The Amazing Story of Blizzer, the German Shepherd
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My beautiful companion Blizzer died on April 27th 2010 at the age of 12 years 8 months, euthanized at our apartment in Blackstone, Massachusetts to spare him the ravages of end stage hip dysplasia arthritis. Due to the exquisite cruelty of the house-call vet I hired to discharge this delicate procedure, my beloved friend left this world in a frantic rush, without my hugs and kisses, and without my affording him the dignity of first saying some words about what a wonderful creature he was and what magnificent times he and I had shared together. He deserved far better, and I would like to make up for part of that shameful betrayal now. This is his story.
Blizzer was a six-week-old puppy when I first met him in August of 1997. I had been mentoring a young, multiply-handicapped, wheelchair-bound person named Chris for the previous two years, and at Chris’s persistent pleading for a German Shepherd puppy to live with him as a therapy pet, I drove him in a rented handicapped access van to visit every animal shelter in the area. There were no matches there, and we finally found Blizzer determinedly tottering among his black-and-tan fur ball littermates at the home of Joan Eaton in Groton, Massachusetts.
I made the purchase (today I would only adopt from a shelter, but I was ignorant about animal issues at the start of this journey), and on September 23rd, I brought my future friend and teacher, nestled on the floor of my car, to live at Chris’s apartment with us. I was to be Blizzer’s primary caregiver, and Chris agreed to do what little he could to help. Unfortunately, Chris soon decided that was going to be VERY little, so Blizzer interacted mostly with me, and as the weeks passed, we bonded strongly. Each day we hiked in the woods, did training exercises and went to a doggie play group. Chris, meanwhile, had begun to reveal a volatile temper and a penchant for drug use, his apartment fast becoming a smoky, screeching magnet for denizens of society’s lower depths. Blizzer’s quiet forest walks with me, and the rollicking play sessions I took him to with his puppy mate Smokey across town, now became our mutual respite from this roiling battleground and I grew increasingly concerned for his safety. When Chris and his rough street friends eventually became involved in serious crime and began chaining Blizzer alone for long periods, I protested and on December 2, 1999, after four years as Chris’s mentor, I was beaten up and thrown out of his apartment, banned by him from ever seeing Blizzer again.
I had known little about dogs when Blizzer first joined Chris’s household but by now I had developed a deep respect and admiration for him, as a sentient creature with thoughts and emotions, possessing as much of an inherent right to enjoy his life and be free of suffering as did any human being. Because of Blizzer, I had become a vegetarian. He had changed my life in profound and permanent ways. I knew that without me to care for him each day at Chris’s place, trapped without an ally in that snake pit and chained alone without exercise or company, Blizzer would be doomed. I could not allow that to happen.
And so began my efforts to rescue Blizzer. A hastily conceived liberation snatch in late December, during which Bliz and I lived for two days as fugitives hiding in various safe houses and pursued by authorities who were persuaded by Chris’s handicapped status that he was the rightful “property owner,” ended with my being forced to return Blizzer to Chris.
After that, I went to court. For the next two years, through seven attorneys and three judges, I fought to regain custody of my friend. During this agonizing and frustrating period, poor Blizzer was kept chained on a cruel six-foot noose chain at Chris’s apartment while local humane groups ignored my pleas and did nothing to intervene.
It seemed every judge sided with Chris because he was in a wheelchair. Those were bleak days. My chances of ever seeing Blizzer again seemed increasingly remote. But I persevered, and finally, after Chris had been involved as an accessory in a murder case, the last judge, Honorable Raymond Brassard, determined that Blizzer would best be cared for by me, and awarded me full custody. On August 10th of 2001, I was reunited with Blizzer and our happy new life together started.
For the rest of his days, I tried to give Blizzer a rich and full existence. Every day we went on long walks in the forest. Bliz swam in lakes and ponds, played with other dogs, romped in winter snows, and was never again, for a single moment, chained or tethered.
