Grinding Towards The Inevitable
For much of my early life, I did not understand what the deal was with people and pets. I wanted to, deeply, but my folks were of the opinion that none of their children showed enough maturity to care for a pet. It took a number of years before the great cluestick of Duh struck me over the head and I got it.
My father was born in 1922. My mother in 1927. Which meant that during the Great Depression, Dad was old enough to see what was happening in the world. My mother's earliest memories were of deprivation and scarcity. My father's father, my "paternal grandfather" was a county employee who worked for the court system and lived within walking distance of the Courthouse. So the family did live in town, but walked nearly everywhere they needed to go. Except to their vacation home in the country. But we'll get to that in a bit.
My mother's family lived in the same town. Her father worked for the railroad. And as such, it was most likely much harder work. I never did learn exactly what he did, but I know her grandfather had been a railroad "detective" in the day when "detective" meant removing those that didn't pay to ride in the boxcar from said boxcar. Typically with a club. Or a firearm.
So things were often very tight for my mother. She had four brothers, one sister. My father had five sisters and two brothers. Not large families for the time, but large for "town families". They didn't have farms to keep up, and so that made things a little tighter. Unfortunately, my father lost both brothers - one to what we these days refer to as SIDS, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome - as in "we don't know why, things just stopped working." The other was lost to leukemia. Dad contracted Polio at the age of 3, so never really had many memories of running around like a normal kid.
He, though, did have a dog in his family for a short period of time, because when they found out his brother had Leukemia, which was then an incurable disease, his folks got a dog they named Pepper. My father remembered the dog very well, but only in looks. I suppose back then, a dog was a dog, a pet, not much time was spent wondering about things like "breed" or much else. So long as they could keep it fed, I guess it was a member of the family.
So when I left their home and started making one of my own, it didn't take long before the lady of the house decided she'd like a pet. And came into a cat. From that day onward, we were a household with pets. And that also means that, about eight years ago, I crossed the line between "time without pets" and "time with pets". I have been blessed to have pets most of my life. And my children have had pets ALL of their lives.
I do believe that having a pet in the house does teach children fairly early on to empathize with someone, or something, else. My daughter very early on learned the simple fact that velocity made a difference on the touch when one sought to reach out to a pet. She rather quickly learned soft petting kept the pet around, where excited movement often caused the animal to leave.
Which brings me right around to our latest struggle. And that's my dear friend Leo. Otherwise known around here as "Floofy" or "Leonidas" (when in trouble), or "handsome" or "pretty boy".
We acquired Leo back in March of 2009 as a puppy to keep our other dog, Lily, company. Lily came to our home during the summer of 2007 as a six-week old puppy who had been headed to the bottom of a lake in a bag before some good folks stepped in and took her off the hands of the fellow who was looking to unload the entire bag of puppies because their mother had run off, and he didn't know what to do. So much for the acquisition of empathy in that son of a bitch, but fortunately, someone stepped in his path before he did what he intended to do. Thankfully.
Lily was our first "from scratch" puppy, and I made the rather horrible determination, later, that I was fairly lousy in selecting puppies. I walked up to a caged area of the sales floor in the PetSmart store we normally shopped in for Daisy, our first dog, but she wasn't along that day. I noticed this one quiet, small puppy in a corner, away from the other dogs, and my heart went out to her. After getting the approval from the minders to pick her up, I did, and she was incredibly smart. She cuddled up under my chin. Heart stolen. Again.
I learned, later, that the reason she was all alone in the corner of the pen was because she did not take anyone's shit lightly. Or at all. I watched her try to back down a dog roughly twenty times her size, and fail - but it didn't discourage her. She would still look to cuddle Daisy whenever she could, often sleeping on top of her.
