Part II: Day 66: Clean Plates Club

On Saturday Glenn surprised me with a wonderful message: he and James and the Divine Ms. Emily, their curly-haired golden, were driving out to see us on Sunday from Vermont, if we were up for their company.  They wanted to see Zoe, and while they were at it, to spend a little time with us too.

If you've been following this storyline for a while, you'll know that Glenn and James had a dog named Milo who was Zoe's mentor while he was on this earth.  Milo, the three-legged golden retriever, sometimes known as Milo Speed Racer because he traveled for many months of his life by go-cart, came into our lives via a former student of mine named Annie, who had worked with James at Green Mountain Coffee in Vermont before she and her husband joined the Peace Corps and headed off to Zambia.  Zoe and I stayed with Milo and Emily and the cats and these fine humans twice this spring, in late March and in late April.  I don't think Zoe and I could have navigated through the world of canine cancer without their advice on nutrition and medicine.  Last week, when Zoe announced that she was done with chemo and was going to do everything her way for the last stretch, Glenn gave me a lot of wonderful advice on the phone and talked me off the ledge.  He suggested Prednisone for Zoe's appetite and for relief from inflamation, and Tramadol for pain.  This advice was immediately echoed by a number of other friends on-line.  Because of these wonder drugs, Zoe rallied this week.

But other things may be motivating her to hang out here for a while.  I've written this week about the lamb dinners, the rib-eye steak, the extra acupuncture, the visit with the cat, and the Reiki.  And I wrote about some of our sweet visitors.  Saturday night Zoe got to spend time with the other Milo in her life, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who Thinks He's a Greyhound, when his lovely people brought over pizza and wings and we stayed out on the deck talking and drinking wine until the mosquitoes were stricken with food comas from feasting on us.  I think the love blasting her way from so many sources is keeping Zoe interested in life.

I've written numerous posts about the delight my husband and I take in Sunday lunch, but we skipped it last week because I was working hard on my book and we missed it the week before because we were still at Chautauqua.  I almost forgot how much fun it is to set the table in anticipation of a glorious feast.  To prepare a few of the dishes the day before: the beet salad with wild blueberries, walnuts, parsley, and goat cheese feta; the lime and cilantro and jalapeno marinade for the grilled chicken; the lemon shallot olive oil salad dressing; Kerry's dry rub for the ribs and how his slow-cooking method fills the house with savory aromas.

Zoe has a unique relationship with each of our friends.  With James and Glenn, whose energy is so calming and peaceful and nonjudgmental, she turns into a puddle of bliss.  Other people inspire her to run, or sit up tall, or boss around their dogs, but with these two dog whisperers, she just eases down into the grass and welcomes in the love.  They are the most patient dog-centric people I have ever met and I often drew strength from them this spring when I visited their house in Vermont and hunkered down on the floor beside the dog day bed, otherwise known as The Nest, where their two goldens ran the show.

Before we sat down to eat the two men gazed at the river with their dog and mine, and Zoe seemed to understand that there was something very special about this visit.  She lay supine beside them, as relaxed as she is when someone has just done Reiki on her.

But then she smelled the meat.

Later, Zoe and I lowered our full bellies to the ground and stretched out.  For an hour I lay beside her in the grass.  The wind kicked up again, and then it began to rain.  The title for the tableau the dog and I made was The Art of Resting in the Rain.  It was so soothing and lovely to just ease down onto the earth and feel that cooling mist of rain caress our bodies.  I felt like a plate licked clean by dogs.

In the evening, another car came up our drive.  Zoe left her bunker under the deck where she'd sought refuge from late afternoon sun to run to our guests.  There were Diane and Fred, bearing pepperoni dog treats (low-fat, Diane promised, because their boxer, Finn, has suffered bouts of pancreatitis after high fat feasts.)  They never visit without treats. 

So we sat down at the table on the deck and ate the whole meal again.  While Diane and Fred entertained us with stories about ghosts in the house in Ireland they sometimes rent, the antics of a certain empathy-deficient brother-in-law (now even I can do a fair imitation of the man's whining), and a bizarre murder trial that took place last year in our county, Zoe understood that she was the reason for the visit, that she was the star of this show.

