Part II: Day 63: Her Way

I remember when I was contemplating getting a dog I thought at first that I would find the right one by reading up on every breed and blend and then carefully picking the one best suited for my temperament and our lifestyle . . . in other words, when I was a completely different person, I thought there was a science to finding the right canine companion.

I did worry sometimes that I'd be too much of a pushover and that the dog would not learn his or her manners and people would dread coming to my house because there would be this spoiled monster ruling the roost, jumping on the table, snatching ham sandwiches right out of people's hands, humping their legs, then chewing up their Italian leather shoes, perhaps with their feet still in them, peeing on their leather handbags, leaving her mark on the Persian rug, with me just leaning back saying, "Isn't she the cutest?"

I got really lucky with Zoe.  It took me two weeks and two nights to train her to tell me, reliably, when she had to go.  She had arrived in our home in May to a glorious verdant late spring and she relished all that time we spent outdoors during housebreaking.  After that, the only accidents we ever had were when I failed to hear her, when I didn't listen to her message, and those incidents were rare.  The rest was, I see now, bizarrely easy too.  She had sit and stay and heel down in a nanosecond, and we were soon ready for the world.  She was never a chewer, she's never taken food from low tables, or gotten into things in the house that she shouldn't.  She didn't jump on people when they arrived, and although she barks when anyone drives up to the house, she makes them feel welcome once they show her the proper respect and let her know that they understand she's in charge of this residence.

But it became clear to me early on that Zoe would follow the commands I gave her only when the intellectual rigor of these games appealed to her.  When she got bored, or when there wasn't anything in it for her (treats) she would come when she felt like it.  We've rarely been in a situation where her being a haughty, independent, strong-willed dog has been a problem.  She has never been skunked.  She has only terrified me by running into the road to meet another dog maybe three times total in our nine-plus years.  And when she wants to go a certain way on a walk, I follow.  She is always good about heeling; I think she takes pride in it, now more than ever, especially since, as a tripod, it has been harder to go slow than to go fast.

The Monks of New Skete warned against letting the dog think you're its butler, and that notion has always made me smile.  I am not just Zoe's butler: I'm also her chef, nurse, workout buddy, traveling sidekick, health advocate, and now, increasingly, I hope, her confidante.  She is my muse, and that's a lot of pressure to put even on a working dog, but other than turning away rather disdainfully sometimes when I try to take yet another picture of her, she has borne her lot in life with me with good will.

So now we're trying to do things totally her way.  I am hearing Frank Sinatra in my head: you know the song.  She said no more chemotherapy drugs and we said, fine.  Before that she said no more hippie-dippie raw food diet with Chinese herbs mixed in, and we listened.  She wanted to see what regular dogs ate and we tried that for a month.  This Monday she said no more dog food, I want only what you're having, especially the lamb, and now we just cook up three serving of meat and vegetables and try to take Sheri's advice about going easy on carbs, and she licks her plate and asks for seconds.  I should have been tipped off last week at the lake house when Pam brought us moussaka and Zoe ate more of it than anyone.  I'm still learning.

hello there, you

Zoe eating with gusto fills my heart

I don't have a lot of time left to become a good listener, but I'm trying my best.  We still start our days on the balcony, and she takes pride in mounting those stairs, stopping to look at me en route for my praise.  It winds her, and she pants afterwards, but then she finds a cool spot on the wood and rests her head on the rail and she's there.  I sit with her, I post, and I even bring my meditation blankets out here and find a spot near her to do the honors.  A little into the morning I make her breakfast, preparing the food I think she wants, and she eats with gusto.  When the sun hits the balcony, Zoe wants to retreat to the shady spots of our yard.  She picks where to be, and I sit a few feet away with my laptop or a book, but mostly I just sit.  I pet her, then I give her space.  The novel I've been revising for the past five months will be there when I'm bereft and need a new purpose in my life.  So will the books I occasionally open and consider reading.  Instead, I watch the breeze stir up the flower pots and notice when a pink snapdragon opens.  I pay attention to birds.  A lot of robins are in our yard these days.  Now Zoe and I are watching Jeff do some sawing on our deck for the construction project.  He just put in a new window that brought more light into the mud room.  She won't be here when this job is done, but the fact that she's sitting a few yards from where the work is going on helps me believe she's still having her say in how the house shapes up, and that some proprietary part of her will still be sitting out here when the work is done.

When I went to the Potsdam Humane Society in May of 2003, thinking I was beginning a systematic search for finding the right dog, I didn't notice Zoe at first.  Most of her seven litter mates came up to the end of their cage to climb up and say hello, but Zoe stayed back resting with her head on her outstretched paws just as she is doing now as I write.  She was known as the shy dog in the pack.  The mellow one.  The philosopher.  I fell in love with her at first sight, but I also thought I had to rescue her because the people visiting would be wowed by the other cuddly, vivacious pups and would not give an aloof dog like her a second look.  I found out later that two other people asked to have her right after I put down my name, and if I hadn't walked into the pound on that very day, at that very minute, I would have missed the chance to be her person.

She was a little bit melancholy.  She had trouble trusting.  She didn't make eye contact easily.  And my oh my, when she did finally look directly into my eyes, I was a goner.  And still am.

I told myself I was channeling the Monks of New Skete by picking a shy dog.  I thought it would be easier for me to be the alpha pack leader with a retiring little pup who sat off to the side thinking deep thoughts about the meaning of life.  But actually, I learned, she was simply demonstrating her independence by separating herself from the crowd.  She's not a follower.  She is her own brand.

I love being her butler, chef, attendant, nurse, companion.  Today, when I brought Zoe out a bit of Poly-MVA (known to shrink tumors, but at the least, to boost energy and the immune system; as you can see, certain old habits die hard) with a smoked salmon chaser, my husband and I were just finishing lunch on the deck.  I said, in mock culinary speak, "The dog will start with smoked Wild Alaskan salmon in a light broth of Poly-MVA" and Kerry said, "The real question is this: is the broth frothed?"  No, but the dog was salivating when she saw it, along with the tastes of pâté and goat cheese I brought her on a plate as a midday snack.

So here's where we are.  We're at peace.  We're content right now, this dog and me.  My job is to just sit beside her and listen.  That's painful sometimes because her breathing is getting labored.  She has trouble getting a deep breath sometimes, like all our human friends with asthma, but then she's okay again for a while.  Watching her breathe and listening for when it gets too hard is my only job at the moment.  The prednisone is helping open up her lungs a little, and helping her find one last blast of energy and appetite to fortify her for the journey ahead, but it won't do its magic for long. 

Right now she is watching Jeff carry out a ladder to the side of the house and she's smiling.  "This is our house," she seems to be saying.  "We're glad you are here to be part of things."

