboweled them so quickly and was on to the next. She also loved to tear up milk jugs and potatoes. She was a challenge on the leash and we tried many different devices to get her to walk calmly. (Little did we know it would take 13 years to solve that problem!) She became my running buddy and we would jog the trails and streets in our neighborhood. She loved to be out and about and quickly became quite a fixture in Duck Creek.

Carly had her fair share of bizarre injuries throughout the years. We often joked that they kept a spot reserved for us at the emergency vet because when something happened, it was on the weekend or after hours. Her first adventure involved a Chevy on Arapaho. She slipped out of her body harness and made a beeline for Arapaho where she was hit by a car. Amazingly, she emerged with just a few scratches. Another time, she got stung by something on the nose in the middle of the night, which required a 2am trip for a antihistamine shot. One holiday weekend, she cut her paw when jumping into the water at White Rock Lake. Carly also had her ACL replaced after years of activity. (Not one single event could be connected to that surgery.) Another time she was checking out the dog behind the fence when the dog busted through a fence board and nailed her in the nose.

Carly loved to swim. Without a pool of our own, we would take her to parks with a long extend a leash and let her swim in the lakes. She would attend end of season pool closings and swim till her paws bled, spending the rest of the day in Scott's closet. She loved to romp along the banks of the creek and chase balls in White Rock Lake like nobody's business. She loved those soft, squeaky latex balls and was never beat when retrieving it in water.

She was a funny eater. To keep her busy, we tried all sorts of food containers to disburse her food or make her find it. She would play "mind games" with our fosters and eventually, just with Reese, eating one morsel at a time. We used to put gravy over her food to entice her to eat.

Carly was an incredible foster sister to 26 dogs, a venture we got into based on a bad football wager by Scott. We kept her as alpha, letting her have full run of the house and sleep on our bed at night. She enjoyed playing with the other dogs and we loved finding homes for these pups. Our foster failures came with #20, Reese, and #25 and #26, Rosie and Jackson.

Carly loved to go to the dog park in Plano. On Sundays, we would head up there. Scott would read the paper and we would let her circulate around the park like a social butterfly. She was so interested in people and other dogs.

We were very fortunate to travel quite a bit with her, even if it meant her riding in the front seat with me. Our first camping experience was to Inks Lake State Park and day trips to Pedernales State Park. Anxious in the car, we tried to give her Benadryl, but she fought that tooth and nail. Instead of anxious or calm dog, we had something like a drunk and drugged dog. We also ventured out to Colorado Bend State Park, and a rainy weekend in Caprock Canyon. We drove to Florida with her, stopping at FSU and UF with our girl. She swam in Scott's parents pool and was intimidated by the dogs and cats at my mom's house. She loved the beach and got to swim in the Atlantic Ocean. We also made two trips to Galveston with her where she quickly learned not to drink the salt water. She took two trips also to Beavers Bend, OK and enjoyed hiking and swimming up there as well.

When she wasn't traveling with us, she enjoyed various pet-sitters-- Tina, Lori, Uncle Casey, Glen, and Wendy. Our first pet sitters taught her how to "talk", so there went her barking for attention trick.

Claire was born in 2007 when Carly was five years old. Carly took it all in stride although she wasn't crazy about this two-legged little noise maker until Claire started eating solids, and then it was game on! Family pictures were harder to come by with Reese and Carly and a baby, but we loved snapping pictures of everyone together. The twins arrived almost 2 years later when Carly was 7, and I'm sure she thought, "Whaaa???" No, she was good with the kiddos, but when she had her fill, she would up and leave. Jude was born in 2012 and Carly was almost 10 years old. By now she was a completely seasoned "mother" dog and enjoyed another food thrower.

Life was good when the children were young and she and Reese were aging. Our activities outside the home may have decreased some, but Carly and Reese had each other. They loved to wrestle, play "mouthsies" and beat each other out the door in the backyard.

In 2014, we bought a new home and transitioned everyone and everything over there. With a pool of our own, Carly would leap into the water and chase those squeaky balls. She loved exploring the terraced back yard. When we built a tree fort, that was her favorite place to watch from. She still slept on our bed at night and was constantly with me during the day while the kids went off to school. She was my co-pilot, dropping kids off at school or picking them up from sports practices.

