Life With Bridger
Learning Lessons the Hard Way
The air was crisp with a slight breeze as the sun began to crest over the Michigan campground. Rick was taking our two dogs out to potty, starting with our wheaten 12 year old Cairn, Paryn. As he opened the camper door to put her back in, our three-year-old Cairn Terrier, Bridger, bolted. Tossing Paryn inside, Rick pivoted quickly down the camper stairs and was relieved to see that Bridger had stopped to pee on a tree. Lunging for the dog’s collar, Rick fell off balance, jamming his bad shoulder into the Oak. Bridger seized the opportunity and zipped off.
Flinging open the camper door, Rick shouted to me—still in bed. “Bridger’s loose. Help!” The campground was bordered by pine trees, the only screening between us and a busy highway. While I fumbled to get dressed, Rick sprinted across the sleeping neighbors’ yards and spotted him at the dog park. But just as he got close, Bridger crouched with front paws extended, tail in the air, head pivoting left and right to assess his next move, and then he darted toward the highway. Rick pursued. Bridger ran full throttle under the bordering pine trees, sniffing the thick blanket of needles as traffic whizzed by just yards away. Rick, now bent over and moving rapidly on hands and feet, made his way under the branches as they clawed his hair and face. Bridger stopped momentarily to sniff. Rick reached out to grab him. At the same time, a thick pine branch caught his sweatshirt’s hood and threw him on his back. Cussing now and likely waking up the adjacent campers, he rolled back and forth in the needles to get back up and resume chase. Bridger stopped to poop. Rick didn’t hesitate, catapulting to tackle him in mid-excrement. I arrived to help just in time to take the furry fugitive back to the safety of the camper.
Bridger Teton of Goat Mountain. His registered name was big—just like his attitude—and was chosen in honor of Bridger Teton National Park in Jackson Hole, a nod to our wedding. This black, grey, and brown bundle of orneriness and attitude came to us in September 2021. It took 14 months to find him—navigating through a myriad of Cairn Terrier breeders who couldn’t keep up with the demand caused by Covid. People craved the comfort of unconditional love and diversion from isolation, fear, and confusion.
Goofy and independent, this little guy taught us his language of communication. If he needed to go outside to potty or wanted food, he would glare at us. If we didn’t move fast enough, we’d hear a low “Brrrrr,” the trademark Cairn Terrier growl. Still not fast enough? He’d slap our knee with his paw. He did the same thing in the middle of the night, waking us up when he wanted to go out or be fed—even at 3:15 am.
If you tried to pick him up, he went completely limp, sending us into spasms of laughter as we tried to hoist his 32 pounds. If we lay him down somewhere, he would stay however he landed—sometimes in the most contorted positions. At night, he would jump on the sofa, knock the pillows askew and plop in the middle of them.
He taught us patience.
As a puppy, he destroyed two of my Mom’s hearing aids and two pair of her eyeglasses. Other dogs we’d owned chewed up inexpensive pet toys or socks. Bridger had expensive taste.
We had a vacation planned. He tore out his toenail on the chain link fence the day before, resulting in an expensive emergency surgery and cancellation of our trip.
Going in and out of the house became our exercise for flexibility, balance, and reflexes as he would pretend to wait and then dart quickly between our legs. If he was out and we wanted him to come in, he’d sit there, seemingly confused about what he was supposed to do. I started propping the door open and walking away from it, allowing him the independence to decide. He seemed to like that.
He greeted all guests—delivery people, friends, relatives—with the growl, bark, and stance of an angry German Shepherd, hair standing up on his back. Those who weren’t familiar with this “act” would recoil, their eyes wide, as I picked up and contained the screaming, wiggling devil so they could enter. A few minutes later, he would calm down and stretch upward for a scratch, declaring them safe and accepted.
He taught us about faith and hope.
At 18 months, Bridger had his first seizure. He spent 24 hours in a vet emergency hospital to be stabilized and was then transferred to a Fishers specialty hospital with neurologists. On the way there, Rick and I pondered what this meant for Bridger and our bank account. We had already racked up a shocking amount with his emergency toenail surgery, hearing aid and eyeglass replacement, and the emergency vet hospital.
“If they want to do expensive tests and procedures, we’re not doing that—right?” one of us said.
“Right. We’re not doing that. We can’t afford to do that.”
An hour later, we were compelled by soft brown eyes that peeked at us under brown and black fringe to consent to whatever needed to be done to save him. The blood work, CT scan, and spinal tap proved only that he didn’t have a brain tumor or any other reason we could point at with anger and send away. He was in the hospital for five days--blind and wobbly when he tried to stand. After we finally got him home, his vision slowly returned, and he regained his mobility, albeit a little slower due to the mind-numbing effects of phenobarbital.