And so we sit and watch the world go by and breathe together.  She's in charge.  She's always been a dog who did best when we did things her way, although sometimes I have forgotten and imposed a few elements into her regime that I thought would help her live longer and better.  But from the moment we met, I've been her person and serving her has given me more joy than anything I've ever done in my life.

She'll be in charge of when she leaves this house and goes out into the universe.  Until then I'll keep sitting beside her watching and trying to learn all I can to do right by her.

Part II, Day 61: A Pretty Good Day, Considering

Amazing how the new normal can be a peaceful place after an attitudinal adjustment--or two, or three.  So Zoe spoke on Monday and we heard her.  No more anti-cancer drugs, no more walks at set times, no more dog food, no more activities that Zoe doesn't choose.  That's our non-plan of a plan, and we've eased into it and set up camp there.

Kerry and Zoe

She perked up in late afternoon and asked for a stroll.  My husband and I put her on the leash and headed off in our usual direction, and even though we always think she has more fun off the lead, she seemed delighted to be out there in the 'hood with us, observing our neighbors' lives.  She marker peed on various shrubs and lawns, delivering her triumphant, alpha Zoe-was-here graffiti with gusto, and as usual she wanted to pull her way up to Rebecca's house to play hide and seek with the kitties.  When we steered her right on State Street instead of left, she wanted to stop in to see her friend Milo, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who Thinks he's a Greyhound, but his people's cars weren't there and we told her she would just have to make do with us as sidekicks.

On the way back down Riverside we passed the house where after an ice storm that became a blizzard this winter we saw a woman outside shoveling snow so her husband would be able to get their truck up the drive.  We'd all lost power that day and she was staying warm by keeping her driveway clear, but she was worried about her child and their cat in the cold apartment.  If the power didn't come on again that night, they'd be in trouble.  Even with all her worries, she had stopped to pet the cute three-legged dog and admire her dexterity in this crazy winter weather.  Now she said, "I remember how much energy and strength your dog had that day, the way she plowed through feet of snow and wouldn't stop.  The way she walked confidently through all those snowdrifts.  She was the most powerful thing out in the world that day."  It was such a kind thing for her to say, and now she and her little boy were patting Zoe, doing their own version of a laying on of hands, wishing her some good last days.  (I wrote the story of Zoe's first encounter with this woman in January in a post called "A Meditation on Power," which you can see here.)

Afterwards our vet, Amy Thompson, came by to see her and to drop off pain meds for when she needs them, if she needs them.  Zoe barked and wagged her tail and followed her into the house with great purpose.  Amy said, "Well, she may be putting on a show for me, but I think Zoe still has lots of Xi in her--a good, strong pulse."  We made plans for her to come back on Tuesday and treat Zoe with acupuncture needles: the first time she would ever be doing this solo, without the Vermont Dr. Thompson. After the visit, Zoe ate for the first time that day.  I think that once she realized we really got the message that the anti-cancer drugs were getting hard on her stomach, and she understood that we've ditched them, and that we'll give her whatever she wants, she was keen to tuck in.

Tuesday morning Zoe opted to hang out on the deck watching the house instead of walking with the gents, but then we took a stroll in late morning around the backyard, startling the groundhogs, admiring the wingspan of the great blue heron, playing a slow-moving kind of hide and seek in the tall grass by the river.  For most of the day afterwards we sat on the balcony together except for when rain chased us inside.  She ate a late breakfast of browned hamburger (organic, local) and grains and watched the river flow by our house while I brought my laptop out there and sat beside her.  When the rain came, we went back in and had a long and very honest conversation.  I lay down beside her and she presented me with her paw, as in, Nice to meet you again, as in, We've done okay, you and I, as in, We can do this part well too, we really can, as in, Thank you.  For a long time it was a contest to see who would break the gaze first.  Her stare is very intense and in the first round, she won, but in the rematch we tied.

Dr. Amy T and Zoe

I talked to Dr. Bravo in Ottawa, her oncologist, and she faxed over a prescription of prednisone to my vet, which many advised is good for the last days because it gives the dog a last boost of appetite and spring in her step and joie de vivre before it's time to say good-bye.

At five o'clock Zoe enjoyed another stroll through the neighborhood.  She met a young chocolate lab on the corner of Riverside and Prospect and it was such a sweet encounter.  They stood a few inches apart from one another wagging tails for the sniff-fest, and then they gently tapped snouts.   Later, Amy came over with the prednisone and her acupuncture needles and Zoe relaxed into a good session on her doggy day bed.  She looked content and peaceful when the needles went in, and afterwards she napped out on the balcony.

I think, from Zoe's point of view, the best part of this new phase is getting to eat what she wants.  We cooked her lamb chops from 8 o'clock ranch and served them on her organic grains mix and some wild rice with beet greens and she devoured every bite. We've got wild salmon from Alaska in the freezer for her, and tonight she'll get what we're having on a plate.

This is our office now

So now it's Wednesday morning and we're on the balcony together, where we'll be all day today when we're not taking a leisurely short walk in the yard or in the 'hood.  When she looks up at me it's as though I were her sculptor and she were posing, or maybe she's the artist and I'm her model.  We know each other's every expression, every head tilt and tone of voice.  She clearly knows we've moved on, into uncharted territory, but I think she also understands that even as I sit a few feet away from her, with every gaze, with every breath, and now, with every stroke of my fingertips at the keyboard, we're together.

Part II: Day 60: Slowing Down

A few people along the way have warned us that Zoe's decline could be swift.  We think that's what's happening now.  At Lake Finley she sometimes planted her paws and did her "hell no, I won't go" early on a walk, but it was 95 degrees and we were in a place she didn't know.  "The real test," I told my friends, "is how she is if/when the weather cools down.  If she's reluctant to walk far on the gentlemen's walk, we'll know that she's slowing down."


We noticed as soon as we got home that her breathing was getting more labored when she ran up a hill.  She is panting now for much of the day.  And although yesterday she ate seconds at breakfast and dinner, when she woke up today she went on a hunger strike.  And when Kerry drove her out to the join the gents for the morning constitutional, she said quite firmly that she would prefer not to.

And then the good news: when she came home from the walk, she ran to the door to my studio and asked to be let up.  It's a steep walk up many stairs, but she wanted to be up there on her post on the balcony watching the river flow by.  She still seeks solace in nature, and in stillness.  And whenever anyone walks up to her and she's awake, she wags her tail.

We think it's time to think about palliative care.  Doggy hospice.  I don't want to leave the house or do anything other than sit by her side on the grass when she's awake.  But even then, I don't want to overdo it.  Sometimes another's intense love is a burden, isn't it?  She's such a brave, resilient, strong-willed dog, and I don't want her to be afraid to go because she thinks it's her job to look after me, her person.  Kerry and I will have to make her as comfortable as we can and then let go.

