Our great friend J (who made it possible for me to keep a golden retriever in spite of back problems that preclude my using a leash -- by coming every other day before work to walk with us) and I took the resident fuzzball on that last, sad trip to the vet yesterday morning.  Our best guess is he had developed a nerve sheath tumor in the same shoulder as the mast cell tumor that was removed right after I got him.  He was very lame and in a lot of pain, getting progressively worse in spite of pain medications and sessions of physical therapy.  He loved the underwater treadmill so much they had trouble getting him to come out, and when he didn’t want to do it at all yesterday, it was one of many signs that it was time.

We all (J, the vet and I) sat on the floor around him as he passed peacefully.  He was a great dog.  I had rescued him when he was 10, and we had two and a half years together.  I miss him a lot, and at the oddest moments (like realizing I don't need to save bulk-food bags for scoop-bags any more).

 Rudyard Kipling was a Victorian and a colonialist, but he understood the love between humans and dogs, and he wrote (probably with tears in his eyes):

The Power of the Dog

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day; 
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear. 

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie –
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

 When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour or fits,
And the vets’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find – it’s your own affair –
But… you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

 When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still)
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone – wherever it goes – for good
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay,
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ‘em the more do we grieve;

 For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long –
So why in – Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

****

And yet we do … and I will undoubtedly do it again.

"Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty."

This is from T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets."  "They" are mysterious presences in an abandoned garden where the roses nonetheless "have the look of flowers that are looked at."

This will be a very occasional blog, limited by my physical condition and a surprisingly busy schedule for a solitary and a dreamer.