I love how these two couples visiting us yesterday appealed to two sides of Zoe's nature--and ours.  Glenn and James sooth and comfort her, and make her feel safe.  Diane and Fred bring out the puppy in her; they are high-spirited playmates and provocateurs.  Zoe feeling safe and able to relax, Zoe charged and ready to play (or at least, beg for meat): they are both sides of a dog who is still enjoying her life.

Later, Zoe stayed with me in the kitchen while I cleaned up instead of going upstairs with Kerry.
  
There were still plates to lick from supper. 

Part II: Day 65: Sun, Wind, Clouds, Birds

I have so many feelings swimming inside as I sit on the balcony on this Sunday morning.  Zoe just tucked into a huge breakfast of Sojo's (a nod to the hippie/organic-fight-cancer-with full-vigor era) gussied up with leftover roast lamb and asparagus (the palliative care-inspired, make-your-dog-feel-like-a queen diet).  For half an hour this morning, she joined the gentlemen's walk for the first time in a week.  David was back from conferences in Botswana and France and Zoe got to see him and Maya, his golden retriever, the closest thing Zoe has had to a litter mate these past nine years.  Kerry didn't want to push it, didn't want to give her lungs and that sore hind leg too much to do, but she was a normal dog this morning crossing the field with a beagle and a golden and pushing her snout into the pocket of one of her favorite human friends saying, "More please.  Can I please have some more?"  My husband says it was more of an amble than a walk, but hey.

We used to have a flock of turkey vultures who nested a couple houses down from us.  They would send their young to flight camp, and you'd see them running drills above our yard, doing laps, crazy eights, letting an air current carry them up before they practiced the dive-bomb.  Zoe, as a puppy, would see them up there and look at me, her face a grimace of doggy worry.  "Can those big birds get me?" she wanted to know.  "No way will I let them get you," I always told her, but until she weighed about thirty pounds or so, too heavy for a raptor's talons, I would take her in the house when they got close.

My neighbor Betsy thinks the vultures now have moved a few blocks over, to Cleveland Street.  Her friend has woods behind his house that the big birds prefer to our block.  Cleveland: the name also of the town I grew up in.  At the Chautauqua Writers Festival a lot of the writers attending were from Cleveland.  One woman asked me to sign my memoir, and she asked if it was true, the sad epiphany I come to in an end chapter, that Cleveland holds too much pain and sorrow for me and I'll never go back.  I told her that as soon as I left the conference I'd be getting together with the girls I grew up with in Cleveland, for a reunion we call Camp Baker, and that I would have been heading to the city itself as well for my third trip there in three years but I couldn't prolong the vacation because Zoe wasn't feeling her best.

Trouble flies by our houses like a big black bird.  If you peer into those glistening obsidian wings you can always see the reflection of your own face.  Best not to look too closely.

There's a lot of sickness suffering and death around us these days.

A close friend, a breast cancer survivor, has, since I began writing this blog, undergone surgery and radiation to remove a small tumor from her brain, and she's now contemplating chemo as the cancer claims a toehold in her lungs.  But she meditates for an hour each morning, tends to her garden, and finds ways to know peace.  She is, in fact, a very steady, calming presence.

A colleague known for her fierceness and fearlessness and tough mama love died of brain cancer last week.  I still can't quite believe that she's gone.  I didn't know her well, but I will remember her as a fiery spirit: the sun in the solar system of her family and circle of friends.

Wednesday night a close friend's mother-in-law ended up in the ICU when her heart stopped beating.  The family is reeling while they wait to see if she'll pull through.

We all want to draw some kind of wisdom from these illnesses and losses and shocks but when trouble like this looms large, flapping its big dark wings at us, language usually fails us.  Fails me, anyway.  For me, it's best to be soft and tender around grief.  This morning I'm looking around here and I see that my plants need watering.  I'll do that in a minute.  Add some walnuts and goat cheese feta to the beet salad I made last night.  Put the clothes in the dryer.   Find some Miracle-gro for the pansies and snapdragons, which are looking more dessicated by the minute.  Pet the dog.