It's been a year since I came back from India and noticed that she was limping.  A year of long walks along the river through summer grass and fall leaves and snow and ice and trillium and now more summer grass.  A year of morning meditations on the balcony, of romps through the backyard, lovely get-togethers with friends, and the writing of countless dogcentric mini-essays, journal entries, blog posts.
 
Yesterday Zoe and I sat together for a long time on the balcony at first light.  We saw a doe run to the river to drink water and cross over to the other side.  Today the groundhog babies did a kind of shuffle across the lawn, not concerned at all that we were above them looking down on their shiny brown heads.  And now as I write the wind rocks the maple tree at my window, keeping Zoe cool as she rests in the grass.

I look out the window and she looks back up at me, entirely herself, queenly and cuddly at once.  And so I'll end here because she's awake and I want to sit beside her for a few minutes on the cool grass and enjoy hearing what she has to say while I still can.

Part II: Day 58: The Literary Dog Gets a Gig

Zoe in front of the Athenaeum Hotel, Chautauqua, with her male human

For the first time in known history, Zoe has been granted entry to the Chautauqua Writers Festival.  She has a room that she shares with her two human attendants in the Victorian hotel, the Athenaeum, on the first floor, across the hall from a student in her person's workshop--a young woman who, like her instructor, sees metaphors everywhere, even in the parking lot, and is writing an essay about a wasp that terrified Darwin because it laid its eggs inside a spider's abdomen and the creature was churned inside out.

When things that belong on the inside are outside it gets scary: ulcers, skin ruptures that look intestinal, parasites, alien embryos, intense emotions--like the kind that a memoirist relives, never exorcising them completely, through writing.  

At the picnic before the reading a clump of admirers have gathered on the grass to love up this dog.  They praise her beauty, her sweet ways, her proffered paws, her polite begging technique, her lean-in hugs.  After her person gives the dog bites of pulled pork and chicken, the nonfiction festival director takes care of dessert.  The lovely tattooed poet who is writing about her relationship with Rilke gets teary-eyed talking about her writing mentors, including this festival director--how they not only nurtured her muse, but how they also found her and her small children a place to live and gave her the will to live when she was in the lowest place ever.  Zoe's person's eyes fill too, and Zoe notes that this is a place where people really share things, essential things, life-affirming things, and not just pulled pork and pie.  The tattooed poet has lived with cats but is drawn to Zoe, she says, because she can see something special about her, something soulful and wise in her eyes that transcends speciesdom.

Zoe with Diana Hume George and Traci Morell

Erica Sklar and Zoe are in love

One of the student interns, a talented nonfiction writer, has veterinary science training.  Zoe's person took to her at once, and Zoe adores her so quickly, so instantly, that it's hard for anyone else to get her attention.  The two submit to a photo shoot, but would rather just commune without all the fuss.

Zoe has a lump on her neck that is seeping.  It was the size of a golf ball before the road trip began, but it's shrinking.  Her people keep patting it down with disinfectant, but then it bleeds.  Even though an oozing growth isn't easy on the eyes, the writers pet her anyway, complimenting her on her lustrous black coat, shiny after being groomed, although one poet at the barbeque suggests that it might be a good idea for her person to wash her hands before she goes to the podium because there's blood on it, which is probably also metaphorical, but not in a good way.  Because Zoe looks so good it's hard to believe that something deadly is growing inside her.  These lumps are the internal made external, even if they aren't harmful--her local vet doesn't think so, but really doesn't know--so they are the focus of her human attendants' administrations.  It comforts them to help make something shrink when other things are so beyond reach.

At the podium, before her person reads, she tries to explain to the audience how Zoe came into her life, how this dog's cancer has changed the way she thinks about time, and how she expected to fall in love with her dog but not like this-- so deeply, completely, helplessly.  She says something about how when humans adopt dogs they risk their hearts because they know they are devoting themselves to a creature with a lifespan that is normally much shorter than theirs, and when that lifespan is limited even more by a disease . . .  Around the room, a few people, she will find out later, are thinking about their own pets and trying not to cry.

Zoe is seated in the back row of this crowd with her male person.  The two humans have wondered how Zoe will comport herself at this event.  This dog is fabulous at parties and weddings.  If people are speaking, delivering toasts, reciting vows, promising to love each other in sickness and in health, feeding each other cake, opening champagne, dancing to bad Eighties music, she is the perfect guest.  Retirement dinners are okay too.  She likes listening to embarrassing tidbits about the retiree's thorough e-mails, idiosyncratic office attire, and generous deeds at the copy machine.  But if it starts to feel too much like a classroom to her, she whines. 

Case in point: her person took her to the final day presentations at the Adirondack Semester in December and at first she thought it was a party and did what she does: quietly made the rounds, leaning into the people who clearly needed to snuggle.  But when the talks went on for just a tad too long, or the blue sky beaming into the window lit up the spot where she stood, she decided it was time to play in the snow.  Her sighs went stereo.  They could be heard in every corner.  She was like the kid with ADD who taps her foot and sighs extravagantly when her person delivers a lecture.  "Gee, I'm sorry.  Was I boring you?" said person is always tempted to say.

Zoe's person tells the assembled that it could go either way depending on what Zoe thinks is going on here: party or school.  This is, of course, a great challenge for a writer at a reading.  Well, it's both, one wants to say, if the purpose of literature really is, as Horace once told us, to delight and instruct: plaire et instruire.  Can you say the same thing about a blog?  Can a blog be held to the same standards?  We don't know.  This is the first time Zoe's person has read something that hasn't been published, let alone shared the posts from this corner in the oral tradition.  It's a little scary.  Like wearing something that belongs inside, outside.  Underwear, say.  Or maybe a nightshirt, like the one with down dog paw prints that her friend Rebecca gave her one year for her birthday.

When she hears her name, Zoe whines audibly.  All human heads turn to look at her again. What has she decided?  Does she want to stick around?

She does.

It doesn't hurt that all the people smell a little like pulled pork.

Although Zoe's person rehearsed and timed her reading, and was able to get through five posts in her allotted 20 minutes when she practiced in her room, when all is said and done, and done and said, and heads have turned to admire the dog in question again, and again, the writer in this corner only has time for three posts: Under Wild Apple Trees, Bark and Soul, and Which Way Do we Go? She wanted to end with Pink Twilight Sky, but hey, the clock has ticked.  There is never enough time. 

Zoe listens respectfully to the whole thing, never making another sound, and for a mad instant her person wonders if the two of them might be able to take this show on the road.  Maybe they could stop at other dog-loving literary venues.  Maybe other dogs could come too.

Then it's over, and the amazing, dog-loving Puerto Rican-American poet, Martin Espada, is coming to the podium.  He will rock and sway, sing and chant, performing poems about immigration, and childhood, and his childhood muses, and the staff at Windows on the World, many of them undocumented workers, who lost their lives in September 11th, and no one will be the same afterwards.  It's going to be one of the best poetry readings this dog's person has ever attended.  Just before he goes on he'll tell Zoe's person that he lost his dog to cancer last year, and he and his wife still haven't gotten over it. 

