My Best Girl 🐾

Today wasn’t a good day. I feel this cloud hanging low over me and I can’t get out from under it. There will be little high notes sometimes, but then that dang cloud covers me again. I’ve been holding my breath again too and I’ll catch myself and take deep deliberate breaths instead, hoping to make up for all that breath holding of late.

I’ve been busy. My dog is in deep decline. She’s on several different meds and takes 17 pills a day. We’ve been at this routine a while and it’s kept her comfortable and ambulatory and smiling. However twice over this last week I’ve called the sweet folks at Lap of Love and talked through my options. I know how it will end and I know it will be soon – they will come over and we will all crowd around Lucie and hold her as she goes peacefully. I’ve watched videos on their website and one of them talked of not only your dog’s pain but also her anxiety, and we should watch for symptoms like whining at night and panting, both things she’s been doing lately. I got the bright idea to call my vet yesterday and ask if there’s something we could give her for anxiety. In fact there is, another pill, which I picked up today. Dosing said give her 1, 1.5 or 2, so I went for the highest dose, realizing she will likely be even more somnolent than what her current regimen brings, but hoping her anxiety will lessen. 

That good anti-anxious mood I thought I’d see instead turned into a dopey sleepy Lucie who several hours in no longer could even stand. I tried helping her up but she wasn’t having it so, frustrated, she just put her head down in a who cares? sort of way. I am in the kitchen with her so often so instead I decided to take a break and step away while she rested. I gave Evan the task of taking her out after he returned from work. In that calm quiet voice he gets when something is wrong, he called me downstairs. The poor girl was on her side and had defecated underneath herself. Cleanable and not too much of a problem, but you could feel her humiliation as I went about toweling her off, and the rug, and the floor. I knew she still needed to go pee, so we tried ushering her outside, her ability to stand from today’s added pill barely improved. Evan carried her out to go and carried her back in. 

I know it’s time, or soon it will be. I know this is the right thing, but damn I’m a teary mess over my girl. On top of her breakfast and dinner she scarfed down, I made her a sweet potato yesterday and she ate little bites I doled out and looked up and beamed at me after each one, an enormous, thank you! how did you know? Oh, I know. I know what my girl loves. 

I hate when a book I’m loving ends. I mourn it a little each time. That last chapter, you savor every word, every nuance and then… that’s it. It’s become past tense. She’s much more than a book, but I feel the story is wrapping up, and I hate that. 

I remember when my sweet cat, Kitty, passed on. Obviously, I missed her but also she spanned 18 years of my life, years back when my mom was alive. Kitty knew my mom. How many people now in my world can say that? There’s power there. There’s life and memories and conversations from times long ago that are no longer. 

I searched for Lucie for a long time. Went to shelters, to private homes with dogs up for adoption, and online to various rescues. We ended up finding a dog on petfinder.com and after meeting the dog we returned home to mull it over. I emailed the owner and she said if I wanted the dog, I needed to send her my payment, which I did. Funny thing I’ve since learned about prepaying for a dog, often it’s a one-way exchange. You pay, yet you’re still dogless. After I took it up with American Express and froze my payment, this crazy lady changed her website to position her “organization” as some benevolent rescue and any money they bring in is for the welfare of their shelter and upkeep of their dogs. They do not adopt dogs but only for the loving kindness of their community do they accept payments. Can you say Capital “B”, Capital “S”? We know how this ends. I’m out $250 and back on the dog hunt.

Then there was that day soon after back in 2008 when I was doing my usual dog search all around the Internet and weeks earlier had even added Craigslist to the mix. And there she was, “Bailey”, a sweet 9-month-old husky/shepherd staring into her mama’s camera right there in front of me on Craigslist. She had a look that I couldn’t turn away. She was hauntingly beautiful but also there was a sweetness in her eyes, and I had to meet her. I quickly responded and was glad to see her cautious owner vetting me in great detail. I made the cut and we had a meeting a few days later. Bailey’s human realized she couldn’t keep a dog with her busy job. She’d been crating the pup for hours on end, and to her credit, Bailey could hold her bladder that long. Except this particular day when her mama worked longer than usual. Rushing to get to our house, her mama brought Bailey “as is” to meet me. My poor girl reeked of dried doggie pee, but did her best to stand tall and get through the interview. 

She was other worldly soft and sweet and she met three criteria I needed her to: 1) She was respectful of and didn’t intimidate our cats who came around to sniff our visitor 2) she didn’t bury her snout in our crotches as some dogs do to say hi 3) And other than the pee scent, she didn’t smell of dog – you know that dirty sock smell some dogs have and when you visit a house you just know there’s a dog?

So Bailey moved in with us soon after we named her Lucie, and the rest has been a most fantastic run… nearly 14 years now. So many memories which I know I’ll release when the flood gates open and I’ll be instead looking back. 

But for now life is in slow motion. I moved upstairs just now as I couldn’t sit in the kitchen anymore and lock eyes with her. She wants to move but she can’t easily and instead watches us all – cats included – buzz around the kitchen doing this and that while she’s resigned to the floor, limbs akimbo sometimes underneath her at odd angles. Evan and I straighten her out and help her outside and back in, but mostly her life these last several days is about eating and drinking and relieving herself. She still smiles – or did this morning before I gave her that dang pill – but she’s also a tad demented, along with her deafness, so maybe the smile is a far-off lunacy which has ended up on her face masked as joy. I still see her though and tell her every day that I love her. She can’t hear but she hears me. And did I mention her ears? A perfect pair of caramel colored velvet triangles. 

Tomorrow I will see if she can walk or if the pill I introduced today propelled her into a deeper decline. I am going to do right by my girl. She will not remain floor bound only to watch us all live our lives moving in and out of her room, our kitchen. She will sail on and ride the calm sea and fly into the heavens light as a cloud. While bodies fail, love stories are forever. 

I saw this ad soon after I got Lucie and found her resemblance to this wolf incredible.