She lost her brother, Reese on May 10, 2016, and with him went a piece of her spunk. Almost 14 years old, she started to slow down-- just a bit. People would still ask, "How old is she?" at the park and asked for clarification when I said, "13 years old." She was content to lay around the house on dog beds, and of course the couch.

In August 2016, she picked up a little bit of a kennel cough that we treated with antibiotics. It mostly went away, but then the cough came back in January 2017. It was odd, antibiotics weren't working, so we went to a specialist to, worried it might tracheal or something else. It turned out to be a mass in her lung, hidden behind fatty tumors. We had it biopsied and lo and behold, it was not cancer. It was an abscess of some kind-- rare to be lodged and encapsulated in the lungs. We biopsied again and found it to be fungal-- even more rare. The fungus came back as sporotrichum, another very rare fungus, slow growing and not very responsive to antibiotics. We tried some flucanzole and it helped a little bit. But what she really needed was surgery to remove the abscess; unfortunately, with its location, she would have to undergo open thoracic surgery, At 14 year old, it was not something we could do to her-- the healing process alone was so hard to fathom. The cough was annoying but she was staying steady.

In early April, a strange auto-immune infection began attacking her joints and causing a fever. It fortunately responded to the prednisone, but of course, the steroid had its side-effects. Carly was always drinking lots of water and having to go pee. Fine, we could manage, it was just a middle of the night bathroom break for us. She would jump off the bed, we'd let her out our bedroom and then she would come right back in.

Knowing our senior girl was getting up there in years and not knowing when the end would be, we created a Bucket List for her. The kids and I put together some ideas, and started checking them off.

Carly's Bucket List

Go through an ice cream drive-through

Celebrate her half birthday

Go to the dog park

Take pictures in the bluebonnets

See her foster mom Mary Anne again

Ride in a convertible

Have hamburgers at the McDonald's drive-through

Ride in the back of daddy's truck

Take a walk around Duck Creek/see the old Baugh or shoot

Go through a car wash

Get a doggy massage

Eat at an outdoor cafe

Attend a Girl Scout meeting

Watch a sports practice

On Tuesday, April 25th, the same routine happened-- she got up at 4am to use the bathroom, I let her out, brought her in and put her back on the bed. Unfortunately, something happened between the hours of 4-8am. I called her out for breakfast and she didn’t come. Not too odd, since she didn’t hear well. We got the kids off to school, and I went into check on her. I lifted her off the bed and immediately her legs went out from under her. I tried to right her, but her legs kept slipping. I carried her outside and she peed all over me on the patio. I took her down by the pool, and she was barely able to stand. I sat down with her and held her in my lap. Her gums were white and her ears were pale. By that time Scott, returned home, and we brought her back inside and laid her on her dog bed. We ran to an appointment, and when we got back she was still resting there. I had tried to feed her, but she didn’t eat her breakfast. I took her out front to enjoy the beautiful day, and laid therein the grass while I talked with the vet. I brought her back inside and she lost control of bowels. It was all black. That’s when I knew something was wrong. I called the vet, loaded her in to the car and drove over there with Jude.

I anticipated Dr. Rae saying that she was declining and maybe we had 48 hours. But when Dr. Rae examined her, she was shocked. Carly’s heart was racing and barely pumping blood to her body. She had possibly thrown a clot or the auto-immune disease was coming back aggressively and attacking her red blood cells.

Scott came and quickly as he could and we held our girl tight. We talked to her and thanked her for being the phenomenal spark in our life. She had run the best race she could, but now it was time to let her body rest.

Heaven gained a beautiful angel in that moment, but down on Earth, there were many broken hearts. I can’t wish for one more day or one more week, because we were already on borrowed time, but I still wasn’t ready to let her go. I know truly, madly, deeply that we gave this girl the best life possible for 13.5 years. We are now left without her, and the pain is overwhelming. She was my special girl, my constant wild card, and she will be greatly missed.