And Zoe will miss every minute of it. Someone will leave the room and Zoe will tug at the lead to follow.  She's had her fifteen minutes of fame and now it's time to stalk the other Chautauqau dogs out for evening strolls along the lakefront, rest beside the fountain, and lap up a drink at the Victorian hotel.

She's been inside among warm bodies for too long, and the outside beckons.

Kerry Grant, Natalia Singer, Zoe, Kristine Newman, and Ruby at Chautauqua, photo by Diana Hume George

P.S.  The dog's person would like to thank the kind and generous Sherra Babcock and Kristine Newman and Diana Hume George at the Chautauqua Writers Festival for opening all these doors to Zoe and making her feel so much at home.  Kristine even brought her dog over for a play date and swim to tire Zoe out before the reading, and gave her a toy.  These dog-lovers are beautiful humans and Zoe and her person are grateful to have them in the pack.

Chautauqua is supposed to be about the life of the mind, but for this dog, it's the life of the body.  And in particular, the head scratch . . .

Part II: Day 54: Treating the Patient's Codependent Pepes

On Saturday Zoe's integrative vet, Dr. Don Thompson--Dr. T., Don, I never know what to call him--comes to the house at lunchtime.  It's Zoe's monthly acupuncture house call.  I am in my studio writing and Kerry is in his shop turning a bowl when we hear Zoe barking wildly, and we know the visit has already begun.

gold star if you can find the needles

Zoe appears to be happy about this shoulder needle, for some reason.

I have never seen this man look quite this tired.  I was planning on calling the other Dr. Thompson, Amy, Zoe's local vet, to come over and join us as she has on the two previous visits.  She is following an acupuncture course herself, and Zoe is her patient, so these house calls are an opportunity for her to learn more about her craft with a dog she knows fairly well.  But when we texted each other early this morning she told me that her husband would be working on a fence today and she would have to bring her young daughter with her.  Zoe is still a little afraid of children who are too young to write papers and meet a professor in her office hours--the pre-verbal, pre-driving demographic still spooks her a little--which could be distracting and disrupt the calm vibe, but I thought maybe my husband and I could play with the child while she and Don got down to business, all in the spirit of Bring it On.

But that's not going to happen.  This man is exhausted.  He left at 3:30 from Stowe, Vermont this morning to drive to the North Country and he is only halfway through the 15 house calls he has to make today.  The next one is in Harrisville, which sounds far, even though I don't know where that is, exactly.  Not our county, anyway.  He won't get home until 11 PM tonight.  I offer him tea, but he's worried that he'll overload on caffeine and get the shakes, so we settle on Strawberry Serenity Kombucha.  I'm so suggestible myself that when I drink this stuff the word "serenity" works on me before I've even finished a bottle, but I realize that not everyone reads a word on a label as a command, so I just hope for the best.

After he puts in the needles, we fill him in on all that has happened with our dog in the last month.  Namely, the bad news we got on May 18 about the size of Zoe's lung tumors, how the biggest one was now 4.78 centimeters, and the oncologist's prognosis then: one month to three.  We're a week away from a month already, but Zoe's still full of zest.  She's supposed to head out with us next weekend for a short vacation.

She relaxes for 20 minutes with the needles in

He tells us, "This dog is not going away any time soon."  He doesn't mean travel.  He means die.  "From what I could see, with that greeting she gave me in your driveway, she's still very engaged with life.  She's got lots of time left."  He says he doesn't need to press the will-to-live point, for example, because her will is very much in evidence.

"This is how it is for us," I say.  "We think she looks great.  And then we get these grim numbers and the grim prognosis.  And I get all upset, and try to hide it from Zoe, but I know she senses it, and then she probably wonders what she did wrong when she feels my sadness, and then when she sniffs out unhappiness, she's not so happy either.  It's one of those feedback loops.  But those dips never last long.  We get back into our routines, and all is well, and Zoe sees you, and I start to think . . ."

(Not long ago I wrote a post about the dog's codependent pepes.  Even my very rational husband agrees that this is our affliction.)

"That's the difference between Western and Eastern medicine," Don says.

He asks about the India trip.  On a previous visit, I asked if he thought it would be okay for me to leave her in late July and early August for a two week work trip.  He has said consistently that he thought Zoe would be in good shape then, that it would be okay for me to leave.  If I went by the oncologist's prediction, I would be gone for Zoe's last two weeks of life in the most optimistic of her scenarios.

"The trip is being postponed to sometime after Christmas," I say.  "It's better this way."  I explain that my husband is having surgery in July, and of course I don't want to miss a minute of the time Zoe and I have together this summer.  Except for a short trip coming up this week, I'm hunkering down.

Don shoots me a look, but doesn't comment.  The way I interpret it, he thinks that Zoe will hang on that long, and that I'll be in more conflict about traveling then than I would be this summer.  But I really can't read minds, even though I try to all the time.

Today's acupuncture points, which he writes down for me, are just the general tune-up points that go with treating a dog with cancer who is in overall good form.  Stomach points.  Spleen points.  Bladder points.  Six in all.

He pets her, and we point out all the lumps that have sprouted overnight, it seems, since she started taking the new drug, Kinavet.

"It's ironic, in that that drug is supposed to be for inoperable mast cell tumors, which isn't Zoe's cancer.  But is it just a coincidence that now she's getting lumpier every day, now that she's taking this drug that shrinks tumors?"

We point to the place where he removed a lump via laser a while back.  Now a new one is growing there.

I've just been assuming they're all cysts, the kind dogs get increasingly as they age, and not dangerous at all.  Kerry's not so sure. One of them started bleeding last week.

"They're not osteosarcomata," Don says.  And he tell us not to worry.

We talk about all the good indicators.  How Zoe's appetite is strong, although she is getting pickier again.  How Zoe's still walking five miles a day without showing signs of exertion, and still cuddly and sweet when she wants to be and still bossing people and critters around in the yard.  "The other night I asked her what she wanted to do when I took her out after dinner and she pointed to the street," I say.  "In the early days, I would take her on four walks a day.  One was the after dinner stroll through the neighborhood.  We stopped doing that long ago because I didn't have the time.  She seems to want to do that again now.  So we did it twice this week."

He knows the geography here, since his family has a house around the block, and he's impressed with the ground Zoe covers on this walk, especially since it's an extra one after she's already walked her five miles.

"That's what you have to do with a cancer patient," he says.  "Just make them happy and do what they want to do, the things that keep them interested in life.  That's very important."