He was more subdued on phenobarbital. I talked to a vet about weaning him off it, thinking the episode might have been a fluke since they couldn’t find a cause. Under his supervision, we tried and made it three weeks before we had to give up and put him back on the twice-a-day drugs.
For 18 months, the seizures went quiet, scared to show their hideous attitude to people who loved this dog so much. But then they came back with vengeance at the end of January 2025. I started recording them in my digital calendar. Clusters of red flowed across my screen each time I entered an appointment. Every 10-15 days, they would visit and remind us a few times that we hadn’t defeated them.
I tried everything. I read labels and scientific journals like they were best sellers. I joined five Facebook groups—scrolling through depressing, contradictory posts where strangers fought with each other about the cause of seizures and what to best feed a dog. I eventually had to walk away from them for my own mental health. I became suspicious of everything: scents, cleaning supplies, chemicals, flea and tick medicine, vaccines, pet food. I started cooking nearly everything that went through his fuzzy lips, spending hours preparing, packaging, and labeling his meals and treats. I spent tons on special seizure supplements, vitamins, liver support drops, and fish oil. And I compiled copious notes for his doctors, outlining his medical history, a timeline of his seizure activity and treatment, and my questions about everything I’d researched.
He thrived, lost a few excess pounds and seemed healthier. His coat looked better. But we were still increasing his medicine almost monthly. Alarmed, I made another appointment with the neurologist who did an exam and suggested his right paw and vision lagged behind his left. She felt he might have inflammation on the left side of his brain and prescribed prednisone. It seemed to help, giving him a reprieve from seizures for 32 days.
But they came back. They always came back.
Then he entered a perfect storm.
I’d hear it—the rhythmic shhh-shhh-shhh as he rubbed his tailbone under our coffee table. We regularly found him with all fours in the air, grinding his back on a plastic bone. Not particularly a lap dog, he was coming to us for more scratches, melting into us as we rubbed him all over.
The morning of his vet appointment to address the scratching, he had his first seizure after a 26-day reprieve. By that evening, he was on five different medications and had received two vaccinations. We felt we’d asked all the right questions and made the right decisions to protect him. Over the next four days he struggled. The prednisone left him starving and parched. I filled his water bowl at least 8 times a day. We’d just get settled on the couch when he’d approach, Brrring and slapping his paw to be let out. We started getting up every 1-1/2 to 2 hours to let him out at night and feed him enough to settle him down.
Finally his body had enough.
At 7:20 am—10 minutes after I fed him, gave him seizure rescue drugs and ordered more belly bands and liver support medicine--he flopped on the floor, crashing into the wood while he paddled and slashed with his jaws, foaming at the mouth. It was violent. Past seizures had lasted less than a minute. This one was different. He tried to stand and his legs collapsed. He buried his head in the corner of the hall, unable to figure out how to get out of it. I wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to bed, laying him on top of me. Petting him, I felt his heavy breathing and shaking, his panic building. Thinking he might be getting hot, I repositioned him, only to realize he was seizing again—or had he ever quit?
After frantic calls to the neurologist, his primary vet, an emergency hospital closer to home, and then back to his primary vet, we made a decision. He was still seizing. We knew seizures over five minutes were life-altering and life-threatening, causing irreversible brain and organ damage. By the time we got him to the vet, he had been seizing for an hour and twenty minutes. Life was not going to get better for him, we admitted. Bridger deserved better. So we made the tough decision--for him.
I have a friend who once quipped, “The kids are out of the house, the dog died; Woohoo!” It’s easy to focus on restrictions when you cancel or adjust plans to accommodate a pet, when you stand outside a concert venue to consult a vet about seizures. When you plan outings and leave gatherings to cater to potty breaks and medication schedules. You ask others to help you with your responsibilities. (And we had great help.) You cover furniture and rugs to protect them. You don’t resent any of it. You love them with all your being, but it’s clear that this tiny furry creature controls your life.
Rick and I talked about the constraints, and we sometimes fantasized about what we would do when we were pet-free. It sounded so simple. We’d go as we pleased. We’d get new carpet. We’d plan vacations that didn’t rely on pet-friendly accommodations or sitters. But we could never completely imagine life without a dog—grateful for every single day with them.
Losing Bridger provided raw perspective. We had lost 13-year-old Paryn five months before. We were heartbroken then, but Bridger had kept us going. Now, the bay window where he lay with his head propped on a cast iron pig is empty. Our arrival back home lacks fanfare. My shadow has disappeared. At night, our laps are lonely. Our routines are broken. Our hearts—gutted.
Yes, there is less mud, hair, pee, poop, and chaos in and around our house, but we’ve discovered something else. There’s also less joy and laughter. The unconditional love we felt from Bridger is missing. It’s a heavy, heavy price to pay for convenience.