Pet the dog!  Honestly, when I went to bed Monday night I did not think she would live to share another Sunday morning with me.  And here she is, watching the river, turning now and then to gaze at me.  At acupuncture yesterday Amy Thompson said that Zoe's pulses were twice as strong as they were on Tuesday.  Last night Danielle told me she thought Zoe seemed like her old self, and even her coat was shinier than it was when the week began.

But I know this is just a reprieve.  Zoe pants harder now.

Today, on this warm but cloudy Sunday morning, there are so many things I'm grateful for.  I'm glad, for one, that an insistent wind showed up on Friday and Saturday when the temperature rose.  When we began doggy hospice week it was cool and rainy, Zoe's kind of summer weather, and when I heard that it was going to hit 86 degrees on Friday, my heart sank.  I thought, my dog will be doubly miserable.  Most days this week, we watched the wind.  It rocked the willow tree, sent flower petals adrift as at a wedding, and it cooled us down when we sat in the grass.

I'm grateful for my friend Pam who told me not to try to do anything ambitious right now.  To just sit with Zoe and breathe.  Normally at this point in a project I would be working around the clock.  The novel will be my solace in grief.  Discipline and hard work are not difficult for me to manufacture.  What's always come hardest to me--and what my zen-master with a tail has taught me--is to simply be present.  To sit and be still.  To notice the small things happening around me, like the robin that has claimed a spot in the grass near the hammock.

Zoe is moving around up here on the deck, looking for a spot to get comfortable.  She needs something from me, and I wouldn't be here to help her if I was hidden away in my corner with my pile of books.

Yesterday our neighbor, Betsy, was out in her yard and Zoe barked hello.  In my normal working-around-the-clock point of a project, I would have seen my neighbor and only waved.  Instead I invited her to come up the balcony for a cup of tea.  She's leaving soon for a trip to see her family.  She loves Zoe and would not have had the chance to say good-bye to her.

On Friday when the local Reiki master watched Zoe's gaze drift to our neighbor's yard and then the river, she thought at first that Zoe was seeing entities that we couldn't see, like doggy ghosts.  I said, "Well, there was a little dog Zoe used to play with.  A cute Chihuahua who who was hit by a car when Zoe was still a young dog."  I told Betsy that story, and she talked about how much she had loved that cute little dog.  We shared a moment of missing him and I could picture him again, that cute little brown pup half the size of Zoe's head jumping on her and asking to be chased.

And we talked for a long time about the power of this week's wind.  Zoe's and my solace this week was not such a great friend to Betsy.  She had decided to de-clutter her house and she'd piled up some things of her daughter's that she wants her to take to her own home, or chuck.  And then she took out archives from her own life: the photograph in the newspaper in North Carolina announcing her wedding engagement.  The clipping of the photo from the wedding itself.  She even had a clipping from O: The Oprah Magazine of something I wrote and published in 2001 about being a stepmother.  She remembered my older stepson from a school group she led.  At any rate, after she'd gathered up her life-in-clippings, and took out her daughter's box of mementos, she left to go on an errand, and when she came back she found out that all of these documents from her life had scattered to the wind.  She found the engagement photo in her neighbor's shrub.  She patrolled the nearby yards and salvaged what she could find.  And then she had a good long laugh at herself.  This is as an object lesson, she thought, but she wasn't sure what the lesson was, exactly.

My friend whose mother-in-law is gravely ill--as is her dad, and maybe her sister too--found a minute to read my blog this week.  She's like that: no matter how hard things are in her life, she thinks of others.  She wrote me an e-mail to say that she finds it moving to watch me try, with Zoe, both to hang on for dear life, and to let go.

I'm wondering if that's how we're supposed to live all the time.  To hang on by loving fiercely, and not holding anything back.  And to be ready at any moment to let everything go.

Pema Chodron talks about living in uncertainty.  She says it's like being at sea on a raft, and then the raft disappears.  The local Reiki master who has now worked on Zoe twice visualized Zoe's voyage from the earth as a ride on a raft down the swift-moving Grass river, the river she gazes at for most of every day.