We talk about my husband's hip replacement surgery planned for next month, and when I mention some pain I woke up with today, Don channels his wife, who does Chinese Traditional Medicine for humans.  He shows me the points to press near my right knee for the inflamation along my left elbow, the tendon going down to my ring finger.  "That's the triple heater meridian he says."  I'm not that optimistic that we can treat it this way, but I'm open, and here's the thing: the next morning, most of the pain has lessened and as I finish this post now, Monday morning, there's just a little of it left in my finger and the rest is gone.

blissed out after the session, she rolls in the grass

Later, my husband and I dissect the visit.  He's still very worried about Zoe's lumps.  I'm trying not to be.

"Then why didn't you say that?" I ask him.  "Why didn't you say what you were thinking?"

"Because it was obvious to me that part of his job today was to treat you."  I think about this for a minute.  "He wants to make sure that you are as positive and optimistic as you can be.  Because he believes that your moods and your beliefs will affect Zoe's overall prognosis."

That's my girl!

"So maybe that's what he really means by the difference between western and eastern medicine."

Western medicine is more about what the x-rays show: the dimensions of the tumors and their location, the numbers.  The composition of the blood.  But beyond all that I don't understand about acupuncture meridians--what we really mean when we say a needle is entering a bladder point or a stomach point--integrative medicine entertains the notion that our thoughts and feelings can have a tremendous impact on our health.

I used to resist this way of thinking.  I objected to it on political grounds.  I thought it was kind of a blame-the-victim thing, like, if you get sick, it's because you're Debbie Downer.  I strenuously object to any belief system that over-emphasizes the role of the individual in health and wellness and doesn't name and critique, say, the polluters in our environment that make us sick: industry.

I'll never forget the trip I took to the site of the World Trade Center a month after the attacks.  My friend Cathy and I walked there from our hotel in Gramery Park and I smelled the damage half a mile before we arrived.  The acrid taste in my throat, the headache, the dizziness, the disorientation, the heaviness in my lungs: it hit me pretty fast, but what upset me most was the sight of all those people and dogs at work without masks.  The EPA had just put on its web site that there were no dangerous emissions at the site.  I knew in my body that this was a colossal lie.  And just this week I heard a story on the radio that all kinds of cancers are showing up for people who worked or lived near the site, and some people will be able to receive compensation.  But it's no compensation when our environment is making us sick and the agencies charged with protecting us are willing to suppress that information because of political pressure.

But on the other hand, since I started meditating I've read the science about how our ways of thinking and of dealing with stress affect the brain.  I firmly believe now that the feedback loop we create by negative thoughts, emotions, and stress can change the layout of our brain until being perpetually anxious is our new normal.  And I also believe that meditation can undo the damage.  Through meditation I've learned to witness my thoughts as though they were birds alighting on a branch of a tree.  They land, they sing, and they fly off.

Every day, the same message: it's not just that Zoe's good days are contagious, but that mine are too. We are kindred.  We are soft-wired to one another.

And every morning I search for the stillness inside to help me see the tree branch that is right before me without needing to know where and when the next bird will land.

Part II: Day 49: This Morning, This Cool, Rainy June Morning

6 a.m.  It's cool and damp out here, sweater weather for the dog's person, comfort weather for the dog with the thick black fur coat.  We contemplate purple pansies, pink snapdragons, gymnastic squirrels, groundhog mamas and their young, and invite the great blue heron to bring his girlfriend over for our appraisal.  The wind stirs the poplar outside the studio and a branch bows down to us in an unsteady way just as I bowed last night in yoga class in sun salutations with knees slightly bent--cool nights bringing me unusually tight hamstrings--and I say, this is the life I was meant to lead.  We listen, we watch, and I wrap myself in a blanket and drink coffee.  Our dog hates heat and if cool is what she wants, so be it.  I say, I'm in: let's go for summer-lite.  Let there be lettuce and asparagus, let there eventually even be corn and tomatoes, I certainly don't want our farmers to suffer, but if this lovely dog likes a mild cool morning with nary a bug, what's the harm?

We watch the mist swirling above the river and I think I can see fish or creatures imitating them riding the current.  The hammock swings empty in the yard; no one wants to lounge there and read in this weather.  I picture the August me out there with sunglasses and a book and I hope there's an August Zoe too, underneath that hammock swatting flies away.  But hope, Thich Nhat Hanh says, is dangerous.  It makes me forget that the perfect moment is this moment right now.  It makes us chase things we can't see.  It makes us put our happiness in hock. 

And right now the dog is eating, walking, running, playing, cuddling, smiling in her doggy way, and she knows this is her world so of course as the day wakes up and people get to work she will supervise the construction going on across the river--across her river.  Right now the dog is beside me sharing a new day, this Tuesday morning.  This is our moment, and although I want a million more of these I will horde the ones I have by writing about them here and now.

Namaste, gentle reader.  Namaste.

Part II: Day 46: The Dog's Codependent Pepes

Morning meditation with our girl starts this codependent human on the right track

Yesterday after lunch, my husband and I were romping with Zoe along the riverbed in our back yard, and he said, “We’re both totally codependent on the dog.  We’re happy as clams today because she’s happy as a clam.  Look at her!”

We looked down as Zoe chewed on some tall grass, then tried to balance a stick on her head.  The dog looked up at us and panted happily.  She had that gleam in her eye.

If every day with her is a gift, this one, Thursday, May 31, was like a houseful of presents on one of those birthdays that end with an 0.  Dog's appetite: excellent.  Dog's desire to walk and romp: off the charts.  Dog's vibe: Buddha meets Lassie.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” I said.  “The fact that what you just said is true, or the fact that I’ve influenced you and now you are starting to talk like this.”

We both laughed.  My husband loathes jargon, especially the kind we associate with pop psychology.  But he knows this about himself:  he is always as happy as the least tranquil member of his family.

Why is our Zoe back to her happy place?  What has done the trick?  Has she gotten used to her new drugs?  Is she just happy that she won the victory and we’re giving her mainstream dog food and, for the moment—this is really not forever—no herbals? 

Last week there were a lot of strikes against her.   

For starters, she's dealing with new drugs that no one seems to know much about, not even the pharmaceutical company that makes them.   I know this because I called them when we were trapped in the car on our way through the maybe-tornado.  And I know this because when I talked to Willow and asked whether she has known dogs lose their personalities on the drug, she said that Zoe is only the second dog she’s prescribed it to.  “The other dog . . . It was just a short time,” she said.  Meaning, I presume, that the drug was the last port of call, and the dog died.  So we’re in unknown territory here and no one has any advice.   

Then there were the parasites.  And intense heat.  The rise of barometric pressure before a major storm blew through.  Construction project altering her domain and adding to the noise, which she can’t stand.  Plus we also gave her a dose of Frontline—we were driving into Lyme Disease headquarters—which always makes her squirmy, plus her monthly Heartguard tablet.  Just one of these factors—the heat, in particular—would normally take her off her game.  Then add to that the problem that her people roiled about with anxiety and frayed nerves.

