Priorities

She's just a dog. A stupid dog.

When she was young, around one or two, she liked to bolt out the front door and we'd have to chase her down until we finally gave up. I'd tell her if she didn't like living with us she didn't have to come back. But she always did.

After she got older, sometimes she'd run off into the woods behind my house and be gone for hours, coming back covered in mud and cockleburs. I'd curse and yell, and wash the chunks of mud down the drain, cut out the thorn branches stuck in her hair. I told her if she wasn't careful some wild animal would eat her. I fenced in my yard.

She stands at the back door wanting in and out, in and out, worse than a kid and annoying the hell out of me. Or she barks at nothing at all, even in the middle of the night, until I tell her to be quiet. Once, she knew there was mouse under our house and shredded the carpet and the baseboard trying to get to it.

Five years ago she was attacked by a German shepherd. She was in bad shape. She almost didn't make it. But I insisted we fix her, spending more money than we had, more money than a person should on a dog.

But she's my dog. That's what I told Darrell that Sunday morning in the Emergency Clinic. She's my dog. We have to fix her.

This weekend, while I was gone, something happened. She started walking into things. Sunday night she fell down the stairs. Twice. She continued falling down, her legs on her right side giving out. I thought it was her back, which was injured when she was attacked. Why didn't I know better? Yet, I did.

The vet sent me home this afternoon with a pharmacopoeia of medicines. Predisone, muscle relaxers, pain pills. The vet said it could be a pinched nerve until I mentioned she went to the neighbors house, thinking it was ours. Then she leaned heavily to a neurological cause.

Brain tumor.

I left, shockingly numb. It wasn't definite. It could still be a nerve, but it a nerve didn't fit. I spent the afternoon in denial.

I've watched her get worse and worse all afternoon and evening. She can hardly walk. When she tries to stand, she falls until she finally gets her sea legs and stumbles around. I just took her outside and watched the wind knock her over and over, until I was sure she was done and carried her in. I set her in front of her food and water and waited, the shield I erected around my heart crumbling every time she slipped and fell on her side, smacking her face on the hardwood floor.

All too familiar feelings wash through me. Foreboding hovers over my head. A cloak of grief I know to well.

I have lived this before.

I asked myself, when I allowed myself to release the tears-- how many times will I lose the ones I love? Will I always feel so helpless?

She's lying at my feet now, waiting for me to finish this post. She's always near, waiting. I call her my shadow, but I can feel the darkness slipping in, the fingers of death creeping close to do what it does best. Steal.

She's a dog. A stupid dog. But she's mine and I love her.