Above us, the clouds are clumped into a quilt that says nothing, that makes no particular shape I can read things into as I'm often inclined to do, but is doing its job by keeping us cooler than we would be otherwise.  Zoe is panting anyway, and I need to check her out to see if something new is wrong, or if this is just her new normal.  Love binds us now, as we breathe together, and will bind us still when she's gone.  I feel the sun and wind and look above at the clouds and beside me, to this dog I love so much, and I feel so thankful to be part of all of this.  All of it.  Even the things that scare me, the things that I continue to hope will skip the house and fly by on big wings toward the clouds.

Part II: Day 64: More Inter-Species Encounters

On Wednesday, Zoe met a local Reiki master and shaman and photographer who poses by daytime as a bank manager.  In true North Country fashion, this woman has at least four strings to her bow, and she also lives on a hundred acres of land in a landscape that some would describe as the middle of nowhere but is truly the middle of somewhere alive and wondrous, full of creatures with tails and plants that sometimes murmur advice.

My friend Sandy did some Reiki on Zoe at Camp Baker and I saw how Zoe both perked up and relaxed as my friend opened up the energy between Zoe's heart and head and hind.  She looked both startled, as in, What is this odd, cool thing?, and relieved, as in, I was wondering when you were going to figure out that I need this.

Zoe leans right into the local Reiki master the instant they meet.  My shy girl presents herself to this woman fully, but with one exception.  She won't let her touch her throat.  I wonder about this.  These are the muscles on Zoe's neck that she uses to hold her head so high, earning her reputation as a regal dog, but perhaps it's with these same muscles that she braces herself and hides the pain.  The local Reiki master finds the pain anyway.  It's mostly in her hind quarters: the torqued hip and leg.  We'd been noticing how that back leg seemed weaker lately, and the local Reiki master thinks there's a hot spot there.  I wish I'd been getting Zoe chiropractic adjustments all along, since she became a tripod, like James and Glenn did with Milo.  The Reiki master works on Zoe's heart and lungs and feels the congestion there, but tells me that even though Zoe has to work hard to breathe in certain positions, she is not feeling pain in that region.

She closes her eyes to listen to Zoe.

A minute later, she says: "She loves you.  She doesn't want to leave you."  We talk about how I can find ways to communicate with Zoe to let her know that I'll be sad when she's gone and I'll miss her, but she is free to go whenever she needs to, and that it would make me much sadder to see her suffer.

"But the other thing is, I think Zoe likes it here a lot right now."  It's true.  We've had one of the best weeks ever.  And while we're having this conversation, Zoe and the local Reiki master can smell the lamb Kerry is roasting.  Later, Zoe will lick her plate and ask for seconds.

On Thursday Zoe fulfilled her lifelong dream to sniff the butt of a kitty who didn't retaliate by scratching her eyes out.  She even kissed the cat, both on her nose and on her ribs, but unfortunately, neither the cat's person, Rebecca, nor I had our cameras at the ready to film the closest of these inter-species encounters, so you'll just have to take our word for it.

I wasn't sure if Zoe would be up for this visit.  On Monday and Tuesday we'd walked through the neighborhood and she'd tugged hard, asking to go over to Rebecca's, but by Wednesday we were confining our walks to the acre we live on so as to conserve her strength.  But I just looked at Zoe and said, "Do you want to go in the car to see Rebecca and the kitty?" and she hopped in.

I think Zoe prefers the push-pull of the chase than to have the object of her obsession offered to her directly, as Rebecca was doing.  This fearless cat the size of Zoe's head loved provoking Zoe by scrunching down to places under low tables that she knew were too small for Zoe to follow her into, and Zoe loved provoking the cat by squeaking her mouse toys.  The truth is, Zoe is still a little afraid of this cat.  This was evident in their staring matches, which Katniss always won. (For back story on Zoe's relationship with Katniss, go here.  For more on Zoe with Rebecca and her cat, Webster and an evil cat Zoe met on the island of Corsica, go here.)

Zoe begins each visit to Rebecca's by devouring a greenie

Are you seeing the scale differential here between species?

I see you!

Zoe and Rebecca and the fearless, freakishly calm Katniss

Try getting under here with that big bootie of yours!  Ha!

Do you think they're going to make us pose with funny hats for a greeting card?