A friend who is going through something very similar with his dog wrote me this message on e-mail:

"Although these days are all rollercoaster days - some we're at the top and some we're at the bottom--my challenge is not letting those days at the bottom consume me.  They tend to be lost days in my life and I wish I could find a better way to handle it. "

Tell me about it, friend!

So now our task is to do whatever we can to replenish ourselves, rebuild our strength and resilience and senses of humor so that we can be ready when something else happens, so that we can ride the next wave without letting it carry us away.

Part II: Day 45, The Storm, the Wall, and Some Good Stuff in Between

Driving back on Tuesday from Zoe's acupuncture appointment in Vermont, after a lovely and restful Memorial Weekend at my sister's, the receptionist said: "Did you hear about the tornado warnings?"

"Really, where?" my husband asked.

She looked again at the computer.

"Uh, where you are headed right now, I think," she said.  "And all of Vermont too."  She read more about what was expected.  Torrential rain, high winds, thunder, hail.

"Figures," I said. 

For the past hour, Dr. Bond (Emily) had treated Zoe for her cancer, but also for anxiety: the first time this has been necessary.  Zoe had whimpered much of the way there from Massachusetts and had cried all the way to Massachusetts on Saturday.  Zoe's cry is very high-pitched.  It's plaintive.  Piercing.  Heartbreaking.  Normally she's a great traveler and she only whines and cries when she has to pee, or if she thinks she's going to be left behind.  Not this weekend.  This was not the same dog who, two years earlier, spent seven months in France, eleven weeks of which we wandered from place to place by car and boat, never staying anywhere for longer than a week.  This was not the dog who bounded fiercely through Alpine meadows and leapt with joy into the Mediterranean Sea.

I felt like we'd already been riding a storm cloud for days.  Now we were driving into one.

*   *   *   *   *

Just before Memorial Day weekend, I hit the wall:

Meditation: a patch on stress relief, nothing deep, nothing life-altering, and definitely nothing blissful.

Writing: A few very good days, but by Saturday morning I was too worried about Zoe to go in deep.  To write well I have to loosen the reins, forget people might read it and just follow the trail of imagery and insight and crazy loop-de-loops of insight and metaphor and characters behaving badly or surprisingly well and let them decide what to do and when.

To do this well I have to let go.  But I felt with every other part of me--the part not writing the novel, anyway--like I had to hang on tight.

In meditation class, our teacher Rebecca says that when she is with us as our teacher and guide she goes into a "light" meditation state so that she can be ready and alert if any of us needs her.  People can go to all kinds of wild places in meditation, and sometimes it's frightening.  She said, "I also need to be aware if anyone walks into the door."  She keeps the place safe for all of us.

Perhaps that's the role I'm performing for my dog these days and I really don't feel like I can abandon that post, even if she's outside or in the house and I'm in my studio.

Well, that's one way of looking at it.  The other is that I've been a frantic worrier.  Since Sunday night, May 20th, the evening after our college's commencement, Zoe wasn't doing very well and I didn't know how to help her.  I spent hours of the day looking on the internet about the side effects of Kinavet, Zoe's new drug, and not getting anywhere.

Something had changed last week, after we started her on this new drug.  She stopped trusting us.  She wouldn't eat.  She looked at her bowl with contempt.  She didn't want to just hang out with us and frolic.  She was still energetic and content on walks, and she perked up now and then--enough to tell us it wasn't The End--but something was markedly different, and we had nothing in our bag of tricks to help her.  When I found out she had protozoa in her system I was very relieved, thinking we had the reason, something ordinary and treatable, for her stomach woes, but even then we knew the new medicine had to be at least partly to blame.

It's one thing to have an adverse reaction to a drug.  That's a potentially big problem, but we could always go back to the drug she was on earlier this spring.  The real issue was this: had the disease advanced enough to make her feel bad?  Was she suffering? 

She was picky and finicky for a few days, but then Zoe went on strike.  She got all Bartleby-the-Scrivener on us and said, I would prefer not to. 

Her doggy health food diet, with all the non-wheat grains, the raw meats, the vegetables, the herbs?

She would not go near it.

She'd been so compliant.  We could mix all those Chinese herbs right into her food most of the time and if we topped up her food with a little bit of something she wanted, more meat, or some nibbles of cheese, or broth, she would ignore the ick factor and just go for it.

Then I spent a great deal of energy trying to decide if it was mean and evil of me to ask my husband to put the Chinese herbs and potions into a syringe and get them in her that way.  Mean and evil to make him do it, because I just can't, and mean and evil to subject her to more invasive stuff when all she wanted to do was lie in the shade and be a normal dog on a hot summer day.

But then again, this method of getting down the herbs works for Milo, Zoe's doggy friend in Vermont who has the same kind of cancer.  So why can't we make this work for us?

The two of me duked it out.

Meanwhile, my husband started tearing apart the side of our house so that we can insulate it better and put up some siding along the deck.  He's taking good care of us.  It's an important project and this is the right time to get it done. But here's the thing: our house's exterior looked the way I was starting to feel inside.  Like life as I had known it was now a demolition project.

This is all because Zoe had stopped trusting us, had decided her silver bowl was radioactive, and seemed also to lose her appetite for cuddling and play. 

I'd been waiting all week to hear back from the oncologist about this new drug and its potential side effects and I felt so helpless.   I wanted to help my dog but I didn't know how.  And it had all happened so suddenly.  She was completely fine, and then she wasn't, and it felt like there was nothing gradual in between.

I'd written about the whole "sudden decline" factor in a recent post: of the dogs of friends going downhill without warning, the dogs of friends who were left reeling in shock.  In writing that post I was rehearsing for the moment when I, too, will have to let go and say good-bye to our pup, but when I wrote it Zoe was perfectly fine so I could allow myself the luxury of imagining the worst--we weren't there yet.

When a week had passed without hearing from the oncologist I sent another message.  I should have called too, I should have called on Friday, but I was running around getting errands done then and it's never possible to get through to her without waiting for several hours and then I just feel frustrated and anxious.  At least, though, if I had called I would have been on her radar.  And I had total faith that I'd get an e-mail message.  The vet techs have always been great about this.  So Saturday morning I sent an e-mail thinking that maybe at the very least someone would call me on Tuesday, after the long weekend.  But when I sent my message I got the oncologist's vacation message which said that she was going to be gone all of the coming week and wouldn't be back until a few days after Zoe's drugs had run out.  That's when I panicked, big time.

