Chapter 25: All About Brutus

Brutus Comes Home

This is Brutus.  He was born October 30, 2004 in a trailer outside of Cambridge, Ohio.  We had read about him and his siblings in The Columbus Dispatch and were in the market for a puppy.  Brutus seemed to fill the bill.  Since we were headed to the Akron/Canton area for a housewarming party that day, we stopped to look at the "8 week old" advertised CKC Shih-Tzu's.

We should have done the math instead of taking the breeder at face value.  We were told Brutus was eight weeks old; his small stature was attributed to the size of his parents.. We asked to see them and were told "well, his dad doesn't live here."  We never did see the mom.  It's really a shame; Brutus would have benefited from the additional 3 weeks of mommy-time so she could have taught him about the finer aspects of social graces.  As it was, he was the epitome of trailer trash.

We pulled up to the trailer and were just a might scared at the size of the wood piled up by the house.  The amount of smoke coming from the trailer was astounding and we thought the whole place was ablaze.

 Had we realized Brutus was only five weeks old we might have walked away.  As it was, the little black bundle of fur was already entwined in our heart strings, so against every muscle in our combined bodies we took the little beast out of his 65 foot by 12 foot existence.

 The picture above represents that day. This occurred in early December of 2004.   This was the year of the big ice storm in Ohio.  We were without power for the better part of the week.  One of the highlights of the week was Connie starting Brutus down the potty-training road. Connie caught him in mid-squat, scooped him up and out the back door. The problem was the back steps had about an inch and a half of ice on them.  Brutus was flying through the air while Connie was lying on the back step.  I was on my way home from work when Connie called me on her cell phone with the bad news, and I scurried as much as I could given the icy road conditions to get her to a hospital.  She required stitches in her arm.  Many folks swear to this day that we went to the hospital to enjoy the warmth.  I'm not going to say we didn't enjoy it while we were there, but I'd ask you to look at the scar on her arm for proof of her injury.

I retired from ODOT at the beginning of 2009, and took a job with Info Tech starting in June of 2009.  It was the summer before Brutus's 5th birthday.  I was living in Gainesville in a hotel for 2 out of four weeks a month.  Brutus had a vet appointment, because he was not able to digest his food properly.  It was then we started him on the half-of-a-pepcid a day routine that he would have to adhere to for the rest of his life.  

Brutus was always in charge of his own life.  He took the pepcid faithfully, ate his food as if he had never eaten before, and growled at his brothers if they looked at him while he was eating.  He loved chasing squirrels in the back yard, occasionally treeing one and spending the entire day in the yard beneath the tree of the day.

Connie was holding him on a beautiful Fall day in 2009 and he almost passed.  It was right around the time of his birthday.  He had been on meds including kepra for seizures during this time.  When he began to fade away, mom and Connie took him to Med Vet in north Columbus.  This was the only place that wanted anything to do with him.    He was diagnosed with a liver shunt; a strange disease that basically builds an artificial pathway around the liver.  All the blood that normally passed through his liver was basically dumped directly into his system, bypassing the filtration that the liver provides.  It also results in a smaller than normal liver.  

He was deemed "not likely" to survive the surgery; but we had faith in him and in Doggie Howser who was the physician at Med Vet who performed his surgery. ( Doggie's real name is Dr. Kennedy).

I flew home to Reynoldsburg in time for Brutus' surgery.  Dr. Kennedy was amazed at the size of the shunt, and felt like he needed to draw us a picture on the white board.  He stated again that Brutus may last a year, but not to expect even that from him.  His surgery was hard on him and recovery was even more difficult.  Little did the doctor know that Brutus was worth 9 more years!

Brutus at Easter 2018

All told we were out $6,800, five of that directly attributable to his liver problems.  We both agree it was money well spent.

We lost Brutus last month, just a few months shy of his 14th birthday.  He is in the china cabinet now with Billy and Chance who preceded him in death by several years.  We always thought that Brutus missed his bro' Chance but not so much Billy!  We tried to replace the boys with two Shima brothers from Fort McCoy, but that was ludicrous.  How can you possibly replace your first born?

Here is a more recent picture of Brutus.  Rest in Peace, Buddy.  Sorry it has to end this wayl