We had some rough times. The long court battle, and then the exorbitant expense of treating the many chronic skin, bowel, ear and paw problems that Blizzer had developed as a result of both his loathsome captivity and genetic predisposition, plus his hip dysplasia arthritis which was diagnosed in 2004 and thereafter inexorably worsened, kept me in permanent financial struggle. Without the help of a kind and generous woman named Judy Basteri, who runs a wonderful doggie day care and boarding facility in Reading called
Pet Companions, Blizzer and I would never have been able to stay afloat. There were others, including my attorney Donna Turley, Buddy Dog shelter manager Pam Skewes-Cox, some family members, friends, a thoughtful neighbor, even complete strangers, all of whom gave charitably of themselves at critical times along the way to help Blizzer, and I am deeply grateful to each of them, but it was one-in-a-trillion Judy who was Blizzer’s constant guardian angel, providing safe haven and guidance from the very start, and always there for us in the ensuing years as well, our safe harbor in every storm.
Judy Basteri
Because finding affordable, decent apartments that would accept a large German Shepherd was extremely challenging even in the best of times, and often virtually impossible, Blizzer and I lived at fifteen different places during our nearly nine years together, most of them, with a few notable exceptions, dumps owned by duplicitous slumlords or emotionally disturbed homeowners who were adept at appearing relatively normal during our interviews, then once snaring us inevitably revealed personalities so shockingly twisted that we ended up quickly escaping from them, only to land in another situation that was even worse. Here is a brief sampling, each seeming at the time indelibly tragic, but now admittedly somewhat humorous in the recounting:
Residence #4, Chelsea, MA:
A closet-sized room in the apartment of a deaf, terminally angry woman in a gray Moe cut. Every morning at 5:00 am, she blasted us with Native American nature chants loud enough to register on Richter sensors worldwide. Length of stay: four months.
Residence #5, Watertown, MA:
A one-bedroom apartment in a multi-dwelling hovel with enough exotic mold on the bathroom walls to supply the Department of Defense’s BioWeapons unit for the next century. Our lovely upstairs neighbor turned out to be a sociopathic career criminal with a knuckle-thick rap sheet comprising every violent offense short of murder, and after I asked her to stop belting show tunes at 3 am, she made it known she intended to rectify that singular omission with me. Thirteen months, twelve police emergency visits and innumerable district court appearances later, she was evicted, and her apartment was then taken by a comparatively mild-mannered
Al Qaeda terrorist.
Residence #12, Acton, MA:
A thimble-sized space in the house of an obese, fuming, dwarf pharmacy technician who was plotting to kill her pharmacist boss. This freak’s idea of sanitation was to wash her hands only AFTER she had taken a dump without flushing, picked up the dead rabid mice her cat left on the kitchen counter, made a salad, and set the table. Blizzer and I somehow lasted several months here without contracting Lassa fever, but after our gentle roomie intentionally left cooked chicken bones on the lawn which Bliz got into and could have choked on, we packed our bags.
Residence #13, Maynard, MA:
An odiferous room in a halfway house inhabited by an Amazonian female sex addict, her squat, rotund female arch enemy, the TV sets they hurled at each other during their frequent brawls, their dogs, and a basement full of Nigerian drug runners. Less than one week after the mellow house manager had given me permission to move in with Blizzer, the property owner returned from a “sales” trip to Africa and threatened to dismember me without anesthetic, because “You dog ees shedding in mah bootiful house! You must stop heem from shedding and take down hees beeg ramp! Raht now! Or ah keel you!” The police were duly summoned. Length of residence: four weeks.