It was a holiday weekend, no one would be around to help, and I thought I was going to have drive for hours and hours to some oncology vet in a distant state to get Zoe seen to.  I wrote a desperate e-mail to a vet that I thought was at the Cornell veterinary school, but was actually in Connecticut.  I looked into animal hospital hours in Massachusetts, where we were heading.  I thought about Tufts in Boston, where my sister's dog got really good care when she had a wood sliver lodged in her throat and had to have it surgically removed.  I was thinking I had to do something Big, something Drastic.  I was thinking if I didn't solve this problem that very morning All Would Be Lost.

It was a bad flashback, a deja-vu to a place I thought I'd long since left behind.  I knew what was happening even while it was happening, but I couldn't make it stop.  I felt the same panic, the same heart elevating, adrenalin-rushing-through-the-body dread and fear I felt when our mother would have psychotic episodes when I was a child and no reliable adult was available to intervene.  It was that same feeling of How can I help her?  Who will come to our aid?  How can I make a medical decision for her when I don't understand what's happening?  I have to fix this.  I don't know how to fix this.  I have to fix this.  I don't know how.

It was worse than this, actually, this Saturday morning meltdown, because going back to this place just felt so ridiculous and overblown and melodramatic and wrong.  I thought, my goodness, if you're going to have a panic attack because your dog has lost her appetite and is acting paranoid now in your company, how are you going to be able to help your husband in a time of crisis?  What good will you to be your sister or friends when they fall apart? Pull yourself together, woman!

And so on.

It's one thing to have a flashback to the places that scare us.  It's another thing to judge that experience as inappropriate and then beat ourselves up for having it while we are having it.

Honestly, in the eleven months since I first noticed Zoe limping, I've experienced many days of great sorrow, a handful of crying jags, but I don't think I ever went through a panicky meltdown quite like the one I had Saturday morning when I thought our medical support system was also in the hands of the demolition crew, and my husband and I were on our own, the dog was going to suffer now, and we didn't know what to do.

Somehow I pulled myself together and helped my husband pack up the car.

Zoe cried the whole six and a half hours the whole way there.  She has never behaved like this in her life.

I said to myself, This dog sounds like how I feel right now.  We are each other's mirror.  We're in a co-dependent relationship.  We need a therapist. 

And so on.


When we got to my sister and brother-in-law's house, Zoe seemed pleased to be there, as ever, but she didn't do what she usually does: run a lap around the house, then charge in, pull all the plush squeaky toys out of Sadie's box because she can, and say, Queen Alpha is baaack, hellooo! 

She wandered in, wagged her tail in a blasé way, then headed out to the deck to rest.  I need a break from my frantic person, she seemed to be saying.  I need some space.  Can I get a little air, please?  

It occurred to me then that just as she had seemed like a stranger to me all week, perhaps, in my panicked state, I had seemed like a stranger to her.


And then something shifted a little--the change of venue was probably what we all needed.  That night we realized that Zoe would eat if we gave her dog food and cat food from a can.  And if we put it in a different bowl, not the silver one which she now associates with All Bad Things.  There was nothing wrong with her appetite.  She was hungry.  She was just like a kid who says Enough of the spelt and spirolina and lentil cutlets!  I want a cheeseburger and fries and coke like a normal kid.   You people are freaks! 

Zoe had hit the wall too.  She'd been on her best behavior, she'd been strong and resilient and compliant for so long.  Now, it seemed, she just wanted us to treat her like a typical dog.  A regular dog, who eats regular dog food, and hangs out, and walks, and isn't fussed over, and is permitted the luxury of having bad moods without it meaning The End is Near.

So we gave her a day off, a Sunday sabbatical, from the new drug, Kinavet.  And we haven't given her any herbal treatments since.  I know they help her with her vitality and keep her immune system strong, but what we need now even more than that is for our relationship with her to be strong, and that means we do it her way.  We need her to trust us.  We need her to feel safe with us.  At the vet's on Tuesday morning, Emily suggested we put the herbs in capsules and I'm going to do that tomorrow.  She's really good about taking pills in little balls of cream cheese or peanut butter.  But the herbals in caps will mean 12 pills a day, and we'll just have to see how that goes.  If it doesn't work out, I'm not going to sweat it.

She needs to have a happy, uncomplicated doggy life until it's time to say good-bye.

And here's the thing:  Once we decided to give her a day off from drugs and to let her eat whatever she wants to eat and to take a little sabbatical from the herbs, we got our dog back.  She became our sweet, mellow Zoe again.

We walked our usual five miles a day.

She swam.

She played with Sadie and they fought their usual tug-of-war for the ball.

She found a cool spot in the iris bed and posed for us.

She rolled in the wood chip pile and gave us her goo-goo I know I'm Adorable come hither look.

My friend Sara told me this wise thing on Monday, when we met at the Leverett Coop for a walk in the woods and lunch: "Whatever your emotional baggage is, even if you think you're not carrying it around any more, it's going to hit you when you have a medical emergency with your loved one if no one comes to your aid."  She told me a terrifying story about how her mom had had surgery and then later went into withdrawal from the pain medication and went through what seemed at the time like a psychotic episode.  No one at the hospital had warned her that this could happen.  And the only thing she could do was to take her mom to an emergency room and sit with her for seven hours until someone was willing to see her and prescribe that drug again.  "When you are in a situation like this and you feel helpless, everything from your past comes out.  You may think you're over something, that you've left it long behind you, and then it's back," she said.

Then she told me how a few years ago she had helped her mom with a medical crisis and for that one she'd held it together just fine, but when she flew home to find out a kitten she had rescued was in serious trouble she completely fell apart.  "I don't cry about the people I love the way I did with this helpless little animal," she said.  "I think it has to do with the fact that our relationships with people are complicated.  But with these little animals we love . . ."

 "They're our hearts," I said.  "They're the furry little loving part of us.  We give them unconditional love and they give it back in a way that people just can't.  So when they are suffering, and we feel helpless because we can't make them feel better, we feel our emotions without any defenses."

The weekend was just what the three of us needed.  Zoe got to be herself again.  My husband got to rest his back after all the demolition work on the house.  I worked on my novel and got a lot of sleep and had other people help keep an eye on our girl--people who love her, whom she loves as much as she loves us.  By the time we were packing up to go home on Tuesday, I felt strong and peaceful again.  Zoe was fine.  She was our old dog again.  Nothing was wrong with her appetite--she just wanted to call the shots.  She still had her zest for life.

And then I found out that our oncologist had, indeed, tried to get in touch with me.  She had left two messages on my cell phone on Monday--that's usually her day off, so I hadn't expected this--and she promised a long, detailed conversation.  I had felt completely abandoned on Saturday, and now, a few days later, I got into the car to drive home with the terrible sinking realization that I was now the weak link in the chain, I had dropped the ball.  I didn't realize it at the time, but we hadn't had cell phone coverage where we'd been frolicking for much of the weekend.  The phone was by my side when the calls came but the phone never rang.

And now this person I so needed to speak to was on vacation and I was back where I'd started: the drugs were running out and I didn't know what to do.

