Bisou at Seventy

My little red Cavalier, Bisou, just turned seventy in dog years, which makes her almost my age. How did she get there so fast? Every day I scan her for signs of aging, as I do myself.

She sleeps more than she used to, and she only occasionally gets the zoomies, which in her youth were her default mode. Her hearing is failing. Unlike me, however, she doesn’t have recourse to hearing aids, nor to cataract surgery, although her eyes are growing cloudy, and if she were human she would be worried about driving at night.

We both languish in temperatures over 75F, so we take our walks early in the morning or after sundown. When I see her panting and looking haggard, I start to wane myself, and we head home, where, after extracting burrs and seed pods from her fabulous “feathers,” I give her an ice cube to chew while I rub one on my pulse points.

 I worry about her teeth. Despite daily brushings, she’s had to have several pulled, and for her, dental implants are not an option. So far her muscles and joints are holding up, and she leaps on and off the furniture with relative abandon, but for how long? And when her hips start acting up, will I get her a hip replacement, to match my own? Although this surgery is available for dogs, I doubt that I’ll put her through it.

She was such a wild puppy! At nine weeks, no bigger than a cantaloupe, she would entice my two German Shepherds, Wolfie and Lexi,to chase her. She had a much tighter turning radius than they did, and she calculated her chances of escape to a nicety. If worst came to worst she would dash under a broccoli plant—the super-obedient  Shepherds, who had been taught never to set foot in the garden, could be counted on to come to a screeching halt at the edge.

But if they did catch her, she had perfected what I called the “omelette flip,” turning on her back and exposing her defenseless little belly, which would instantly disarm the big dogs.

Inside the house, she flew from sofa to windowsill to coffee table. One day, chasing one of the Shepherds, she tumbled down our steep staircase. I rushed to pick up what I expected to be her lifeless body, but she was already at the other end of the house, pursuing her prey.

One of her pastimes was to get the ever-patient Wolfie to open his mouth wide enough so she could stick her head inside.

I  know that he looks ferocious, but it was all her idea. And this is how they looked after she’d finally gotten her wish:

For five years now, she and I have been doing weekly therapy visits at the nursing wing of the retirement community where we live. Bisou’s job is to stare soulfully into the residents’ eyes while they pet her and reminisce about their own long-gone dogs.

The people we visit are usually sitting in recliners or wheel chairs, and because Bisou worries about falling off their lap, I end up kneeling on the floor, holding her up so the resident can reach to pet her. Getting up off the floor has become more and more challenging, so last week, the staff member who accompanies us on our rounds showed up with a small stool for me to sit on. I felt like a medieval queen that day, walking the halls with a page following behind, carrying my seat.

Back home after each visit, Bisou and I fling ourselves down on the bed, physically and emotionally exhausted. We are not what we once were. In my files there is a detailed Advance Directive that I hope will avoid the prolongation of my final days. When Bisou’s time comes, however, she’ll have to rely on me to know when to end her suffering. I hope I’ll be able to serve her well.

Is Bisou my last dog? If she lives an exceptional five more years (Cavaliers, though small, are not a long-lived breed), I will be nearing my ninth decade when she dies. A puppy will be out of the question. Perhaps a tiny dog, one as ancient as I, might do. Or maybe I should content myself with the cat.

Do I want to even think about this stuff? Of course not. But it is the task of this life stage to learn to look unblinkingly at matters that, only a decade ago, seemed abstract and far away. To reflect about death, my own and the dog’s, and then take her with me into the shadowy woods, hoping for a glimpse of the fox--that is the work that occupies me these days.

No Cat Yet

Three months after Wolfie's demise, we're still a one-dog, two-fish household.  I had forgotten how simple life with a single dog, especially a single small dog, can be.  Gone are interminable grooming sessions, when my arm would give way before making even a dent in Wolfie's perennially shedding, dense undercoat.  Gone are the daily heartbreaking walks, when he would alternate between hopping on three legs and lagging behind on four.  And gone, at last, is the anxious watching--is he getting worse?  Is he miserable?  What should I do?

With only Bisou like a little red shadow at my side, the days seem to have expanded, and I have been using the extra time and energy to revisit a project that I began four years ago--a personal account of my two decades with CFS, enlivened and redeemed by the company of dogs.  A couple of years ago I got as far as printing out a first draft, and then the illness itself took over and robbed me of the  energy to write about it.

