On a Wave of Cookies

Today is the last full day of our old dog Ellie's existence.  

Thursday was rough, as her appetite had dwindled away to nothing, as it will with kidney failure.  Thursday morning she refused any and all food.  No treats.  No ham or turkey or chicken.  No jerky.  No cheese.  No salmon or tuna.  Nothing.  She wouldn't take her pain meds, either, no matter how we cajoled.

Absent any meaningful nutrition or relief, she was weak and in clear discomfort, both desperately hungry and unwilling to eat.  She paced and panted, stumbling about on weakening legs, obviously cramping, unable to find any way to be at ease.  It was time.  

We made the call to a home-visit vet, and got the earliest possible appointment to have her euthanized at home.

The first possible moment, though, was Saturday morning early.  Which meant that we had to get through Friday.

All day Thursday, she alternated between agitation and torpor, and we were dreading the long stretch of her final day in this mortal coil.  A day of discomfort wasn't what we wished for her.  The hard call made, I distracted myself by preparing the earth to receive her, right there in her little patch of woods behind our house, where she's sniffled and snuffled for the last fourteen years.

Last night, returning home from one of her many ladygatherings, Rache brought home a sugar cookie.  On a whim, she offered a little bite to Ellie.  It was immediately gobbled up, along with the entire rest of the cookie.

A solution!  Healthy eating?  No.  But at this point, it didn't matter.  What'd we be worried about, canine diahbeetus?

I booked on out to get more baked goods, and returned with one bag of Pepperidge Farm Chessmen Butter cookies, one bag of their Farmhouse Thin and Crispy butter cookies, and one package of Harris Teeter Blueberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake Bites.  

She devoured cookie after cookie, and nommed even more voraciously on the cake bites, which also proved to be a perfect delivery mechanism for her pain meds.  She got calmer.  Seemed more at ease.

Today, it's been more of the same.  She ate cookies.  She perked up a little bit, shuffling around in a slightly less wobbly manner.  She ate coffee cake.  When she lay down, she seemed at peace.  She ate more cookies.  She got outside.  She ate even more cookies.  We gave her one last drive through the neighborhood in which she took a lifetime of walks.  

And she did finally turn up her nose at a cookie, but only after knocking back a thousand calories worth.

There are worse ways to leave the world than on a wave of cookies.

The Stranger at the Door

The knock came on the door late in the evening, well after eleven.

The dogs, of course, were set off a-barking, and I was summoned upstairs by my wife to see who it was.

Just about a minute later, we let her into our house.   She was lost and confused, but clearly no threat.  She was totally trusting, even though we'd never ever met.  Our dog...being a gentle but occasionally suspicious sort...took to her right away, but we're dog-sitting our dog-in-law, who can get aggressive with strangers, so we sealed her away in the kitchen.

We tried to sort things out with her for a while, and in the meantime, our unexpected guest paced around anxiously.  We offered a snack and water, which she eagerly accepted, guzzling the water like she'd not had any in weeks, after which she flopped around on the floor for a while and tried to get us to rub her belly.

She was a dog, of course, a big derpy and utterly trusting yellow lab.  "Luna," we learned, from her collar.  A neighbor from a few houses down was walking home from a late night of futbol at a local field, saw her running around in the darkness, and thought that she might be our dog.

Hence the knock, which is usually beyond the ability of yellow labs.

She was clearly friendly, so we decided the best thing to do was to host her for a while as we figured out where she came from.

We put in calls to the numbers on her tags and collar, and found our way to the family that was at that very moment driving around the neighborhood in the darkness anxiously looking for their dog.

Luna, I learned from the immensely grateful dad who pulled up just a few minutes later, had spotted one of the foxes in the neighborhood, and gone barreling off in pursuit, leaping fences and generally having a delightful adventure.

After she'd left, having been fed and watered, I found myself reflecting on just how neighborly she'd been, and how much she'd evoked neighborliness in us.

Not every dog is that pleasant, I'll admit.  But her assumption was that we were her friends, that we were there to help.  She wasn't anxious, or afraid, or aggressive, or defensive.  Being a dog and all, she was utterly oblivious to the endless whispering madness of our fear-based profit-media and our social-media hysteria.

Dogs may have co-evolved with us as social animals, but that part of what we are becoming as social creatures they have blessedly missed.  Not for a moment did she fret about us, or worry about accepting the shelter of our home.  She was just happy to take what hospitality we had to offer.

It's one of the reasons it's good to keep them around, I think.  They remind us of things we forget about ourselves.

Com-Nom-Nom-Nom-Union

One of the simple delights of having a dog about the house comes every time I pop open a bag of empty carbohydrates.  It could be a bag of chips.  It could be a bag of cheezy corn puff doodles.  But with the first sound of the crinkling plastic, the pup arrives, eager to be at my side.

Ours is a bit of a wan dog, prone to brooding and a tick on the skittish side.  She's gentle as can be, and wonderful with the kids, but if she's in one of her moods, she prefers to keep to herself.  She doesn't come when called.  She doesn't fetch.  When she's being particularly distant, I'll accuse her of having feline ancestry.  

"Your dad must have been a cat," I'll say, as she wanders off yet again to sit in the sun and gaze wistfully out the window.

But a bag of crunchies brings her eagerly to my side.  

It's not a particularly healthy thing, I'll admit.  I should only feed her the foods that come in the big industrial sized bags for dogs, as opposed to the big industrial sized bags for humans.  What could I be thinking?

As I sit to game for a bit, or read, or blog, it's nice sharing a bite of food with her.  I'll pop a low fat potato chip in my mouth, and offer her one.

As I crunch down on the chip, so does she.  The taste of salt and fat and starch fills both of our mouths.  Both sets of teeth bite, and both tongues turn, and the crunchcrunchcrunch carries satisfyingly through the bones of our heads.

It's the same feeling, at the same moment.

There's something to be said for that.  It's a reminder that we are not so far removed from the creatures that surround us.  While we'd prefer to forget it, particularly as we factory-farm them, they and we are formed from the same dust.

That's one of the best things about having a dog, I think.  That reminder, without anthropomorphizing them, that they and we are not so far distant.

Dogs are good for that.

They're also good for reminding us that with the right attitude, starting a day with a bag of warm excrement can feel like victory.

But that's another post for another time.