This cancer is aggressive.  A few days without the medication might mean that Zoe's tumors blow up in no time at all.

This time I had screwed up.  All because of technology.  In Massachusetts I hadn't been able to get on the internet either--something wonky with my sister's new server--and I hadn't pushed it, or asked to borrow her laptop, because to be honest, it was nice to take a rest, have a holiday weekend without being plugged in.  If I had checked e-mail I would have known the call was coming.

I had now missed the call I'd been waiting for for more than a week, and we were in a bind.

What were we going to do?

*   *   *   *   *

This is what the sky and clouds looked like when we left Vermont and drove into Northern New York:

 Zoe was in the back seat and as the heavens opened, she started to whine.  We still had another three hours until we had to go home to our messy house where there are boards and bricks everywhere and not enough medicine for Zoe or a plan.

I took these pictures, and I prayed.  I was really pissed off, if you want to know the truth.  I did not have the proper attitude of gratitude.  I did not feel the least bit zen.  My attitude was, fuck that whole letting go thing.  Fuck the whole attachment is suffering thing.  Don't expect me to be so good.  I need to be snarky here.  I need to be mad.  I'm tired of being resilient and positive.  Let me just sink into this sinkhole for a few minutes and spew a little, okay? 

I looked back over the weekend.  I had gone three mornings in a row without meditating, which is the longest I've gone in a year.  I was on strike, in my own way, just as Zoe had been.  And now I looked at the sky, and I said, Really?  Seriously?  You're going to give this just-back-from-freaked-out-dog and her just-back-from-freaked-out-person and her just-back-from-trying-to-calm-down-freaked-out-person-and dog husband a friggin' tornado now?  Are you fucking kidding me?

Then I thought, okay.  Let's try something else.  I closed my eyes and counted my breaths, basically just to stop from hyperventilating.  I got my feet up into half-lotus on my car seat and meditated for a while, using the top-secret mantra my teacher gave us in the meditation tune-up class.


I looked outside at the pouring rain and then I asked my husband if he felt okay driving.  He said yes.  We were prepared to find a hotel somewhere if we had to but we were way out in the sticks.

But then I asked the universe, god = dog = love, the force of nature and animals, a little more nicely to give us a break.

And I started to feel better.  I said the mantra in my head for a while.  I breathed slowly.  Zoe stopped whining the minute my mood lifted.  It was that instantaneous.

The storm blew West and wreaked havoc on Plattsburgh, which was maybe fifteen miles from where we were at the time.

"It was like threading the eye of a needle," my husband said the next morning.  "Just a few miles away from us they had ping-pong ball size hail, terrible winds, torrential rain.  Everything we were supposed to have, but didn't."

I'm sorry, Plattsburgh.  I really am.  But I'm really glad we drove home safely without incident.

While we were still in the car, watching storm clouds head west, I got on the phone for maybe the sixth time that day and spoke to Willow, one of our vet techs.  We agreed she would order us more of the Kinavet and we'll just take it day by day until after our oncologist comes back.

"I don't know what's happening around here, Natalia," she said.  "There are so many sick animals.  Donna and I worked on Friday until 11 o'clock at night.  The dogs just kept coming and coming.  We don't know why it's like this.  We don't know why there are so many sick animals.  We don't know why we are this busy.  It's just so overwhelming."

I heard the goodness and frustration in her voice and I wanted to hug her.  I wanted to hug and love up all the afflicted beings in this cancer-infested broken and beautiful world. Why are so many dogs and cats getting cancer?

I was way over being mad and sad and feeling like a helpless child again.  That was so four-days-ago. 

Zoe is a strong, resilient dog but she needs to be able to feel like crap sometimes without her humans falling apart. We have to be able to see her through good days and bad days and let her feel safe and loved and protected through every minute of them until the very end.

Usually I'm pretty good at doing this, but last week I hit the wall.

Wednesday morning I woke up to calm skies and the sight of the great blue heron standing in tree pose on the rocks in front of the river.

I meditated and wrote and played with Zoe and had lunch with a dear friend and felt like my old self again.

When I turned on the internet for the first time since Saturday morning I found Facebook friend messages and e-mails from people sending good wishes, wanting to say hey, and some nice notes from the oncologist and vet techs whom I thought had abandoned us.   I woke to the reminder once again that we're never ever as alone as we think we are.

Zoe holds up a mirror to me.  When I feel bad, she feels bad, and vice versa.  I think she sensed all my anxiety on Saturday and carried it all the way from New York to Massachusetts.

We've had it easy these past eleven months because while Zoe is exceedingly sensitive, she is also placid and sweet and mellow.  She's what some people I've met recently call "a heart dog"--full of emotion and empathy--and to make her happy I have to hide my storms from her and stay out of sight, then come out in better weather later for a cuddle.

I've managed to do that 90% of the time this year.  But on Saturday, that long car ride--there was nowhere to hide.

Last night in my meditation class, everyone told stories about the weeks we had just had.  One woman, a very devoted yoga practitioner and meditator for decades, said that she's had moments during her meditation recently where she just burst inexplicably into sobbing.  She has relived moments of feeling alone and abandoned and unloved from when she was only four years old.  Others described sensations of color and heat and movement--what the yogis describe as kundalini awakening--an experience and sensation that Elizabeth Gilbert documents really vividly in the India section of Eat, Pray, Love.   Others talked about how when they need meditation the most, they can't find time to do it, or they do it and don't go in very deeply.  Sometimes when I sit in meditation in our class all I feel is physical pain.  Others feel emotional pain.  Our teacher tells us that we're "clearing" the pain--physical and emotional--when this happens.  We're experiencing it so that we can release it, so that we won't have the same blocks, physically and emotionally, we've been carrying with us for so long.

Last Saturday when I relived that panic of being responsible for another being but not knowing how to help her, and not being able to find anyone to give me the advice I needed, I was very frightened of that emotion.  It's one thing to release something.  It's another to get stuck there again.  But at least I understood what was happening to me even when I couldn't move past it.  

Zoe's her old self again.  This morning when I woke up she thumped her tail and rolled on her back and grunted and leaned against me.  She's off walking with my husband on the gentlemen's walk as I conclude this post.

Last night when I came home from meditation class, I took her outside.  She didn't need to pee, and didn't want to roll around in the sweet-smelling grass.  She just wanted to stare at the sky.  She nudged her snout towards my studio door, lifted her head, and I said, Okay.  We climbed the stairs and sat out on the balcony for a while, watching the night sky.  It was beautiful.  The clouds had woven a fine net over everything, but now and then a bright star blinked past.  The black sky that wasn't covered with this soft net was shaped like a black dog's head, a dog with a long snout.  A plane was flying south, its light like a dog's eye moving, blinking, watching.

I don't know what's coming next, but I'm so grateful that we still have more time.