But now that I no longer have a garden to tend or meals to cook, let alone a large sick dog to care for, I have managed to revisit that old manuscript.  And that is why I've gone so long without writing here.  I've been busy keeping the almost 70,000 word narrative straight in my head and on the page, taking out enormous chunks of blather (I am, if nothing else, a superb deleter), and striving to tell a good story while also telling the truth, whatever that is.  I used to find writing--essays, speeches, short stories--less than agonizing.   But this memoir business is a bear.  A grizzly bear, in fact.

There are hundreds of writers out there, prolific novelists, essayists, and memoirists who somehow manage to write copiously and continuously on their blogs.  I am not one of them.  You should know that I have been been beating myself up about this regularly, though.  I have been grossly lacking in blogger's noblesse oblige, all but abandoning My Green Vermont without explanation or apology.  But the truth is that I never intended to stop posting.  Every day I would tell myself that I was planning to write a post, that I would very soon write a post, that I was about to write a post any minute now...And then--you know how it is--guilt and embarrassment took over, so that the thought of ever writing anything here again made me cringe.

Today I have obviously stopped cringing long enough to write this, but I suspect that I'll have to get that memoir into a lot better shape before I can post regularly again.  In the meantime, I'm still thinking, thinking, thinking about getting a kitten for Bisou.

One Dog, Or Two?

When Wolfie expired quietly next to his water bowl last month, I asked the vet to wait before taking his body away.  I wanted Bisou to see him one last time.  I thought she might want to say goodbye, or get a sense of closure or whatever it is a dog needs when her life's companion dies.  But she didn't pay any more attention to that long, still body than if it had been a pile of laundry.  Instead, all her focus was on the vet, whom she loves and who said, seeing my surprise, "I've seen this kind of reaction before.  Dogs are really good at perceiving the difference between 'alive' and 'dead.'  To her, Wolfie is no longer here."

In the following days, I watched Bisou carefully for signs of mourning, but there was nothing obvious.  Then I went away for an overnight trip, leaving her with my husband, who fed her and threw balls for her and was around most of the time.  When I walked in the house on my return, she became hysterical.  She barked and yelped and moaned.  She ran around in frantic circles and barked some more, and couldn't seem to stop.  I finally had to throw balls for her to drain some of that energy and bring her back down to earth.  My husband said, "Maybe she thought that the vet had taken you away like he did Wolfie...."

Wolfie was so much bigger than she that they didn't play together, unless you count as play Bisou's jumping up into his face to get him to yodel and open his mouth wide so she could stick her head inside.  But the two of them would casually check on each other during the day, and sleep close together at night.  I am sure that he was a steadying, reassuring presence in her life, as he was in mine.

Now people are asking if I plan to get another dog.  One friend says, "You should always have at least two dogs.  That way, when one of them dies, you're not left dogless." Another asks, "If dogs kept humans as pets, wouldn't you appreciate having another person in the house?" 

They are right, of course.  But...

Although I have almost always had two dogs (for a while I had three, but that was way too many), there is much to be said for the one-dog life.  It's so much easier, especially if the dog is a reasonable, portable size.  These days, when I go on errands, I often invite Bisou along.  And if I have time after I've done my shopping, I let her out of the car and we go for a walk.  There is just one collar, one leash to deal with.  One "heeling" behavior to correct.  One poop bag.  True, in my two- dog days I sometimes left one at home, but oh, the guilt on my part, and the uncomprehending sorrow of the dog I left behind!  Of course I would tell him over and over that it would be his turn next time, but he didn't know that, he was just a dog, and all he knew was that a terrible injustice was being perpetrated.

A single dog not only means less guilt, but less hair on the furniture, less poop to pick up, fewer nails to clip, fewer vet bills and visits.  And it also means, for me, a more intense relationship with the dog.  As with human marriage, there is something to be said for person/dog monogamy.  Our capacity for love may be infinite, but our time, energy and attention are sadly limited, and it's so much easier when you don't have to worry that you're giving too much to one dog and depriving the other (yes, there goes the guilt issue again).

True, with a single dog there is the danger of neurotic over-involvement on the part of the human.  Sometimes I worry that I've started down that road already.  I find myself wishing that Bisou were half her size so I could take her on airplanes, to restaurants, stores, everywhere.  Will I end up, twenty years from now, mumbling endearments to a Chihuahua in my purse?

I think I can stay vigilant enough to prevent my  relationship with Bisou from degenerating into neurosis.  As for her, as long as her nose keeps her attuned to that universe of smells into which I cannot follow, and as long as her love affair with the entire human race continues, she is in no danger of becoming pathologically attached to me.

Still, it would be nice to be able to leave her for a couple of hours without worrying that her little heart is breaking.  Should I get her a cat?

(To be continued.)