Residence #14, Stow, MA:
Two alternately frigid and Sahara-hot rooms in the house of a suicidal, schizoid inventor and his ex-wife, the former who constantly stalked me, loudly hissing “Traitor! Traitor!” the latter an alleged artist who specialized in portraits of decapitated children.This hellhole was truly one of our all-time worst, both roommates incorrigibly disingenuous and loopy, and the yard so steeply sloped that it was utter torture for Blizzer’s arthritic legs to climb up it. I had not wanted to move here, but with an angry Nigerian waving a machete at our Maynard digs and no other landlords on the horizon willing to accept a large, arthritic German Shepherd who by now could no longer climb even a single stair, I had absolutely no other choice.
It took me five months to arrange our escape from this pesthole, a delay I believe did Blizzer immense harm, exacerbating the decline of his rear legs, and I will always feel remorse at subjecting him to these insufferable conditions.
As I said, there were a few pleasant interludes to our otherwise unremitting housing misery, and at Residence #3, Blizzer’s exuberant early morning romps with his golden-furred next-door buddy Philo, while Philo’s dad Bob Baima and I discussed current events, were balm for the soul. And Jim and Elena Hammond, our wonderful upstairs neighbors with their cats K.C. and Lucey at Residence #7 on Wilson Avenue in North Reading, were always kind and generous to Blizzer and me. They relocated to Maryland only six months after we arrived, and we missed both of them very much.
As Blizzer’s hip dysplasia significantly worsened from 2006 onward, I tried every potentially helpful strategy and treatment to maintain him at a high quality of life.The pain medication Tramadol was added to his Cosequin DS glucosamine-chondroitin chewables, omega three fish oil and MSM. Then the Tramadol dosage was increased. Several acupuncture sessions were tried, then discontinued when no benefit resulted.When things started to look grim, a wonderful veterinary dermatologist, Jill Abraham, suggested that the pain medication Gabapentin be added to the mix, and this strategy miraculously brought Blizzer an extra year of comfort.
When Blizzer could no longer jump into my car’s back seat, and couldn’t use a variety of store-bought ramps and stairs to access the vehicle, I had the right front seat removed and a special wooden entry platform made by our genius friend David LaFrance, so that Bliz could now step slowly into the empty seat well, and from there ease gently onto the back seat, without the need for a painful jump. When after a while he could no longer get into my car even this way, I rented handicapped access vans with wide, gently angled ramps for him to travel to doctor visits and hikes. When he became fearful of entering even the vans, I hired house-call veterinarians to examine him wherever we lived. Right through January 19th 2010, his house-call vet reported that despite his encroaching arthritis, Blizzer had a good quality of life and was doing well, with no need to further adjust his medications. Thereafter, unfortunately, as I became further besieged and distracted with the cumulative stresses of our unraveling situation, I dropped the ball on Blizzer’s pain management strategy, and after his death I learned from several veterinary pain specialists that the vet could have put him on substantially higher pain med dosages during his final months. My failure of vigilance, and my realization that it likely caused Blizzer to suffer more than I had realized, have caused me an inordinate amount of grief and remorse that I am still sifting through.
When Bliz could no longer climb stairs, and I realized that affordable apartments without at least some entry stairs were practically nonexistent, I had a sturdy, customized 11-foot wooden ramp with protective side rails made, to lay over the outside stairs at our apartments. Uncle Dave designed and constructed these crucially helpful devices, and he also transported the ramp from dump to dump for us in his pickup truck whenever we moved. When it became difficult for Blizzer to negotiate even the ramp, I purchased two different support slings to try to help him, neither of which offered much relief. To this day, even after Blizzer is gone, I still find myself scanning the entranceways of every house and apartment complex I drive by, relentlessly seeking the elusive stairless entrance.
At long last, I found a quiet and peaceful retirement home for Blizzer, the first floor of a house set deep in the woods of rustic Blackstone, Massachusetts. This property had a large stretch of flat green lawn that would not challenge his fragile rear legs, and because of the house’s seclusion, for the first time ever, Blizzer would be able to stay outside as long as he wanted, with negligible danger of his being discovered and re-taken by Chris’s gang affiliates, a constant concern for me over the past nine years. Bliz was an affirmed nature lover and while I had always made sure he got at least three hours of outside time with me each day, now he could, if he so wished in the home stretch of his life, indulge himself with double or even triple that duration.
