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I have sad, but not unexpected news. Socrates has passed away. He died some time between late morning and 5 p.m. on June 5.
His late winter and spring seemed to be pretty good. He was eager for treats and attention. Once he managed to push his way partly into the airlock where we shut Kiri so we could have Socrates all to our selves, and inject him without Kiri "helping." In the past few years, Kiri and Socrates have both almost entirely lost their voices, so Socrates was doing his best to bellow at Kiri (or maybe at us for pushing him out of the airlock) but he was doing it in something like a stage whisper. This was during the period where he was only interested in eating hard, crunchy treats. Pig ears for preference, but also chicken jerky. He'd dart his head, tilt it, move it up and down as he worked on his treats, which made injecting him like spearing a moving target, since I was injecting in his neck and around the back of his shoulders.
Both old Boyz enjoyed having their straw changed. Socrates also liked to rub and head butt on us. Sometimes I think his face itched. The abscess drainage site took a long time to heal because he kept rubbing his face on the fence, and on us. I discovered years ago that some wolves are scab-pickers. Socrates was one of those and he spent the winter and the first part of the spring looking, in Monty's words, as if his face had been attacked by a pizza.
Though he was snuffly, he could breathe, and even if his sinus were blocked he could still pant through his throat. He produced a lot of snot, and sometimes let me wipe his nose with a tissue, but at other times he was happy to use my jeans, or Monty's, as a hanky.
I had planned, in early winter to take a trip out of town in late April. I made arrangements with the caveat that should Socrates need me to give him injections, or look as if he was staging a Victorian death-bed scene, I would cancel my plans and stay. I did not really expect him to be alive by then, but Socrates is a true son of Chinook who surprised us over and over. He had another Christmas, and another Easter. He was still needing injections, but he did enjoy some Easter ham and I got him a small ham of his very own and tried giving him little chunks suitable for hiding pills. They were acceptable. But would they be acceptable on the critical weekend? Then Gale, giving everyone heartworm preventative for me, reported that Socrates took an Interceptor pill in cream cheese with no problem. (I'd gotten him a heartguard chewable which he liked, and as Plan B or maybe C intended to get some injectable Ivermectin such as we gave the wolves in the 1980's.)
Plan A for my weekend away was to let Gale try pill Socrates first on each day, and if he rejected the pills, Plan B would go into effect: Amanda and Socrates' and Kiri's puppy father Mark Woodcock would go in and inject the Tease. Monty was out of town that weekend, which was why he did not figure in the plans at that point. But Plan A worked. Socrates took pills nicely and when I got back from the trip I continued giving him pills, and letting him have a respite from being a pin cushion. He seemed to feel as well as could be expected under the circumstances. His snuffling and snottiness decreased and some days he danced, anticipating his treats.
In early May we started moving wolves around so we could mow their enclosures without their help. When Socrates and Kiri were returned to theirs, they examined huge lumps of grass lying around (the grass had been almost long enough to cut for hay) and Great Balls o'…Grass! could have been their geezerly exclamations.
Our vet began to suspect that Socrates might have an extremely tenacious fungal infection in his nose rather than cancer and we discussed the pros and cons of anesthetizing him for an in your face (as in, inside your sinuses) exam and maybe some head x-rays. The kind of cancer she thought most likely is aggressive and fairly quick to kill. This is what happened with my first horse years ago. The onset of Soccy's malady was similar in symptoms to those of my horse, but then Soccy's symptoms decreased and stayed decreased for months. We started to hope that it might not be cancer after all, and that we were gradually helping Socrates win the war instead of just a series of battles.
Then, on June 5th I got a call from Dana. The interns reported Socrates lying still and, so far as they could see, not breathing. I called Monty so we could go in but when I got over there, I could see that Socrates was gone, leaving only the body through which we used to interface with him. He had his 15th birthday, been able to keep Kiri's companionship, have visits from human friends, including his puppy parents, lots of treats, and almost the entire spring. On the morning of June 5th he came to the fence, looking pleased at the prospect of a hot dog piece. There was nothing to make me think he might slip away from us later in the day. I kept thinking the rest of that evening that somewhere, in the back ground, as though from another dimension, I could hear Frank Sinatra singing "and in the end, I did it myyyyyyyyyyy waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!"
Goodbye Socrates. It's been real.
Postscript. We took Socrates' body in the next day for a necropsy. X rays showed defective bone and a bulging bony mass at the abscess drainage site that is exceedingly characteristic of cancer. We also took a sample of bone which has not yet been tested. Yet his airways were clear, although his sinuses did look funky. X-rays of his lungs showed nothing to indicate that cancer had spread there, and his liver, and kidneys did not have lumps indicating cancer. The necropsy was not as conclusive as we would like because the body had lain out in the heat for several hours, and the tissues were too deteriorated to yield much information if samples were examined microscopically. I don't know exactly what caused Socrates' death right at that time, whether he died of cancer, or with cancer. I only know that he had months of life that we did not expect, and quite a few mutually enjoyable interactions. And now I think I hear Frank Sinatra again….