It's a dance

The kitty's paw eventually was draped along Zoe's head, but my camera was in the case then

But finally, after they'd been in close(ish) proximity for nearly two hours, the two creatures were friends.  I think if we'd had more time a bit of snuggling might have ensued, but a sniff and a kiss were such milestones that it would be greedy for any of us to ask for anything more.

Zoe celebrated this inter-species love-fest with ice cream at Morgan's.  Afterwards, she walked around the park, marker-peeing and saying to anyone who was interested that she was having a great day.

Last night the local Reiki master came over again, and this time she worked on me for a few minutes first and taught me some Reiki moves I can use on Zoe myself.  Zoe ran right up to her when she arrived, picked a spot in the shade for us to begin, and waited while we talked, announcing her interest in the action to come by chewing a stick.

"She feels good today," she said.  "Definitely no worse than Wednesday.  She's tired, though."

"I don't think she's sleeping deeply enough," I said.  "It's hard for her to sleep on her side now, whether it's the aching hip or where the lung mass is located, and when she sleeps on her side she sleeps her deepest and best.  It's the only time she completely surrenders."

Toward the end of the session, Zoe was looking off toward the river.  "It's either like a portal for her, what she's seeing, to the beyond.  Or she just wants to go down to that river and get her feet wet to cool off."  We followed Zoe's gaze.  Later the local Reiki master suggested that I explain to Zoe that leaving this life will be like floating on a raft down that river she loves so much.

But here's the thing:  I believe what the people who can talk to animals tell me when they say that Zoe is afraid to leave me, afraid that I'll be heartbroken, and that it's my job to tell her she's free to go.  But at the same time, whether it's the prednisone giving her a last boost, or the fact that our days this week have been so peaceful, she has seemed very happy lately and still her same old graceful, haughty, dignified, occasionally cuddly self.  She is living her life exactly the way she wants to.  On her terms.

And besides, there's meat.  Last night Kerry cooked three rib-eye steaks for dinner.  Zoe was in the grass and we were on the deck, and she whined and cried until we invited her to join us at the table.  She ate more steak than I did, with asparagus and chard, and I swear to dog I've never seen her look this ecstatic--not since she caught and ate the bunny.  Afterwards she wanted to run down to the river she'd been staring at earlier, and while Kerry and I stood on the flat rock together and hugged, she leaned against us.  Then she went in to cool down her paws and get a drink.  I wanted those few minutes to last forever.

I always want our moments together to last forever.

I forgot to say that just when the session with the local Reiki master had ended, Zoe took a nap.  She slept on her side and slept deeply.  And last night I woke myself up a few times to watch her sleep.  She usually is aware of me no matter how quiet I am but last night she only got up once when I did.  I scooted over to the wooden floor to lie beside her, and a minute or so later she was asleep again in that position of surrender.

This morning since we climbed the balcony we've seen the robin patrolling the yard looking for seed, and a squirrel, and then a moment or two ago the great blue heron swooped down to say hello.  There's so much life around us and we have the best seat in the house.

Am I bribing her to stick around a few more days with steak and ice cream and cats?

Don't feel compelled to answer.  I'm working this out myself.  But I will say this: for whatever reason Zoe has rallied these past few days (and the prednisone is magically playing its part), she has blessed me repeatedly with that eager look I've known and loved these past nine years.

I will never think there's enough time.   But trust me, I'm content hanging out here with my dog right now on our back acre in the here and now, and when she says it's time to get on that raft, I'll find the strength to help her go.

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 62: Visitors

It starts Monday afternoon.  Erin comes over to say good-bye to Zoe and me.  Erin and her family are off to the cottage until August and in our ideal world their sweet dog, Max, would still be alive to run on the beach with them, and Zoe and my husband and I would join them.  We would eat watermelon on the deck and spit seeds at each other, and we would all swim, and Zoe and Max would compete for the sticks we'd toss, but they'd sometimes swim to shore together with the same one in their jaws.

Instead we humans have to make do with a good talk and a cup of dandelion tea.  But it's enough to lift our spirits, and not long after the visit, Zoe wants to walk, and eat, and tell me a thing or two about how she'd like things to be run around here.  This visit marks a turning point.  We started this day with such sadness, but after Erin's visit Zoe understood that we had heard her and we kind of eased into this new phase of our life together with grace.