In contrast to the rental agent’s promise of zero stairs, there actually were two, but this place was as close to Nirvana as I was going to find for Bliz, so Uncle Dave trimmed down his 11-foot ramp to fit the new entranceway, and we were in business.
On April 4, 2010, Easter Sunday, Blizzer and I moved together for the last time. There were no handicapped vans available, so Blizzer courageously entered my car once again and endured a horrific 40-mile journey, riding up front beside me on a special padded platform which Uncle Dave had built and inserted into the passenger seat well. I had always told querying people that the name Blizzer was Norwegian for “stout of heart,” a story I had made up--it was actually a derivative of Chris’s favorite performer “Gizzer” of the rap group Wu Tang Clan--but it was a definition which Blizzer amply validated time after time, most especially on this fateful twilight trip. When we arrived after dark, he tumbled onto the lawn in exhaustion and lay there a long while, as I rewarded him with hamburger treats and hugs. I have never known a braver creature.
In the end, though, things did not work out as I had hoped. Blizzer enjoyed several days of protracted sun basking, taking his meals and meds outdoors and sometimes staying on the lawn from morning until after dark. But the weather was mostly cold and wet that April, and the ordeal of our final, ineludible car ride had taken its toll. Blizzer’s rear legs got so bad so fast that towards the end he could no longer arise by himself at all. That was the decision point for me. As long as he only needed a butt boost eight or nine times out of ten, it seemed right to me to keep him going, since he still loved his food, was only evidencing discomfort when he got up, as do I as well in my creaky dotage, and was not disengaging from life. By mid-month, every day had become an exercise in measuring positive elements versus negative, and Blizzer was still coming up barely on the plus side.

But once he reached a point where he could never arise without assistance, and was in constant danger of soiling himself, that was the dreaded but unmistakable signal that the time had come. I would not allow my friend to descend into a torment of compromised function and lost dignity. And to be forthright, I was getting to the point where I could not physically continue lifting him. We had reached the finish.
Our former house-call vet was not able to travel to us, and my internet search revealed only one listing for a local Blackstone house-visit vet, so I arranged with her to examine Blizzer and then if necessary euthanize him. This domineering ball buster eventually came out and did a fine job of expeditiously releasing Blizzer from his depleted life while sadistically entrapping me in one of robust and eternal torment. But that’s another chronicle for another day. This is Blizzer’s story, and I will always be thankful that I was blessed to be a part of it. I’m not a person who cries in front of others, but behind closed doors I have grieved uncounted days and nights for my departed life’s companion and it took me over twelve weeks to gather myself to be able to write these words about him.
It is a profoundly painful burden to live without him and to know I could have done far better by him towards the end. I don’t believe in heaven or the rainbow ridge, and I don’t expect to ever hike with Blizzer again on some ethereal forest trail, but I still talk to him. And I do walk the quiet paths we used to roam together, and placidly regard the cool waters in which he once joyously splashed, and I have left his ashes at many of these peaceful places, as well as at the sites of his birth and his death. It is what I do to get through.
I suppose it is possible that one day, after I have relived all the diary entries and memorized all the photos and videos, and dubiously tried to grant myself forgiveness for my lapses in Blizzer’s care that he himself would undoubtedly bestow upon me instantly, I may reclaim a measure of peace and again become guardian to an animal in peril. If so, he or she will be fortunate indeed to have two protectors, one a hapless but well-intentioned human of tangible, albeit increasingly gnarled form, the other an unseen but durably present, frequently consulted and invariably trusted spirit guide: the wise, serene, goofy, noble, beautiful — and unendingly stout of heart — Blizzer.
I will love him forever.
(C) 2010 by Paul Edward Yalen. All rights reserved.