Which we scraped up and sent off, and one Thursday afternoon I picked the kids up after school and headed up to to freight terminal at the Airport, where Ann met us, and when we walked in I could hear this rather annoying chirp coming out of the back room. I introduced myself, showed the woman behind the counter the prepaid receipt we had, and she said "oh, that's him right now" as she nodded over her shoulder. She left the counter and not more than a minute, she was back with a huge crate. Inside that huge crate was that tiny puppy you see over there.
That was our first moment with Leo. Jack was about twelve, there, and enjoying his new buddy. He was so young, about ten weeks old, and his fur wasn't even laying down yet. But that was our little Leo.
As I have apparently used my one-picture-a-day upload limit, I'll have to save the picture of him with Lily outside for tomorrow. But he was receiving a pretty cold introduction to Minnesota, because we had snow on the ground, and I don't think his legs were long enough to keep his undescended undercarriage out of it. So that had to be a shock.
We've had Leo every day for the last 13 1/2 years now. He's lived three different places with us, our comedian, our fluffy, fuzzy puppy, and the best friend to all of us at one time or another.
For the first couple of years, he got to play out in the yard without a leash, run all over with Lily, his older sister, and learn the ropes and her rules. Which got a great deal more difficult when he got bigger than she was. Lily took this as a threat, and they often got into unprovoked fights. She would go full-on snarling after him, there were times I had to stick my hands between them and get bit because they were going after one another so hard. She drew his blood a few times.
Then came the day we did not expect, all too damned soon, when Lily was diagnosed with cancer and given an extremely short prognosis. We'd had to move out of our house into a townhouse where the lawn was regularly treated with spray-on weed control. Little did we know. But that was one of the major variables that I am certain sent her health spiraling down, as she loved to eat grass. And we didn't know.
But Leo had his sister Lily until he was about 5, when she passed away, and then he was the only puppy for a while. He was less rambunctious, less a lap dog, a little more stand-offish. I'm not sure what he was thinking. I do remember when we took Lily to the vet that last day, we brought Leo along too. He had known things weren't right with her, we wanted him to be able to say goodbye too. We were all in the exam room at the vet, after I had my moment with Lily and Leo did too, we went out across the parking lot to the grassy area, and I walked him while the rest of the family stayed with Lily. As with every pet we've brought into the family, I make them the promise that I'll do the best I can for them and be there up until the last minute. I've failed that promise a few times. I was there with Gillie when he passed away. Tish, Gillie's older brother, did not go to the vet at the end, he just passed away sleeping on the end of the couch, one of his favorite spots. I was there for Charlie, even though he wasn't our full-time pet any longer. I wasn't there for Daisy because her end came so quickly, and I was at a Scouting Training event that evening. I was there for Lily.
Now it looks like soon, I'll have to make that walk again with my Leo. He's gone downhill this year pretty quickly. He has back problems, his back legs do not always obey his commands, he can fall or just feel his legs slowly slide out from beneath him. His vet has tried a number of things, including acupuncture, which worked for a time. Now it's just difficult for the poor guy.
For years he slept next to our bed, if not in it, but for the past few weeks he prefers to sleep in the living room. There's a full flight of stairs with a landing midway down to our room, and he does not often take that trip any longer. If he does, he really prefers to make the trip back up on his own time. Our morning routine has me getting up, doing my stuff, then heading upstairs. I drop their breakfasts into their bowls. It used to be he would follow me up the stairs and be right next to me when I scooped his breakfast out of the dog food bin.
These days, even if he's sleeping in the living room, right next to the dining room, he doesn't wake up when the scoop hits the food in the bin. His new raised dog dish is aluminum, so when I drop the food in it, usually from at least eighteen inches above the bowl to make plenty of noise, he doesn't even look up. His sister Cheyanne sleeps on our bed most nights, and doesn't leave it until she hears the food hit Leo's bowl. I have a little race with her to take the three steps from Leo's bowl back to the bin, scoop out her third-cup breakfast and get it into her bowl before she hits the top of the stairs. I don't often beat her.
These days, after I put her food in the bowl, I go back and wake up Leo. Some mornings I need to entice him with treats to come to his bowl to eat breakfast. He has to take a few warm-up laps around the living room before he's read.