Zoe adores Erin.

Eve and Blue arrive on Tuesday afternoon at 3, around the time we'd normally be thinking about a long walk along the river.  Zoe is so excited to see Blue that she chases him downstairs and back up again, and that's how I first hear and witness "the cough," the dreaded sign that the mass in Zoe's lungs is interfering with her respiration.  Well, we knew this was the case a few days ago when Zoe started stopping en route on walks a few times to pant and catch her breath when she went uphill, but now we're onto something bigger.  But our vet tells us a couple hours later that this doesn't quite mean The End.  When Zoe coughs like that when she's at rest, doing nothing at all, and when the cough interferes with her sleep, we'll know.  Plus, Zoe took those stairs to greet her old friend like she did as a pup. She was so happy to see him and his person; her mad tear up and down the stairs to herd Blue was her version of dancing a jig.

Here's how it is for her: It's like she was an Olympic runner and all at once she woke up with the lungs of a two-pack-a-day smoker, and she's just trying to learn how to move again.  Later I will tell this story to Danielle and Steve and Steve will say it's like when Lance Armstrong first got on his bicycle after chemo.  He'd think he was pushing hard, going as fast as he could, and then "a little old lady would fly right past him."

Danielle and Steve and Milo, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who Thinks he's a Greyhound, pop over just after Amy Thompson has finished giving Zoe acupuncture.  Milo has a hard time finding a comfortable place to rest in my studio, and Danielle wonders if he senses that things have shifted for his friend, the big black dog with the wolfy face who used to herd him: if he feels the impending loss.  Zoe is sleepy from the acupuncture so she elects to go out to the balcony to rest.

My husband is having hip replacement surgery on July 10, and Danielle offers to come over sometime after that and make a nice dinner for us, partly in honor of Kerry's birthday which is later in July.  Danielle is one of the best cooks we know.  We were originally going to go to dinner at her and Steve's house on Saturday but now we just can't make plans, and before we could even tell her this she sensed it.   Normally when we go to her and Steve's house she has a bone waiting for Zoe, and all the dogs lick our plates.  Now it seems unlikely that Zoe will be up for leaving the familiar, the comfort of her domain, so the party will come to her--but only if she's up for it.

I feel so lucky to have such kind friends.  And it lifts our spirits, Zoe's and mine, to have visitors.  Zoe snuggles against our friends, or offers them a paw,  and the presence of others lets this sweet dog know that there's still a world outside our house and yard even though, since yesterday, she hasn't been up for heading out there.  I like to think it lets her know that her people won't fall apart.  That she can go when she has to, that she doesn't have to stick around just for us.

Last night my husband said to me, "Would you like to go away for a few days if  . . when . . ." and then the sentence trailed off.   It was such a kind, sweet offer.  We're both kind of tapped out financially now.  He suggested a couple places not far away, one that we've been to in Essex, Vermont, that is connected to the culinary institute, and do you want to know, honestly, my first response?  Before I could say it, I was thinking, 'That's a good choice.  They take dogs."

I'm going to have my work cut out for me.

But I don't have to do it just yet.  For now, Zoe and I are camped out on the balcony watching the river.  The fat groundhog mama just visited, although she thinks of himself, I'm pretty sure, not as a visitor but as an inhabitant.  A hawk swooped above us last night and did a few loops around the yard and we were enthralled.  And although we're all just visitors to this planet, I feel very lucky to have claimed this particular spot on a cool morning in late June with a smart, sensitive dog whose snout reaching over the rails picks up the scent of every creature in our vicinity, and whose big, tender heart keeps teaching me more ways to love her even now.  She's snoring, and that sound as she visits the land of dreams is as comforting to me as the sound of the river flowing past.

Another day.  How lucky we are.  The gift of another day . . .

Blue and Zoe

They have been friends ever since I took Zoe home to live with us

Zoe and I were so happy to see Eve, and I was happier still to see Zoe this happy

When I first brought Zoe home, Eve bought me a pet advice newsletter and was my go-to person on all kinds of pup matters.  She and Zoe have always understood each other.

photo of Milo and Zoe taken by Danielle Egan; I didn't have my camera out to capture their sweet visit on Tuesday

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.