Theodore Decker: A eulogy for Roland, the pit bull who spent his days tending to sick pets
At the time of their diagnosis, the doctors gave him four months. Maybe six.
But Roland was a fighter. The 8-year-old pit bull made it nine months before the cancer got the best of him.
Carly Ciancetta, a veterinary technician at Gahanna Animal Hospital and Roland's owner, had told me previously that she was dreading the inevitable, but that Roland would tell her when it was time.
That time came last Thursday evening.
I told Roland's story in the Dispatch on Dec. 26.
If you missed it, some background:
I had heard about Roland from my wife, who works at the animal hospital.
Roland, she said, had the self-appointed job of tending to other pets as they were on the mend, typically after surgery.
To put quotes around "job" would be to minimize his role, because if you watched him at work you realized very quickly that he took this job seriously. Everything he did — the nuzzles, the licks, the gentle tugs at a patient's blankets — seemed to come from a place of concern. He felt for them, and he fretted over their fragile state until they came around.
Roland kept up this job, coming to work with Ciancetta three times a week, even after he was diagnosed last spring with inoperable prostate cancer.
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As spring became summer and then fall, Roland made it through 10 rounds of chemo. When another checkup in December revealed the tumor had grown 2 centimeters, Ciancetta made the decision to discontinue the treatment and prepare for euthanasia.
"He let me know he was in pain, and I saw it," Ciancetta told me Tuesday night, as she made one of the first of what will be many drives home from work without Roland riding beside her.
"The hardest part was telling my kids, because he looked so OK," she said. "That was the worst part, my daughter crying, hugging him, saying, 'But he doesn't look sick.'"
But her daughters, ages 6 and 9, have grown up around animals and the hospital. She knew they would come to understand.
Both girls wanted to be there Thursday night, as did a number of Ciancetta's coworkers. Roland was their dog, too.
"It felt like there was 20 of us," Ciancetta said.
For a while now, some employees had been batting around an idea they'd seen on Pinterest. Some animal hospitals kept a jar of chocolates in their euthanasia rooms as a final treat, should the owners want to offer it. We all know that chocolate is bad for dogs, but in those last moments, why not?
So Ciancetta came with a glass jar full of Hershey's Kisses, which she had labeled, "Goodbye Kisses...because no dog should go to Heaven without tasting chocolate."
Roland tasted plenty.
"We stood in a circle and that dude went around to every one of us and received his Hershey's Kiss," she said. "He just went perfectly to the next person. I couldn't even have dreamt it better.
"He was just in bliss, and it was beautiful."
They made print casts of his paws and said their goodbyes. Ciancetta cradled his head in her hands.
"He peacefully fell asleep, munching on a marshmallow, with me telling him what a good boy he was, over and over and over," Ciancetta said. "I just wanted him to know."
The car rides now are lonely. So are the nights, when Roland used to climb into bed with her and her girls.
"It comes in waves," she said.
She couldn't bear to see Roland's old, soft-sided crate at the hospital — the one he was rarely in since he always seemed to be on patrol — sit unused. So it has become the official domain of another vet tech's pet, a French bulldog named Norman who beat his own set of health challenges and now comes to work with his owner.
"He is a quiet little man, a quiet little soul, just like Roland," Ciancetta said.
Will he follow Roland's calling?
That would be nice, Ciancetta said.
"We'll see," she said. "He's got big shoes to fill."
Or paws, as the case may be.
@Theodore_Decker
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Pit bull Roland who comforted hospitalized pets loses cancer fight