Then we head out into the yard. I hook the new harness I got him a few months ago, as he no longer wears a collar. He used to have one, every day, and I was, in the back of my head, waiting for him to "grow up" before I got him a "proper leather collar" like Daisy had. He had his reflective collar which matched Cheyanne's, we'd picked them up a few years ago, but when he was diagnosed with "gulp" which was an ailment which caused some regurgitation issues, which have since cleared up, in all likelihood thanks to both the medication he was on and the fact that he doesn't have a collar around his throat any longer, I'd guess, we use the harness when we walk him. It keeps his leash out from underfoot, which can be a challenge for him these days if it gets a little tangled. It also does give us a hand in getting him back to his feet a bit easier. It's not easy to lift a 75 pound dog, these days, especially when he's the size Leo is. There aren't any convenient handles, he's so much hair that you're often not sure your hands are under the dog, or under the cloud surrounding him.
So that helps. We get hooked up, wander the yard for a bit, then I get to come in and have my breakfast. Not too much longer after that, Mom comes up and if it's one of the three days of the week she works from home, she heads upstairs and he follows happily behind. Which is weird, but I guess he knows that come 11 am, he's getting peanut butter - with his midday pills, and a bit of a walk outside again. Then, come the end of the day, he gets another trip around the yard before dinner, when he gets his anxiety pill, which helps him settle down.
I'm beginning to think that some of his vocalizations later in the evening aren't excitement in heading out for the "long walk" at 9 pm every night. I think they may be anxiety over what is to come. Tonight, as we crossed the street to the School yard next door, I could hear his hind leg toenails dragging on the pavement, which I never hear until about a year ago, when I started to notice it. These days, he takes the curb rather slowly, and will sometimes trip over it. Most nights, we get around the school parking lot, which is about a fifth of a mile, a far, far shorter run than we used to make when we first started these nightly walks. We'd regularly go at least a mile most evenings, and my wife would often go longer. My walks were usually later in the evening, and those trips were in the dark and I often lacked a flashlight, found myself hoping if the dogs did something I'd need to pick up, it would be close to a street light. It often was, as the lights were fairly close to one another in that neighborhood. In this neighborhood, the school lot lights aren't on over the weekends, so I have some pretty good flashlights.
What I don't have are immortal dogs. I have some of the best. They've been good, wonderful friends, Leo seeing us through the loss of my house, my parents, and my mother-in-law, so he's seen an awful lot of tears in his fur. And he loves us for it. I can see it in his face when he sees me first thing in the morning. On great days, he'll wait at the top of the stairs and we'll head butt one another to say good morning - gently, as he sniffs my head, and then I sniff his.
I'll never forget how he would come and lean against me at times, just to have someone close by. He's such a warm, lovely boy. Smart to the level that might be otherwise scary. His favorite misbehavior is to sort through the trash can for the good stuff - which in his world is coffee grounds, anything chocolate, or anything that's really messy. He loves a good mess. He also loves warm outdoor days when he has to get a bath. Winter baths are no fun at all, because it can take days for that coat to dry. But we don't bathe him often. He's usually a pretty good boy, not too smelly.
Which is a lousy way to end this, but he's still here, so I have a few more weeks, I hope, before we make that last trip. I would really prefer a few more decades, truthfully, but I know he doesn't have that. What's killing me now is that I can't tell his whines of anticipation or needing to go potty from the whines and whimpers of pain. Maybe it's all the same to him any more. I just can't tell. Which is going to be the brutal part of this next portion of his life. I'm going to have to make and support a decision that I'll second-guess for the rest of my life. Hopefully I won't let him suffer too long, and he'll forgive me if we meet again. I sure hope we do. I do know where he's going to end up. I can't say for sure I'll be in the same place, eventually. I am hopeful. But we'll see when we see.
I'll have to enjoy what's left while I can. I hope he does, too.
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